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Title: Sonnets and Poems

Author: Eleanor Farjeon

Release Date: December 24, 2017 [EBook #56244]

Language: English

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SONNETS AND POEMS, BY ELEANOR

FARJEON.

TO VIOLA.

¶ Some of these poems have appeared in The Athenæum, Blackwood’s

Magazine, The Englishwoman, Root and Branch, The Saturday Westminster,

and The Vineyard: by the courtesy of whose editors they are reprinted

in this volume.

CONTENTS

Page

Sonnets

7

Christmas and New-year Songs

Six Green Singers

16

In a Far Country

17

A Manger Song

19

Child’s Carol

20

The Mummers

20

Cradle-Song for Christmas

21

The Moon upon her Watch-Tower

22

A Burying

22

“Colin Clout, Come Home Again!”

23

Miscellaneous Poems.

Bronwen of the Flowers

28

Jessica Dances

28

Sylvia Sings

29

Myfanwy among the Leaves

30

For Joan

31

A Child’s Fear

32

A Christening

32

The Singer

34

The Girl with the Ball

35

The Story-Teller

36

The Reflection

37

Solitary

39

Spring-Dawn

39

The World’s Amazing Beauty

40

41

Nightingales

42

Night-Piece

43

Before Winter

43

On the Snow

44

Three Miles to Penn

44

When You Say

45

The Outlet

45

Two Choruses from “Merlin in Broceliande”

46

Peace

48

Now that You Too

49

SONNETS. I.

AN cannot be a sophist to his heart,

He must look nakedly on his intent,

Expose it of all shreds of argument,

And strip it like a slave-girl in the mart.

What though with speckled truths and masked confessions

He still deceives awhile the outer sense?

At barely half his honesty’s expense

Still earns the world’s excuse for the world’s transgressions?

His conscience cannot play the marshland elf,

Confusing that poor midnight wanderer,

His soul, with floundering lights and errant gleams.

O what damnation man would deal himself

If meeting her beyond his uttermost dreams

He still could face his soul and lie to her.

II.

O SPARE me from the hand of niggard love

That grasps at interest on what it lends,

And sets cold counsel as a guard above

The hoard it calculates before it spends.

Such misers of the riches of the heart

Bear their untested treasure to the grave,

And miss the whole, striving to save the part,

By the bare measure they have striven to save.

Is it for pride in saying at the end:

See, Life! I spent not all that thou hast given—

Lo, this and this and this I did not spend!

I stinted earth of bliss to add to heaven.

Alas, poor fools! life only gave ye this

Because earth has such need of heavenly bliss.

III.

ONCE, Love, be prodigal, nor look hereafter,

Not though experience unrolls the years

And bids thee count the cost of golden laughter

In the dull coinage of leaden tears.

O perjured wisdom! half-truth hedged with lies!

That makes a common stake of joy and pain,

When tears are man’s most mortal certainties

And every instant’s joy his heavenly gain.

Ah, mystery that sowed our breath and being,

What harvest wilt thou get of untilled powers?

Why didst thou give us sight if not for seeing?

Why if we dare not hear make hearing ours?

Or why in life’s name this high passion of love

But in life’s name its passionate height to prove?

IV.

WILT thou put seals on love because men say

Love is a thing that certain time will steal?

As well, since night is certain after day,

Might men their eyelids to the noontide seal.

Nay! even though that worn-out tale were truth,

And love, dear love, were time’s assurèd dower,

What profit canst thou get of cheated youth

By paying usury before his hour?

I will not hear the sorry tune of time,

That bitter quencher of young blessedness.

Not to have proved young rapture is the crime,

Unproven it will be quenched no less, no less.

And thou wilt to the earth at last, time’s scorn,

Relinquishing a crown thou hast not worn.

V.

WHEN all is said, we can but turn our eyes

In helplessness on the miraculous heart

And secretly dream opportunities

That shall its untried force in motion start;

But life that launched and left us lets us drift,

Our mightiest dreams still lean on circumstance,

The essence of pain and joy is in our gift

But not its seasons of significance.

We cannot by the strength of our desires

Compel our destinies; we only feel

That in our souls imperishable fires

Are hungry for the anvil and the steel.

But if life brings no metal to the flame

What shall we fashion of it in life’s name?

VI.

CERTAIN among us walk in loneliness

Along the pale unprofitable days,

Hazarding many an unanswered guess

At what vague purpose wastes us on our ways.

We know that we are potent to create,

We say, I could be such or such or such,

And lo, indifferent death swings back the gate

And life has never put us to the touch.

So women with the aching will to bear

Still to the barren grave must barren go,

And men that might again like Titans dare

Angelic secrets, die and nothing know.

Alas! why were we born to woe and bliss

If life had no more need of us than this?

VII.

WHEN I see two delay their wings at heaven

To scan the creeping audience of the earth,

I think the angelic hosts of life must even

Break into tears of fire or furious mirth,

That ever spirits nearly perfected

Should count the cost of knowing themselves sublime,

Setting the measurable years in dread

Against their single flash of measureless time.

So issues strange to nature are debated,

Woven in nets and beaten into bars,

While nature’s issue stands unconsummated

Upon the very boundary of the stars;

And souls whose unity had been divine

Sundered shrink back from God’s to man’s design.

VIII.

ALAS, that ever life’s sleek counterfeit,

Convention, should usurp life’s very throne,

Setting about the bitter and the sweet

Observances the soul disdains to own.

It muffles up with bland expedient tongue

The wise examination of the mind,

Bribing the old and threatening the young

And offering easy conduct to the blind.

A handbook of few rules for many cases,

One answer to more sums than it can prove,

With prizes for apt scholars in its paces,

A veil for knowledge and a ring for love;

And this smooth text for any questioning heart—

Know not, and be less than, the thing thou art.

IX.

LOVE needs not two the render it complete,

O certainly love needs not even one!

Sweet singing wants no listener to be sweet,

And unseen light’s still proper to the sun.

When sunlight falls upon unpeopled valleys

No presence can increase or dim its fall,

When nightingales sing in deserted alleys

No ear can make the night more musical.

If solitary into the light and song

I come, I know I have my treasure whole,

Yea, and still have it whole, although a throng

Runs after me down paths whereby I stole,

Yea, and still have it whole, though only one

Should follow me—or none, beloved, or none.

X.

WHAT is this anguish then that always stands

Mingled in love, if love be love’s sole end?

O it is life still gasping his commands

And crying love therein to stand his friend.

Life drives us all whether we love or no,

We are life’s purpose, he much less is ours,

And we like panting beasts in harness go

While his fierce needs make torments of our powers.

Only when love across the heavy fields

Divinely treads to labour with the clods,

He breaks the goad that life is glad to yield,

And lifts the yoke that bowed us to the sods:

Upstanding, we behold a God revealed,

And serve life’s purpose not like beasts but gods.

XI.

A FEW of us who faltered as we fared

Love has returned for. Still he leads us on,

But where we walk the furrows are prepared

And sown and fruitful, and the sowers are gone.

O love, O love, the way too easy lies!

Life on the rough horizon yonder goes,

And when I call he will not turn his eyes,

But with my brothers sows, and reaps, and sows.

Life without love, O bitter, bitterest birth!

Love without life still leaves us in our need.

Ah, love, give up to me my patch of earth,

My pinch of seed! Hast neither earth nor seed?

Then whence these visions of thy presence born,

These shining visions of flowers and fruit and corn?

XII.

I HEAR love answer: Since within the mesh

Of blood and flesh you labour for awhile,

I, even I, must use you in the flesh,

Leavening it of all the world calls vile.

I am not nature’s force. O, she will forge

Her indomitable end without my aid,

And men cry out on her with rising gorge

As though they were of other forces made.

Not being her bond-slave, I alone can give

Visions that are unmingled with her earth,

But since this present in her habit you live

I must meet nature to fulfil their birth.

Only when you and I come clear of the clay,

Beloved, I will fulfil them as I may.

XIII.

THY glance is lovelier than the glance of the moon,

Thy breath more heavenly than the breath of may,

When thou dost gaze my sight begins to swoon,

When thou dost breathe my own breath swims away.

O love, with strange clear light, with strange dim breath,

Thou dost pervade me, till all strength, all sense,

Dissolve, it may be as they will when death

Looses the soul from the body’s impotence.

The stones I tread no longer solid are,

These narrow houses all are built of air,

Nay, are they on this star, or on that star

Distantly trembling? Am I here or there?

Love, love, I know not what is near and far,

I am with thee and thou art everywhere.

XIV.

NOW I have love again and life again

By either hand, and cannot join their palms;

For me they never will be one but twain,

And I from each accept the barest alms.

Life’s dole I scatter publicly, love’s lies

Unspent, unspent for ever in my heart—

Poor heart, poor beggar of bleak charities

From stores wherein it owns no proper part.

Each knows me for his almsman in distress

And brings his mercies to my famished door,

But love asks not who doth my body dress,

Nor life who stoops to clothe a heart so poor.

Why do ye always come in singleness?

Meet in me once, and I will want no more.

XV.

FAREWELL, you children that I might have borne.

Now must I put you from me year by year,

Now year by year the root of life be torn

Out of this womb to which you were so dear,

Now year by year the milky springs be dried

Within the sealed-up fountains of my breast,

Now year by year be to my arms denied

The burden they would break with and be blessed.

Sometimes I felt your lips and hands so close

I almost could have plucked you from the dark,

But now your very dream more distant grows

As my still aching body grows more stark.

I shall not see you laugh or hear you weep,

Kiss you awake, or cover up your sleep.

XVI.

O LOVELY life, how you have worn me out

With asking naught and leaving me at large,

Till my unmeasured strength begins to doubt

If it could answer now your lightest charge.

I am as weary as a child to-night

And with my heavy lack of burdens bowed,

And power and pride have ceased to stand upright,

Wanting the cause to be powerful and proud.

Passion is spent, and nothing was it spent on,

And grief run dry of having no wounds to cure,

And discontent that was the staff I leant on

Is stifled by its final panting breaths.

I have only patience left: such patience, sure,

Is not life’s child and mine, but mine and death’s.

XVII.

MY little dream, my momentary dream,

My illimitable dream has slipt away.

It came not like the morning, but the gleam

In morning’s van that is not night or day.

But since my walls of ignorance are broken,

Though on that desert knowledge builds no towers,

I cannot say of life, he has not spoken,

I cannot say of love, he has no powers.

I have seen apparitions. I have heard

Rumours within my soul’s profoundest cave.

Movements remote and mighty have been stirred

In my ancestral blood, while from the grave

And womb of time strange thunders did arise

That shook the throne of thought with prophecies.

XVIII.

SHALL we not laugh together, you and I,

I being at last fulfilled, at last at rest

Within the strength of your beloved breast,

Shall we not laugh once at a day gone by

When, wan as things that lie below the earth,

Things choked and buried, sunless and unsought,

This richest life was only lived in thought,

Seed without fruit, unconsummated birth?

Love, in that time when you have called me yours

And have with kisses long outbreathed old fears,

Love, let me not remember these! these hours,

Save with one smile to drown their thousand tears.

Then fold me in your bosom so deep away

That memory cannot touch this loveless day.

CHRISTMAS AND NEW-YEAR SONGS

SIX GREEN SINGERS.

HE frost of the moon fell over my floor

And six green singers stood at my door.

“What do ye here that music make?”

“Let us come in for Christ’s sweet Sake.”

“Long have ye journeyed in coming here?”

“Our Pilgrimage was the length of the year.”

“Where do ye make for?” I asked of them.

“Our Shrine is a Stable in Bethlehem.”

“What will ye do as ye go along?”

“Sing to the world an evergreen song.”

“What will ye sing for the listening earth?”

“One will sing of a brave-souled Mirth,

“One of the Holiest Mystery,

The Glory of glories shall one song be,

“One of the Memory of things,

One of the Child’s imaginings,

“One of our songs is the fadeless Faith,

And all are the Life more mighty than death.”

“Ere ye be gone that music make,

Give me an alms for Christ’s sweet Sake.”

“Six green branches we leave with you;

See they be scattered your house-place through.

“The staunch blithe Holly your board shall grace,

Mistletoe bless your chimney-place,

“Laurel to crown your lighted hall,

Over your bed let the Yew-bough fall,

“Close by the cradle the Christmas Fir,

For elfin dreams in its branches stir,

“Last and loveliest, high and low,

From ceil to floor let the Ivy go.”

From each glad guest I received my gift

And then the latch of my door did lift—

“Green singers, God prosper the song ye make

As ye sing to the world for Christ’s sweet Sake.”

IN A FAR COUNTRY.

WO strangers met on a mountain-side

In a far country ...

The moon was young, the year was old,

The airs of the night were bitter-cold,

And their heavy cloaks their dress did hide.

One stranger did the other stay

In that far country:

“What brings you into the icy dark

With lifted eyes that only mark

The lights of heaven, less light than day?”

The second said the first unto

In the far country:

“Many the lights of heaven are,

But I watch for the birth of one more Star

Not yet arisen. And what do you?”

The first man to the other spoke

In the far country:

“Even as you I wait the birth

Of one new Light above the earth.

What garb do you wear beneath your cloak?”

The second dropped his outer dress

In that far country:

He wore a sheep-skin frayed and thin

Whose holes laid bare the shivering skin,

And the wind made mock of his nakedness.

The other did his robe unfold

In that far country,

And plain to see in the starlight dim

Were the furs and purple that covered him,

They were so heavy and rich with gold.

The hand of each unto each did spring

In that far country.

“Brother, why dared ye the night?” “Because

He, even as I, a Shepherd was.”

“I came, because He was a King.”

Handfast they watched the Birth on high

In the far country.

Shepherd and King forgotten be,

But not that all men’s Brother was He

Who for all men did live and die

In a far country.

A MANGER SONG.

HENCE got ye your soft, soft eyes of the mother, O soft-eyed cow? We saw the Mother of mothers bring forth, and that was how. We sheltered her that was shelterless for a little while,

We watched the milking Babe at her breast, and we saw her smile.

Even as we she lay upon straw, and even as we

Took her sleep in the dark of the manger unfretfully,

And when the dawn of the strange new Star discovered her thus,

The ray that was destined for her and for Him fell also on us;

The light passed into her eyes and ours, and full in its flood

We were first to behold the first mothering look of the Mother of God.

CHILD’S CAROL

HEN there dawns a certain Star

Comes a Stranger into the city;

The feet of prayer his dear feet are,

His hands they are the hands of pity.

Every houseplace rich and poor

Shall show for welcome a sprig of green,

And every heart shall open its door

To let the Stranger enter in.

I will set my door ajar

That he may enter if he please;

The eyes of love his dear eyes are,

His brow it is the brow of peace.

Through the heart of every child

And man and woman in the city

He shall pass, and they be filled

With love and peace and prayer and pity.

THE MUMMERS.

ERE’S greeting for the master,

And for the mistress greeting,

And greeting for each gallant lad

And every pretty sweeting,

And greeting for the little children

Dancing round our meeting.

We be your servants all,

We be merry mummers;

We know jolly winter’s face

Though we ne’er saw summer’s;

We come in wi’ the end o’ the year,

For we be Christmas-comers.

This here do be Saint George,

This the heathen Paynim,

Dragon he will drink your healths

When Saint George has slain him,

This do be a beautiful maid

And a trouble ’twere to train him!

There’s our mumming ended

And nothing to distress ye—

Surely, we be little loth

Since so kindly press ye.

Here’s God bless ye, master, mistress,

All the house, God bless ye!

CRADLE-SONG SONG FOR CHRISTMAS.

HILD, when on this night you lie

Softly, undisturbedly,

On as white a bed of down

As any child’s in London Town,

By a fire that all the night

Keeps your chamber warm and light:

Dream, if dreams are yet your law,

Your bed of down a bed of straw,

Only warmed and lighted by

One star in the open sky.

Sweet you’ll sleep then, for we know

Once a Child slept sweetly so.

THE MOON UPON HER WATCH-TOWER.

HE moon upon her watch-tower

With her golden eye

Guarded the quarters

East and West the sky.

Just as midnight

Was stepping past

One drew his first breath,

One drew his last.

The moon upon her watch-tower

Rang a soundless bell—

It might have been for welcome,

It might have been farewell.

A BURYING.

SEE the twelve fair months go by

Bearing a coffin shoulder-high.

What, laughing? Pretty pall-bearers,

Pitiless of the buried years,

Have ye never a tear to shed

Nor sigh to drop for the newly-dead,

Nor marble grief to mark his grave?—

No, none of these; but see, we have

Green seed to mingle with his earth.—

What, is not this a burying?—— Nay, a birth.

“COLIN CLOUT, COME HOME AGAIN!”

HROUGH the grey and heavy air,

Through the January rain,

When old England nipped and bare

Shudders with the load of pain

Wept upon her by the eyes

Of sunless, sun-remembering skies:

When the soul of man is fain

Suddenly abroad to fare,

Questing, questing everywhere

The soul of beauty to regain,

Dreaming like a boy to snare

The great free bird no lure can chain,

Following in a dull despair

That cannot pierce their brief disguise

Random flights of pallid lies

Never fledged in Paradise:—

Comes the sound of gathering cries

Calling down the centuries

Urgently with might and main,

“Colin Clout, O Colin Clout!

Colin, Colin, Colin Clout!

England needs you, Colin Clout!

Colin Clout, come home again!”

Colin, can you never hear?

Colin, will you never rise

From the narrow plot of rest

That sang for joy of such a guest

To fill its dust with melodies,

And to make it year by year

Such a place of golden cheer,

Of flowering deed and jolly jest,

Of pastoral prettiness and the clear

Summons to be sailing West

Over oceans fabulous

Leading on to stranger shores

And distant ports adventurous—

That with its music in your ear,

Drawn from your own imagined stores,

You care to give no heed to us

Whose laughter has been soured by doubt,

Whose hearts are hedged with many a fear,

Who learn to hold our lives so dear

That all their wealth has trickled out,

Who joy and beauty hand in hand

Have driven homeless from the land

And put the old ideals to rout:—

Yet even because, returning here,

You needs must find your England thus,

Let not her children call in vain,

“Colin Clout, O Colin Clout!

Colin Clout, come home again!”

Hark! I hear a shepherd’s pipe

With three notes of music wipe

Discord from this troubled star;

I hear tumultuous gladness shake

The marrows of the land awake,

Wherein old slumbering visions are;

I hear the stirrings of a day

When all the earth will smell of may,

When eager men will fling aside

Their garments of enlightened pride

Where time the moth has had his way,

And don again the homespun dress

Of England’s ancient simpleness—

O piping shepherd-reed at play,

Blown with a poet’s golden breath,

How suddenly a heart as gay,

As innocent, as full of faith

As children’s hearts are, ’gins to beat

In the world’s bosom at my feet!

How all my sisters’ eyes grow strong,

And all my brothers’ eyes grow sweet,

And we who boast so loud to-day

Above our self-created strife

That we have lost our fear of death

Lose suddenly our fear of life,

And go with gladness down the way

To meet whatever is to meet.

Then, Colin! then about your knees

We’ll lie and list such fantasies

As keep the spirit bright and young

And guard the edge of youth as keen

As a new-tempered virgin sword;

We will re-learn the magic tongue,

And where the meadow-rings are green

Re-seek Titania and her lord,

For you will bring a flitting home

Of vanished Folk to English loam;

About our business we will go

With holiday-hearts whose dancing beat

Is measured to your piping sweet,

And on your music great will grow

In the redress of antique wrongs;

And from the richest of your songs,

O dreamer-lover, shepherd-knight,

Spell out a long-forgotten name,

Re-kindling the expiring glow

Of Chivalry’s high beacon-light,

Till by its heaven-pointing flame

Our generations understand

Their England is too fair a land

To suffer ugliness and blight

And the dishonourable bane

Of serfdom’s bowed and broken knee,

Too fine a trading mart to be

Where one may cause the many pain,

And foul self-interest men empowers

To turn to weeds what should be flowers.

For evil must be still to cope

When Colin Clout comes home again,

Because a world devoid of pain

Would be a world made bare of hope,

And both must act together till

Slipt from its spiritual trance

This globe is frozen to good and ill;

But ere the life here bound by chance

Flows to its last significance,

Colin! bring home the dream we lost

Because we grew too old for dreams,

And bring again the golden barque

With which in our high-hearted youth

We sailed wild seas and perilous streams;

And find again a road we crossed

In olden time and failed to mark;

And give us love of beauty back,

And set us on the grassy track

Of many an ancient-simple truth;

Re-teach our voices how to sing

Melodiously; and bring, O bring

The rustless lance of honour in

For men to strive again to win,

As in the days when knightlihood

For life’s most high expression stood,

And man reached forth to touch that goal

Not with his hands but with his soul.

Ah, Colin! ’tis a twice-told tale

How that the woods were heard to wail,

How birds with silence did complain,

And fields with faded flowers did mourn,

And flocks from feeding did refrain,

And rivers wept for your return.

Singer of England’s merriest hour,

Return! return and make her flower,

Charming your pipe unto your peers

As once you did in other years;

For we who wait on you, know this,

Whatever tune your reed shall play

Will hearken with as gladdened ears

As Cuddy and as Thestylis,

As Hobbinol and Lucida

And all the simple shepherd-train,

What time they gathered and ran, a gay

Rejoicing happy-hearted rout,

Across the sweetening meadow-hay

Each calling other:

“Come about!

The time of waiting is run out,

And Colin Clout, O, Colin Clout,

Colin Clout’s come home again!”

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

BRONWEN OF THE FLOWERS.

RONWEN gathered wild-flowers

Up-and-down the lane;

Her gathering touch upon them

Sweeter was than rain.

Now a blossom overblown,

Now a bud begun—

Her eye that lightened on them

Was quicker than the sun.

One by one she named them,

Oh, she did express

In her pretty namings

All their prettiness:

Some were fit for virgins,

Some for merry dames,

And the love with which she named them

Was lovelier than their names.

JESSICA DANCES.

HEN Joy and Molly on the lawn

Danced bare of foot like spirits of dawn

Jessica watched in wonderment

Until delight would not be pent,

And shoe and sock she cast in mirth

And felt her naked toes touch earth.

Swiftly the fresh green joy shot in

Through the fresh young rosy skin,

And in a golden glee the child

Went dancing innocently-wild

Up and down and round and round

Like daisies covering the ground,

Called sunward by the age-long spell

No ages can destroy

Of youth that never sighed or sinned,—

While elfin Molly and fairy Joy

Danced on like lilies in a dell

Or harebells in the wind.

SYLVIA SINGS.

YLVIA said that day,

“I’ll sing if you will play.”

We could deny not anything,

Not even deny to hear her sing

Who like a little spirit lay

Uncertain whether to flutter its wing,

To go or stay.

So though it broke our hearts for pity,

With hidden face one went

To the tinkling instrument,

And one with bended head

Stayed by the bed,

While the small voice sang over and over its ditty:—

“ ‘Manners make ladies, but not such as these,

Manners make ladies, but not such as these.’

Now again, please!

‘Manners make ladies—

But not such as these.’ ”

She breathed it long and long

And ah, so low,

Her tiny meaningless song,

For she was pleased to please us so—

But what we said

Sitting beside her bed

I do not know,

There were so many tears to keep unshed.

MYFANWY AMONG THE LEAVES.

YING leaf and dead leaf,

Yellow leaf and red leaf

And white-backed beam,

Lay along the woodland road

As quiet as a dream.

Summer was over,

The year had lost her lover,

Spent with her grief

All along the woodland road

Leaf fell on leaf.

Then came a shuffling,

Such a happy ruffling

Of the dried sweet

Surf of leaves upon the road

Round a baby’s feet.

Year-old leaf ran after

Three-year-old laughter,

Danced through the air

As she caught them from the road

And flung them anywhere.

Old leaf and cold leaf,

Brown leaf and gold leaf

And white-backed beam,

Followed down the woodland road

Myfanwy in a dream.

FOR JOAN.

SHALL love no other child,

Joan, as I love you;

The second life our children build

Remains for you to do.

You would have been out-loved in one

That never will be born,

And the love that should my flower have grown

Grows nothing but my thorn.

You for that unborn other’s sake

My deepest heart do clutch,

But sometimes—sometimes all you take

Hurts, for her sake, too much.

A CHILD’S FEAR.

OME to your poor old Mother,” she said

Smiling, and gathered to her breast

With her good hands her baby’s head;

But the child’s eyes looked out oppressed.

“Not old—not old—it isn’t true!

Everyone may be old but you.”

Old?—Old, you see, is much too near

The half-imagined thing that takes

Our Mothers where they do not hear

Even when their baby wakes

And cries for comfort in the gloom—

Babies to cry, and Mothers not come!

Within the safe arms round her curled,

“Oh,” she half sobbed, “I wish you’d be

The youngest person in the world—

How old are you? not old?” begged she,

And caught a little panting breath,

Then lay quite still and thought of death.

A CHRISTENING.

HIS day we are met to set a name

On thy mysterious dust and flame,

That in the years to follow, when

Thy feet shall walk the ways of men,

Thou mayst according to his plan

Be known thereby to man.

O being undiscoverable!

Thy name thyself will never spell.

Whate’er thou art, whate’er wilt be,

Man’s tongue will never utter thee;

Towering upon thy inmost throne

Thou shalt of none be known.

We watch in wonder how thy brow

Grows strange and silent in sleep, and how

Even more silent and more strange

Thy waking is that brings no change

When thy dim dreams of slumber press

To dimmer dreamlessness.

But looking with a love that seems

To pierce thy undiscovered dreams,

Within thy small unfolded being

Some dream of our own making seeing,

“All that she feels and dreams,” we say,

“We too will know one day.”

Ah, even when human speech has come

To make thy mouth no longer dumb,

When quickened thought and sympathy

Like angels look from either eye,

Thyself will still be hidden as deep

As now, awake, asleep.

We must our knowledge of thee still

By nothing save by love fulfil,

And with the dreamings of the heart

Still guess at the dream of what thou art

Which only of thee and God is known,

Child whom this day names Joan.

THE SINGER.

HAD a holy hour last night.

The room her presence made so pure

Was shaded in uncertain light,

But oh, the light it held was sure.

There while about her golden head

The shadows and the low light played,

She eagerly and softly read

The shining songs her soul had made.

Flower and shell and sand and sea,

And flight of gulls against the sun,

And many a friend, and many a tree,

And youth begun and age nigh-done,

Death and life, and life and death,

Divinely in her vision smiled;

She spoke them with the silver breath

Half of angel, half of child.

Upon her bed I lay at rest,

But once when kneeling by her chair

I leaned my head beside her breast

And heard the wordless singing there.

THE GIRL WITH THE BALL.

HE ran with her ball in her light dress floating and free, Tossing it, tossing it up in the evening light, She ran with her ball at the edge of the outgoing sea On sand which the dropping sun turned bright.

Over the sea hung birds more white than the skin

Of the last few swimmers who took the waves with their breasts;

The birds dipped straight as her ball when a silver fin

Glanced in the shallow crests.

She ran so swift, and suddenly stopped as swift

To look at a shell, or splash up a pool in rain;

Wind blew, and she in the wind began to drift

Foam-like, and suddenly ran again.

Children who played on the shore in the last of the day

Paused and watched in wonder her rise and fall

Like elders watching a child: she was younger than they

As she ran by the sea with her ball.

Her hair was loose and she had no shoes on her feet,

And her image ran under her feet on the wet gold shore,

She threw up her ball and she caught it, and once laughed sweet

As though the world had never heard laughter before.

THE STORY-TELLER.

VER the hearth on which we burned

Brown beech-nuts, lichen-twigs, and cones,

I sat beside her while she turned

A forkèd wand within the pyre,

Until two little spirts of fire

Sprang from the hazel’s withered bones.

Then, with her eyes upon her branch

Pointed with ruddy nuts of flame,

Like one who has no power to staunch

The heart’s-blood flowing from his side,

She through her mouth undammed a tide

Of legends that I could not name:—

Strange villages where damsels fished

For lovers in a rainbow sea

By night: a crazy man who wished

To act like God, and very soon

Out-freaked the fools that raked the moon:

Gold underneath an apple-tree

Discovered by a thrice-dreamed dream:

Half-tales, half-ballads—until the room

Shook in its shadows with a stream

Of pedlars, witches, cats in crowns,

Denizens of enchanted towns,

And kings confined in forests of gloom.

Her voice went up and down like wind

That wanders lost among the eaves;

The flamelets on her hazel thinned

And dwindled into smouldering eyes;

Her voice failed like the wind that dies,

She threw a handful of black leaves

On the bright litter of the hearth

And thrust her hazel’s double spark

Within. The smell of smoking earth

Rose from the stones where ceased to burn

The fiery lines of cone and fern

And berry: the room was dumb and dark.

THE REFLECTION.

HE had no life except to be what men

Required of her to be.

They came for sympathy, and came again

For sympathy.

She never knew the way her heart to spare

When they were hurt or worn,

Whatever one may for another bear

By her was borne.

They said, you give us of yourself so much!

She heard them with a smile,

Knowing she only gave to such and such

Themselves awhile.

Their interests, their frets, their loneliness,

Their sorrows and despairs,

She wore for them—they saw her in no dress

That was not theirs.

She learned to understand the solitudes

When she by none was sought;

Men of themselves grow sick, and in those moods

Needed her not,

Getting relief of others who gave things

By their own purpose lit;

If she too had some freshness in her springs,

None wanted it.

She grew accustomed to be quietly shut

Away, was used to see

Love limping dutifully in a rut

That once ran free;

She knew the signs when friends began to cast

What they had asked her for—

Some asked for much, some little, all at last

Asked nothing more.

And when she died they sorrowed, it is true,

But not for long, because

They had seen some pale reflection that she threw,

Not what she was.

SOLITARY.

E moved his fellow-men among

And changed with them some forms of speech.

His heart was separate from his tongue,

They would not hear his heart beseech.

Their needs were very like his own,

Quivering in bodies numb and dazed;

They smiled and talked and felt alone.—

Did not their hearts look on amazed?

SPRING-DAWN.

EAVEN, the Spring’s coming true again!

Easterly over the sky’s spring-blue again

Passes a pearly flight of cloud—

Somewhere a dovecote is empty, surely!

And all of its birds have flown in a brood

Over the pure blue purely!

Westerly owl-grey gatherings

Linger a little yet:

Soon, owls! soon you will shrink

Out of the sun, I think,

Who even now turns silver-wet

The last of your ghostly gatherings.

Back to your windy barns again,

To your forsaken granaries,

Haunting, hating breed of the Winter!

For the grass in the mould begins to teem,

By every gate where the cuckoo flies

Primrose and fragile wind-flower enter,

And, lovelier truth than any dream,

Blue light is mirrored in ancient tarns again!

THE WORLD’S AMAZING BEAUTY.

HE world’s amazing beauty would make us cry

Aloud; but something in it strikes us dumb.

Beech-forests drenched in sunny floods

Where shaking rays and shadows hum,

The unrepeated aspects of the sky,

Clouds in their lightest and their wildest moods,

Bare shapes of hills, June grass in flower,

The sea in every hour,

Slopes that one January morning flow

Unbrokenly with snow,

Peaks piercing heaven with motions sharp and harsh,

Slow-moving flats, grey reed and silver marsh,

A flock of swans in flight

Or solitary heron flapping home,

Orchards of pear and cherry turning white,

Low apple-trees with rosy-budded boughs,

Streams where young willows drink and cows,

Earth’s rich ploughed loam

Thinking darkly forward to her sheaves,

Water in Autumn spotted with yellow leaves,

Light running overland,

Gulls standing still above their images

On strips of shining sand

While evening in a haze of green

Half-hides

The calm receding tides—

What in the beauty we have seen in these

Keeps us still silent? something we have not seen?

THE WHITE BLACKBIRDS.

MONG the stripped and sooty twigs of the wild cherry tree Sometimes they flit and swing as though two blossoms of the Spring Had quickened on these bleak October branches suddenly.

They are like fairy birds flown down from skies which no one knows,

Their pointed yellow bills are bright as April daffodils,

Their plumy whiteness heavenly as January snows.

Loveliest guests that choose our garden-plot for loitering!

Oh, what a sudden flower of joy is set upon the hour

When in their cherry cages two white blackbirds sit and swing.

NIGHTINGALES.

HE nightingales around our house

Among the lovely orchard boughs:

Where the young apple-dawn too soon

Turns whiter than the daylit moon,

And ’mid its shadowy silver bowers

The quince is flushed with heavenly flowers

That opening poise as though for flight:

The nightingales sing day and night,

With piercing, long, insistent calling,

And chuckle of sweet waters falling,

And unimaginable trill

That makes my heart beat and stand still.

Oh, even so, by night and day

When first the earth broke into May

Ere men shut thunder up in shells,

They came and sang their miracles;

And so, in myriad Mays to come,

When all those damnèd storms are dumb

And only heaven’s lightning crowns

Her clouds of thunder on the Downs,

They still will come, by night and day

To sing the radiant Spring away,

Till men lie crumbled with their towns

And earth no more breaks into May.

NIGHT-PIECE.

OW independent, beautiful and proud,

Out of the vanishing body of a cloud

Like its arisen soul the full moon swims

Over the sea, into whose distant brims

Has flowed the last of the light. I am alone.

Even the diving gannet now is flown

From these unpeopled sands. A mist lies cold

Upon the muffled boundaries of the world.

The lovely earth whose silence is so deep

Is folded up in night, but not in sleep.

BEFORE WINTER.

HE day is gone of the sun and the swallow

And the glory on the trees:

Before the gale the length of the pave

The dry old corpse of a plane-leaf flees,

And its step is harsh and hollow

As it chatters into its grave.

The shivering dawn now hides and slouches

Long in the cover of dark,

Till up the sky, like a murderer pale,

He drags at last a dull red mark,

And the hound of the grey wind crouches

And pants on his rusty trail.

ON THE SNOW.

KNEW no woman, child, or man

Had been before my steps to-day.

By Dippel Woods the snow-lanes ran

Soft and uncrushed above their clay;

But little starry feet had traced

Their passages as though in words,

And all those lanes of snow were laced

With runnings of departed birds.

THREE MILES TO PENN.

O-DAY I walked three miles to Penn

With an uneasy mind.

The sun shone like a frozen eye,

A light that had gone blind,

The glassy air between the sky

And earth was frozen wind—

All motion and all light again

Were closed within a rind,

As I by wood and field to Penn

Took trouble in my mind.

The slopes of cloud in heaven that lay,

Unpeopled hills grown old,

Had no more movement than the land

Locked in a flowing mould;

The sheep like mounds of cloudy sand

Stood soundless in the cold;

There was no stir on all the way

Save what my heart did hold,

So quiet earth and heaven lay,

So quiet and so old.

WHEN YOU SAY.

HEN you say, I still am young,

You are young no more;

When, I’m old, is on your tongue,

Age is still in store.

Youth and age will never grope

To say what they may be:

One only knows it has a hope,

And one a certainty.

THE OUTLET.

RIEF struck me. I so shook in heart and wit

I thought I must speak of it or die of it.

A certain friend I had with strength to lend,

When mine was spent I went to find my friend,

Who, rising up with eyes wild for relief,

Hung on my neck and spoke to me of grief.

I raked the ashes of my burned-out strength

And found one coal to warm her with at length.

I sat with her till I was icy cold.

At last I went away, my grief untold.

TWO CHORUSES FROM “MERLIN IN BROCELIANDE.”

I.

IFE, what art thou? Springing water art

thou: When the waters flash and spring,

life, start thou!

When the spirit burns within the chapels

The stones are quick with faith.

When the branch hangs out its reddened apples

The tree is strong with breath;

When love’s womb conceives the stirring blossom

The heart is full of power;

When youth leaps in the darkness of the bosom

The body is in flower.

When the fiery spirit deserts the chapels,

Bury religion’s corse;

When the branch no more puts forth its apples,

Fell the tree at the source;

When love feeds itself and not its blossom

The heart’s core withereth;

When youth makes no movement in the bosom

The body is signed to death.

Life, what art thou? A golden fountain art thou:

When the fountain springs not, life, depart thou!

II.

First Voices.

SAW ye the stars last night, all still,

Remote, and bitter-cold,

Who were too passionless to thrill,

Being so wise and old?

Second Voices.

O SAW ye not one star alight,

A leap of silver fire,

Did ye not see it sear the night

And die of its own desire?

First Voices.

AW ye the ancient stars look on

Locked in a chilly dream

Which banished the awakened one

Beyond their frozen scheme?

Second Voices.

O SAW ye not the ashen band

Fade in the morning-gold,

Who long had ceased to understand,

Being so bitter-old?

All the Voices.

YE petrified on heavenly thrones,

Was there not chaos once?

Ye did not keep your ordered zones

When ye were raging suns!

Once flaming rivers were your breath

And the wild hairs of your brow—

Once ye were life, once ye were death!

Ye are not either now.

PEACE.

I.

AM as awful as my brother War,

I am the sudden silence after clamour.

I am the face that shows the seamy scar

When blood has lost its frenzy and its glamour.

Men in my pause shall know the cost at last

That is not to be paid in triumphs or tears,

Men will begin to judge the thing that’s past

As men will judge it in a hundred years.

Nations! whose ravenous engines must be fed

Endlessly with the father and the son,

My naked light upon your darkness, dread!—

By which ye shall behold what ye have done:

Whereon, more like a vulture than a dove,

Ye set my seal in hatred, not in love.

II.

LET no man call me good. I am not blest.

My single virtue is the end of crimes,

I only am the period of unrest,

The ceasing of the horrors of the times;

My good is but the negative of ill,

Such ill as bends the spirit with despair,

Such ill as makes the nations’ soul stand still

And freeze to stone beneath its Gorgon glare.

Be blunt, and say that peace is but a state

Wherein the active soul is free to move,

And nations only show as mean or great

According to the spirit then they prove.—

O which of ye whose battle-cry is Hate

Will first in peace dare shout the name of Love?

NOW THAT YOU TOO

OW that you too must shortly go the way

Which in these bloodshot years uncounted men

Have gone in vanishing armies day by day,

And in their numbers will not come again:

I must not strain the moments of our meeting

Striving each look, each accent, not to miss,

Or question of our parting and our greeting,

Is this the last of all? is this—or this?

Last sight of all it may be with these eyes,

Last touch, last hearing, since eyes, hands, and ears,

Even serving love, are our mortalities,

And cling to what they own in mortal fears:—

But oh, let end what will, I hold you fast

By immortal love, which has no first or last.

THIS SECOND OF THE INITIATES SERIES OF

POETRY BY PROVED HANDS, WAS PRINTED

IN OXFORD AT THE VINCENT WORKS,

AND FINISHED IN APRIL, MCMXVIII.

PUBLISHED BY B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD

STREET, OXFORD, AND SOLD IN AMERICA

BY LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., NEW YORK.

NITIATES A SERIES OF POETRY BY PROVED HANDS UNIFORM VOLUMES IN DOLPHIN OLD STYLE TYPE ART BOARDS, THREE SHILLINGS NET.

NOW READY

I.

IN THE VALLEY OF VISION BY GEOFFREY FABER, AUTHOR OF “INTERFLOW.”

II.

SONNETS AND POEMS BY ELEANOR FARJEON, AUTHOR OF “NURSERY RHYMES OF LONDON TOWN.”

IN PREPARATION

III.

THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH, AND OTHER POEMS BY ALDOUS HUXLEY, AUTHOR OF “THE BURNING WHEEL.

IV.

SONGS FOR SALE AN ANTHOLOGY OF VERSE, EDITED BY E. B. C. JONES FROM BOOKS ISSUED RECENTLY BY B. H. BLACKWELL.

V.

CLOWNS’ HOUSES BY EDITH SITWELL, EDITOR OF “WHEELS.”

HE SHELDONIAN SERIES OF REPRINTS AND RENDERINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN ALL LANGUAGES EDITED BY REGINALD HEWITT, M. A. MEDIUM 16MO, IN DOLPHIN OLD STYLE TYPE, RED AND BLACK, BOARDS, TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE NET.

FIRST THREE BOOKS

SONGS AND SAYINGS OF WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE, MINNESAENGER ENGLISHED BY FRANK BETTS.

THE FUNERAL ORATION OF PERICLES. ENGLISHED BY THOMAS HOBBES OF MALMESBURY.

BALLADES OF FRANCOIS VILLON INTERPRETED INTO ENGLISH VERSE BY PAUL HOOKHAM.

OXFORD B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD ST.

DVENTURERS ALL A SERIES OF YOUNG POETS UNKNOWN TO FAME UNIFORM VOLUMES IN DOLPHIN OLD STYLE TYPE IN ART WRAPPERS TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE NET EACH.

¶. “Beautiful little books ... containing poetry, real poetry.”—The New Witness.

I.

THE ESCAPED PRINCESS, AND OTHER POEMS. By WILFRED ROWLAND CHILDE. [Out of print].

II.

THURSDAY’S CHILD. By ELIZABETH RENDALL. [Out of print].

III.

BOHEMIAN GLASS. By ESTHER LILIAN DUFF. [Out of print].

IV.

CONTACTS, AND OTHER POEMS. By T. W. EARP. [Out of print].

V.

THE IRON AGE. By FRANK BETTS. With an Introduction by GILBERT MURRAY.

VI.

THE TWO WORLDS. By SHERARD VINES.

VII.

THE BURNING WHEEL. By A. L. HUXLEY.

VIII.

A VAGABOND’S WALLET. BY STEPHEN REID-HEYMAN.

IX.

OP. I. By DOROTHY L. SAYERS. [Out of print].

X.

LYRICAL POEMS. By DOROTHY PLOWMAN.

XI.

THE WITCHES’ SABBATH. By E. H. W. MEYERSTEIN.

XII.

A SCALLOP SHELL OF QUIET. Poems by Four Women. Introduced by MARGARET L. WOODS.

XIII.

AT A VENTURE. Poems by EIGHT YOUNG WRITERS.

XIV.

ALDEBARAN. By M. ST. CLARE BYRNE.

XV.

LIADAIN AND CURITHIR. By MOIREEN FOX.

XVI.

LINNETS IN THE SLUMS. By MARION PRYCE.

XVII.

OUT OF THE EAST. By VERA and MARGARET LARMINIE.

XVIII.

DUNCH. By SUSAN MILES.

XIX.

DEMETER AND OTHER POEMS. By ELEANOR HILL.

FORTHCOMING

XX.

CARGO. By S. B. GATES.

XXI.

DREAMS AND JOURNEYS. By FREDEGOND SHOVE.

XXII.

THE PEOPLE’S PALACE. By SACHEVERELL SITWELL.

OXFORD B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET

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Table of Contents

SONNETS AND POEMS, BY ELEANOR FARJEON.

CONTENTS

SONNETS. I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

CHRISTMAS AND NEW-YEAR SONGS

SIX GREEN SINGERS.

IN A FAR COUNTRY.

A MANGER SONG.

CHILD’S CAROL

THE MUMMERS.

CRADLE-SONG SONG FOR CHRISTMAS.

THE MOON UPON HER WATCH-TOWER.

A BURYING.

“COLIN CLOUT, COME HOME AGAIN!”

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

BRONWEN OF THE FLOWERS.

JESSICA DANCES.

SYLVIA SINGS.

MYFANWY AMONG THE LEAVES.

FOR JOAN.

A CHILD’S FEAR.

A CHRISTENING.

THE SINGER.

THE GIRL WITH THE BALL.

THE STORY-TELLER.

THE REFLECTION.

SOLITARY.

SPRING-DAWN.

THE WORLD’S AMAZING BEAUTY.

THE WHITE BLACKBIRDS.

NIGHTINGALES.

NIGHT-PIECE.

BEFORE WINTER.

ON THE SNOW.

THREE MILES TO PENN.

WHEN YOU SAY.

THE OUTLET.

TWO CHORUSES FROM “MERLIN IN BROCELIANDE.”

I.

II.

PEACE.

I.

II.

NOW THAT YOU TOO