War

    No eyes shall see the poems that I write
    For you; not even yours; but after long
    Forgetful years have passed on our delight
    Some hand may chance upon a dusty song

    Of those fond days when every spoken word
    Was sweet, and all the fleeting things unspoken
    Yet sweeter, and the music half unheard
    Murmured through forests as a charm unbroken.

    It is the plain and ordinary page
    Of two who loved, sole-spirited and clear.
    Will you, O stranger of another age,
    Not grant a human and compassionate tear
    To us, who each the other held so dear?
    A single tear fraternal, sadly shed,
    Since that which was so living, is so dead.

In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt.
I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.
Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring
Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;
And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
Were about me and beneath me and above.
But a rival, of Solutre, told the tribe my style was outre,
'Neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart
Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.
Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dea...

Melpomine put on thy mourning Gaberdine,
And set thy song vnto the dolefull Base,
And with thy sable vayle shadow thy face,
        with weeping verse,
        attend his hearse,
Whose blessed soule the heauens doe now enshrine.

Come Nymphs and with your Rebecks ring his knell,
Warble forth your wamenting harmony,
And at his drery fatall obsequie,
        with Cypres bowes,
        maske your fayre Browes,
And beat your breasts to chyme his burying peale.

Thy birth-day was to all our ioye, the euen,
And on thy death this dolefull song we sing,
Sweet Child of Pan, and the Castalian spring,
        vnto our endless mone,
        from vs why art thou gone,
To fill vp that sweete Angels quier in heauen.

O whylome thou thy lasses dearest...

    When I grow old they'll come to me and say:
    Did you then know him in that distant day?
    Did you speak with him, touch his hand, observe
    The proud eyes' fire, soft voice and light lips' curve?
    And I shall answer: This man was my friend;
    Call to my memory, add, improve, amend
    And count up all the meetings that we had
    And note his good and touch upon his bad.

    When I grow older and more garrulous,
    I shall discourse on the dead poet thus:
    I said to him ... he answered unto me...
    He dined with me one night in Trinity...
    I supped with him in King's ... Ah, pitiful
    The twisted memories of an ancient fool
    And sweet the silence of a young man dead!
    Now far in Lemnos sleeps that golden head,
    Unchang...

When evening's shadowy fingers fold
The flowers of every hue,
Some shy, half-opened bud will hold
Its drop of morning's dew.

Sweeter with every sunlit hour
The trembling sphere has grown,
Till all the fragrance of the flower
Becomes at last its own.

We that have sung perchance may find
Our little meed of praise,
And round our pallid temples bind
The wreath of fading bays.

Ah, Poet, who hast never spent
Thy breath in idle strains,
For thee the dewdrop morning lent
Still in thy heart remains;

Unwasted, in its perfumed cell
It waits the evening gale;
Then to the azure whence it fell
Its lingering sweets exhale.

(Written in collaboration with R. B. Hamilton.)


When Julius Caesar met his death,
    He muttered in his dying breath:
"It is not patriotism now
    Prompts you to break your friendship's vow."
Quoth Brutus, as he stabbed again
    The greatest of his countrymen:
    "You're in this fix
    Through politics."

As on his path Columbus sped,
    A sailor to the great man said:
"Without a break, without a bend,
    The broad Atlantic has no end."
And to the sailor at his side,
    'Tis rumored, that great man replied:
    "I guess I know.
    You go below."

The snow fell fast on Russia's soil,
    The soldiers, wearied with their toil,
Cried: "'Tis not possible that we
    Our native France again shall see."
Stern e...

Thou art sleeping, brother, sleeping
    In thy lonely battle grave;
Shadows o'er the past are creeping,
Death, the reaper, still is reaping,
Years have swept, and years are sweeping
Many a memory from my keeping,
But I'm waiting still, and weeping
    For my beautiful and brave.

When the battle songs were chanted,
    And war's stirring tocsin pealed,
By those songs thy heart was haunted,
And thy spirit, proud, undaunted,
Clamored wildly -- wildly panted:
"Mother! let my wish be granted;
I will ne'er be mocked and taunted
That I fear to meet our vaunted
    Foemen on the bloody field.

"They are thronging, mother! thronging,
    To a thousand fields of fame;
Let me go -- 'tis wrong, and wronging
God and thee to crush this longin...

She lay among the myrtles on the cliff;
Above her glared the noon; beneath, the sea.
Upon the white horizon Atho's peak
Weltered in burning haze; all airs were dead;
The cicale slept among the tamarisk's hair;
The birds sat dumb and drooping.    Far below
The lazy sea-weed glistened in the sun;
The lazy sea-fowl dried their steaming wings;
The lazy swell crept whispering up the ledge,
And sank again.    Great Pan was laid to rest;
And Mother Earth watched by him as he slept,
And hushed her myriad children for a while.
She lay among the myrtles on the cliff;
And sighed for sleep, for sleep that would not hear,
But left her tossing still; for night and day
A mighty hunger yearned within her heart,
Till all her veins ran fever; and her cheek,
Her long thin h...

Come down from heaven to meet me when my breath
Chokes, and through drumming shafts of stifling death
I stumble toward escape, to find the door
Opening on morn where I may breathe once more
Clear cock-crow airs across some valley dim
With whispering trees. While dawn along the rim
Of night's horizon flows in lakes of fire,
Come down from heaven's bright hill, my song's desire.

Belov'd and faithful, teach my soul to wake
In glades deep-ranked with flowers that gleam and shake
And flock your paths with wonder. In your gaze
Show me the vanquished vigil of my days.
Mute in that golden silence hung with green,
Come down from heaven and bring me in your eyes
Remembrance of all beauty that has been,
And stillness from the pools of Paradise.

1.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2.

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
T...

(The Dark Side)

My mind goes back to Fumin Wood, and how we stuck it out,
Eight days of hunger, thirst and cold, mowed down by steel and flame;
Waist-deep in mud and mad with woe, with dead men all about,
We fought like fiends and waited for relief that never came.
Eight days and nights they rolled on us in battle-frenzied mass!
"Debout les morts!" We hurled them back. By God! they did not pass.

They pinned two medals on my chest, a yellow and a brown,
And lovely ladies made me blush, such pretty words they said.
I felt a cheerful man, almost, until my eyes went down,
And there I saw the blankets - how they sagged upon my bed.
And then again I drank the cup of sorrow to the dregs:
Oh, they can keep their medals if they give me back my legs.

I ...

(Written after hearing a line of Keats repeated by a passing stranger under the palms of Southern California.)


Under the palms of San Diego
    Where gold-skinned Mexicans loll at ease,
And the red half-moons of their black-pipped melons
    Drop from their hands in the sunset seas,
And an incense, out of the old brown missions,
    Blows through the orange trees;

I wished that a poet who died in Europe
    Had found his way to this rose-red West;
That Keats had walked by the wide Pacific
    And cradled his head on its healing breast,
And made new songs of the sun-burned sea-folk,
    New poems, perhaps his best.

I thought of him, under the ripe pomegranates
    At the desert's edge, where the grape-vines grow,
In a sun-kissed ranch between...

Two warriors have grappled, and their arms
Have flecked the air with blood and flashing steel.
These frolics, this mad clanking, these alarms
Proceed from childish love's frantic appeal.

The swords are broken! like our youthful life
My dear! But tooth and nail, avid and sharp,
Soon fill the place of rapier and knife.
0 bitter heat of love, o cankered hearts!

In a ravine haunted by catlike forms
These two have tumbled, struggling to the end;
Shreds of their skin will bloom on arid thorns.

This pit is Hell, its denizens our friends!
Amazon, let us roll there guiltlessly
In spiteful fervour, for eternity!

I.

Oh for a field, my friend; oh for a field!
    I ask no more
    Than one plain field, shut in by hedgerows four,
Contentment sweet to yield.
For I am not fastidious,
    And, with a proud demeanour, I
Will not affect invidious
    Distinctions about scenery.
I sigh not for the fir trees where they rise
Against Italian skies,
    Swiss lakes, or Scottish heather,
    Set off with glorious weather;
            Such sights as these
            The most exacting please;
But I, lone wanderer in London streets,
Where every face one meets
            Is full of care,
            And seems to wear
            A troubled air,
            Of being late for some affair
    Of life or death:--thus I, ev'n I,
Long for a field of gras...

Many the songs of the brave boys sent
Over The Top in the battle's thunder;
But mine is the song of the men who went
Over the top of the waves - and under.

Men of the sea, Men of the sea,
I lift mine eyes to the Flags unfurled -
The Flags of Victory blowing free
Over the new-born world.
And I cry 'Thank God! these things can be!
Thank God, and the Men of the Sea!'

Little it matters to what they belong,
Marine or Navy - or Merchant Ship -
To the Men of the Sea I sing my song;
A song that rises from heart to lip.

I sing of the valour that ploughed a path
Straight through the snares of a crafty foe,
Through billows raging with wintry wrath,
And over the dens of the devils below.

To the splendid heroes of Jutland Bank
And the...

PART FOURTH.

WALK ABROAD - VIEWS AROUND, FROM THE SEVERN TO BRISTOL - WRINGTON - "AULD ROBIN GRAY."

The shower is past - the heath-bell, at our feet,
Looks up, as with a smile, though the cold dew
Hangs yet within its cup, like Pity's tear
Upon the eyelids of a village child!
Mark! where a light upon those far-off waves
Gleams, while the passing shower above our head
Sheds its last silent drops, amid the hues
Of the fast-fading rainbow, - such is life!
Let us go forth, the redbreast is abroad,
And, dripping in the sunshine, sings again.    10
No object on the wider sea-line meets
The straining vision, but one distant ship,
Hanging, as motionless and still, far off,
In the pale haze, between the sea and sky.
She seems the ship - the very ship I saw<...

    The rich, red blood
Doth stain the fair, green grass, and daisies white
    In generous flood ...
This sun-drowsed day for me is darkest night.
O! wreck of splintered wood and twisted wire,
What blind, unmeasured hatred you inspire
Because yours was the power that life to end ...
    Of him, who was my friend!

This morn we lay upon the grass,
And watched the languid hours pass;
A lark, deep in the sky's blue sea,
Sang ecstasies to him and me.

And with the daisies did he play,
As on the waving grass we lay,
And made a little daisy chain
To bring his childhood back again.

And while he watched the clouds above
He drifted into thoughts of love.
He said, "I know why skylarks sing -
Because they love, and it is Spring.

Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep, for here
There is such matter for all feeling.
- Childe Harold.


I
Unwelcome shroud of the forgotten dead,
Oblivion’s dreary fountain, where art thou:
Why speed’st thou not thy deathlike wave to shed
O’er humbled pride, and self-reproaching woe:
Or time’s stern hand, why blots it not away
The saddening tale that tells of sorrow and decay?

II
There are, whose glory passeth not away—
Even in the grave their fragrance cannot fade:
Others there are as deathless full as they,
Who for themselves a monument have made
By their own cringes—a lesson to all eyes—
Of wonder to the fool—of warning to the wise.

III
Yes, there are stories registered on high,
Yes, there are stains time’s fingers...