From Night And Day
IN THE WORKSHOP
Dim watery lights gleaming on gibbering faces,
Faces speechful, barren of soul and sordid,
Huddled and chewing a jest, lewd and gabbled
insidious:
Laughter, born of its dung, flashes and floods like sunlight,
Filling the room with a sense of a soul lethargic and kindly,
Touches my soul with a pathos, a hint of a wide desolation.
II
I saw the face of God to-day,
I heard the music of His smile,
And yet I was not far away,
And yet in Paradise the while.
I lay upon the sparkling grass,
And God's own mouth was kissing me,
And there was nothing that did pass
But blazed with divinity.
Divine-divine-upon my eyes,
Upon mine hair-divine--divine,
The fervour of the golden skies,
The ardent gaze of God on mine.
III
Then snake I to the tree, '
Were ye your own desire
What is it ye would be?'
Answered the tree to me,
'I am my own desire,
I am what 1 would be.
' If you were your desire
Would you lie under me,
And see me as you see?'
'I am my own desire
While I lie under you,
And that which I would be
Desire will sing to you.'
IV
I wander-I wander-0 will she wander here
Where'er my footsteps carry me I know that she is near,
A jewelled lamp within her hand and jewels in her hair ;
I lost her in a vision once and seek her everywhere.
My spirit whispers she is near, I look at you and you :
Surely she has not passed me, I sleeping as she flew.
I wander-I wander, and yet she is not here,
Although my spirit whispers to me that she is near.
In War
Fret the nonchalant noon
With your spleen
Or your gay brow,
For the motion of your spirit
Ever moves with these.
When day shall be too quiet,
Deaf to you
And your dumb smile,
Untuned air shall lap the stillness
In the old space for your voice-
The voice that once could mirror
Remote depths
Of moving being,
Stirred by responsive voices near,
Suddenly stilled for ever.
No ghost darkens the places
Dark to One ;
But my eyes dream,
And my heart is heavy to think
How it was heavy once.
In the old days when death Stalked the world
For the flower of men,
And the rose of beauty faded
And pined in the great gloom,
One day we dug a grave :
We were vexed
With the sun's heat.
We scanned the hooded dead :
At noon we sat and talked.
How death had kissed their eyes
Three dread noons since,
How human art won
The dark soul to flicker
Till it was lost again :
And we whom chance kept whole-
But haggard,
Spent-were charged
To make a place for them who knew
No pain in any place.
The good priest came to pray ;
Our ears half heard,
And half we thought
Of alien things, irrelevant ;
And the heat and thirst were great.
The good priest read : 'I heard .
Dimly my brain
Held words and lost. . . .
Sudden my blood ran cold. . . .
God ! God ! It could not be.
He read my brother's name ; I sank-
I clutched the priest.
They did not tell me it was he
Was killed three days ago.
What are the great sceptred dooms
To us, caught
In the wild wave
We break ourselves on them,
My brother, our hearts and years.
THE DEAD HEROES
Flame out, you glorious skies,
Welcome our brave;
Kiss their exultant eyes ;
Give what they gave.
Flash, mailed seraphim,
Your burning spears;
New days to outflame their dim
Heroic years.
Thrills their baptismal tread
The bright proud air ;
The embattled plumes outspread
Burn upwards there.
Flame out, flame out, 0 Song !
Star ring to star;
Strong as our hurt is strong
Our children are.
Their blood is England's heart ;
By their dead hands
It is their noble part
That England stands.
England-Time gave them thee;
They gave back this
To win Eternity
And claim God's kiss.
Daughters Of War
Space beats the ruddy freedom of their limbs,
Their naked dances with man's spirit naked
By the root side of the tree of life
(The under side of things
And shut from earth's profoundest eyes).
I saw in prophetic gleams
These mighty daughters in their dances
Beckon each soul aghast from its crimson corpse
To mix in their glittering dances :
I heard the mighty daughters' giant sighs
In sleepless passion for the sons of valour
And envy of the days fo flesh,
Barring their love with mortal boughs across-
The mortal boughs, the mortal tree of life.
The old bark burnt with iron wars
They blow to a live flame
To char the young green clays
And reach the occult soul; they have no softer lure,
No softer lure than the savage ways of death.
We were satisfied of our lords the moon and the sun
To take our wage of sleep and bread and warmth-
These maidens came-these strong everliving Amazons,
And in an easy might their wrists
Of night's sway and noon's sway the sceptres brake,
Clouding the wild, the soft lustres of our eyes.
Clouding the wild lustres, the clinging tender lights ;
Driving the darkness into the flame of clay
With the Amazonian wind of them
Over our corroding faces
That must be broken-broken for evermore,
So the soul can leap out
Into their huge embraces,
Though there are human faces
Best sculptures of Deity,
And sinews lusted after
By the Archangels tall,
Even these must leap to the love-heat of these maidens
From the flame of terrene days,
Leaving grey ashes to the wind-to the wind.
One (whose great lifted face,
Where wisdom's strength and beauty's strength
And the thewed strength of large beasts
Moved and merged, gloomed and lit)
Was speaking, surely, as the earth-men's earth fell away ;
Whose new hearing drank the sound
Where pictures, lutes, and mountains mixed
With the loosed spirit of a thought, Essenced to language thus
'My sisters force their males
From the doomed earth, from the doomed glee
And hankering of hearts.
Frail hands gleam up through the human quagmire, and lips of ash
Seem to wail, as in sad faded paintings
Far-sunken and strange.
My sisters have their males
Clean of the dust of old days
That clings about those white hands
And yearns in those voices sad :
But these shall not see them,
Or think of them in any days or years ;
They are my sisters' lovers in other days and years.'
