BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Novels:

THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
THE CRESCENT MOON
THE IRON AGE
THE DARK TOWER
DEEP SEA
UNDERGROWTH (with E. Brett Young)

Poems:

FIVE DEGREES SOUTH

Belles Lettres:

ROBERT BRIDGES: A Critical Study
MARCHING ON TANGA

ERRATA

Page 26, line 17, for "Lybian" read "Libyan."
Page 46, line 9, for "lythe" read "lithe."
Page 70, line 13, for "tyrranous" read "tyrannous."

[Transcriber's note: the above errata have been applied to this etext. The word "Lybia" was also on page 32, and was corrected as above. Similarly, "tyrranous" was also on page 86, and was corrected.]

CONTENTS

PROTHALAMION
TESTAMENT
LOCHANILAUN
LETTERMORE
LAMENT
THE LEMON-TREE
PHTHONOS
EASTER
THE LEANING ELM
THE JOYOUS LOVER
DEAD POETS
PORTON WATER
AN OLD HOUSE
THE DHOWS
THE GIFT
FIVE DEGREES SOUTH
104° FAHRENHEIT
FEVER-TREES
THE RAIN-BIRD
MOTHS
BÊTE HUMAINE
DOVES
SONG (i)
BEFORE ACTION
ON A SUBALTERN KILLED IN ACTION
AFTER ACTION
SONNET
A FAREWELL TO AFRICA
SONG (ii)
THE HAWTHORN SPRAY
THE PAVEMENT
TO LYDIA LOPOKOVA (i)
TO LYDIA LOPOKOVA (ii)
TO LYDIA LOPOKOVA (iii)
GHOSTLY LOVES
FEBRUARY
SONG OF THE DARK AGES
WINTER SUNSET
SONG (iii)
ENGLAND, APRIL 1918
SLENDER THEMES
INVOCATION
THAMAR
ENVOI

PROTHALAMION

When the evening came my love said to me:

Let us go into the garden now that the sky is cool,

The garden of black hellebore and rosemary,

Where wild woodruff spills in a milky pool.

Low we passed in the twilight, for the wavering heat

Of day had waned, and round that shaded plot

Of secret beauty the thickets clustered sweet:

Here is heaven, our hearts whispered, but our lips spake not.

Between that old garden and seas of lazy foam

Gloomy and beautiful alleys of trees arise

With spire of cypress and dreamy beechen dome,

So dark that our enchanted sight knew nothing but the skies

Veiled with soft air, drench'd in the roses' musk

Or the dusky, dark carnation's breath of clove;

No stars burned in their deeps, but through the dusk

I saw my love's eyes, and they were brimmed with love.

No star their secret ravished, no wasting moon

Mocked the sad transience of those eternal hours:

Only the soft, unseeing heaven of June,

The ghosts of great trees, and the sleeping flowers.

For doves that crooned in the leafy noonday now

Were silent; the night-jar sought his secret covers,

Nor even a mild sea-whisper moved a creaking bough--

Was ever a silence deeper made for lovers?

Was ever a moment meeter made for love?

Beautiful are your closed lips beneath my kiss;

And all your yielding sweetness beautiful--

Oh, never in all the world was such a night as this!

TESTAMENT

If I had died, and never seen the dawn

For which I hardly hoped, lighting this lawn

Of silvery grasses; if there had been no light,

And last night merged into perpetual night;

I doubt if I should ever have been content

To have closed my eyes without some testament

To the great benefits that marked my faring

Through the sweet world; for all my joy was sharing

And lonely pleasures were few. Unto which end

Three legacies I'll send,

Three legacies, already half possess'd:

One to a friend, of all good friends the best,

Better than which is nothing; yet another

Unto thy twin, dissimilar spirit, Brother;

The third to you,

Most beautiful, most true,

Most perfect one, to whom they all are due.

Quick, quick ... while there is time....

O best of friends, I leave you one sublime

Summer, one fadeless summer. 'Twas begun

Ere Cotswold hawthorn tarnished in the sun,

When hedges were fledged with green, and early swallows

Swift-darting, on curved wings, pillaged the fallows;

When all our vale was dappled blossom and light,

And oh, the scent of beanfields in the night!

You shall remember that rich dust at even

Which made old Evesham like a street in heaven,

Gold-paved, and washed within a wave of golden

Air all her dreamy towers and gables olden.

You shall remember

How arms sun-blistered, hot palms crack'd with rowing,

Clove the cool water of Avon, sweetly flowing;

And how our bodies, beautifully white,

Stretch'd to a long stroke lengthened in green light,

And we, emerging, laughed in childish wise,

And pressed the kissing water from our eyes.

Ah, was our laughter childish, or were we wise?

And then, crown of the day, a tired returning

With happy sunsets over Bredon burning,

With music and with moonlight, and good ale,

And no thought for the morrow.... Heavy phlox

Our garden pathways bordered, and evening stocks,

Those humble weeds, in sunlight withered and pale,

With a night scent to match the nightingale,

Gladdened with spicèd sweetness sweet night's shadows,

Meeting the breath of hay from mowing meadows:

As humble was our joy, and as intense

Our rapture. So, before I hurry hence,

Yours be the memory.

One night again,

When we were men, and had striven, and known pain,

By a dark canal debating, unresigned,

On the blind fate that shadows humankind,

On the blind sword that severs human love...

Then did the hidden belfry from above

On troubled minds in benediction shed

The patience of the great anonymous dead

Who reared those towers, those high cathedrals builded

In solemn stone, and with clear fancy gilded

A beauty beyond ours, trusting in God.

Then dared we follow the dark way they trod,

And bowing to the universal plan

Trust in the true and fiery spirit of Man.

And you, my Brother,

You know, as knows one other,

How my spirit revisiteth a room

In a high wing, beneath pine-trees, where gloom

Dwelleth, dispelled by resinous wood embers,

Where, in half-darkness ... How the heart remembers...

We talked of beauty, and those fiery things

To which the divine desirous spirit clings,

In a wing'd rapture to that heaven flinging,

Where beauty is an easy thing, and singing

The natural speech of man. Like kissing swords

Our wits clashed there; the brittle beauty of words

Breaking, seemed to discover its secret heart

And all the rapt elusiveness of Art.

Now I have known sorrow, and now I sing

That a lovely word is not an idle thing;

For as with stars the cloth of night is spangled,

With star-like words, most lovelily entangled,

The woof of sombre thought is deckt.... Ah, bright

And cold they glitter in the spirit's night!

But neither distant nor dispassionate;

For beauty is an armour against fate....

I tell you, who have stood in the dark alone.

Seeing the face that turneth all to stone,

Medusa, blind with hate,

While I was dying, Beauty sate with me

Nor tortured any longer; gracious was she;

To her soft words I listened, and was content

To die, nor sorry that my light was spent.

So, Brother, if I come not home,

Go to that little room

That my spirit revisiteth, and there,

Somewhere in the blue air, you shall discover

If that you be a lover

Nor haughtily minded, all that once half-shaped

Then fled us, and escaped:

All that I found that day,

Far, so far away.

And you, my lovely one,

What can I leave to you, who, you having left,

Am utterly bereft?

What in my store of visionary dowers

Is not already yours?

What silences, what hours

Of peace passing all understanding; days

Made lyric by your beauty and its praise;

Years neither time can tarnish, nor death mar,

Wherein you shined as steadfast as a star

In my bleak night, heedless of the cloud-wrack

Scudding in torn fleeces black

Of my dark moods, as those who rule the far

Star-haunted pleasaunces of heaven are?

So think but lightly of that afternoon

With white clouds climbing a blue sky in June

When a boy worshipped under dreaming trees,

Who touched your hand, and sought your eyes.

... Ah, cease,

Not these, not these...

Nor yet those nights when icy Brathay thundered

Under his bridges, and ghostly mountains wondered

At the white blossoming of a Christmas rose

More stainless than their snows;

Nor even of those placid days together

Mellow as early autumn's amber weather

When beech is ankleted with fire, and old

Elms wear their livery of yellow gold,

When orchards all are laden with increase,

And the quiet earth hath fruited, and knows peace

Oh, think not overmuch on those sweet years

Lest their last fruit be tears,--

Your tears, beloved, that were my utmost pain,--

But rather, dream again

How that a lover, half poet and half child,

An eager spirit of fragile fancies wild

Compact, adored the beauty and truth in you:

To your own truth be true;

And when, not mournfully, you turn this page

Consider still your starry heritage,

Continue in your loveliness, a star

To gladden me from afar

Even where there is no light

In my last night.

LOCHANILAUN

This is the image of my last content:

My soul shall be a little lonely lake,

So hidden that no shadow of man may break

The folding of its mountain battlement;

Only the beautiful and innocent

Whiteness of sea-born cloud drooping to shake

Cool rain upon the reed-beds, or the wake

Of churn'd cloud in a howling wind's descent.

For there shall be no terror in the night

When stars that I have loved are born in me,

And cloudy darkness I will hold most fair;

But this shall be the end of my delight:

That you, my lovely one, may stoop and see

Your image in the mirrored beauty there.

LETTERMORE

These winter days on Lettermore

The brown west wind it sweeps the bay,

And icy rain beats on the bare

Unhomely fields that perish there:

The stony fields of Lettermore

That drink the white Atlantic spray.

And men who starve on Lettermore,

Cursing the haggard, hungry surf,

Will souse the autumn's bruisèd grains

To light dark fires within their brains

And fight with stones on Lettermore

Or sprawl beside the smoky turf.

When spring blows over Lettermore

To bloom the ragged furze with gold,

The lovely south wind's living breath

Is laden with the smell of death:

For fever breeds on Lettermore

To waste the eyes of young and old.

A black van comes to Lettermore;

The horses stumble on the stones,

The drivers curse,--for it is hard

To cross the hills from Oughterard

And cart the sick from Lettermore:

A stinking load of rags and bones.

But you will go to Lettermore

When white sea-trout are on the run,

When purple glows between the rocks

About Lord Dudley's fishing-box

Adown the road to Lettermore,

And wide seas tarnish in the sun.

And so you'll think of Lettermore

As a lost island of the blest:

With peasant lovers in a blue

Dim dusk, with heather drench'd in dew,

And the sweet peace of Lettermore

Remote and dreaming in the West.

LAMENT

Once, I think, a finer fire

Touched my lips, and then I sang

Half the songs of my desire:

With their splendour the world rang.

And their sweetness made me free

Of those starry ways whereby

Planets make their minstrelsy

In echoing, unending sky.

So, before that spell was broken,

Song of the wind, surge of the sea,--

Beautiful passionate things unspoken

Rose like a breaking wave in me:

Rose like a wave with curled crest

That green sunlight splinters through...

But the wave broke within my breast:

And now I am a man like you.

THE LEMON-TREE

Last night, last night, a vision of you

Sweetly troubled my waking dream:

Beneath the clear Algerian blue

You stood with lifted eyes: the beam

Of a winter sun beat on the crown

Of a lemon-tree, whose delicate fruit

Like pale lamps hung airily down;

And in your gazing eyes a mute

And lovely wonder.... Have I sung

Of slender things and naught beside?

You were so beautifully young

I must have kissed you or have died.

EASTER

Adown our lane at Eastertide

Hosts of dancing bluebells lay

In pools of light: and 'Oh,' you cried,

'Look, look at them: I think that they

Are bluer than the laughing sea,'

And 'Look!' you cried, 'a piece of the sky

Has fallen down for you and me

To gaze upon and love.' ... And I,

Seeing in your eyes the dancing blue

And in your heart the innocent birth

Of a pure delight, I knew, I knew

That heaven had fallen upon earth.

THE LEANING ELM

Before my window, in days of winter hoar

Huddled a mournful wood:

Smooth pillars of beech, domed chestnut, sycamore,

In stony sleep they stood:

But you, unhappy elm, the angry west

Had chosen from the rest,

Flung broken on your brothers' branches bare,

And left you leaning there

So dead that when the breath of winter cast

Wild snow upon the blast,

The other living branches, downward bowed,

Shook free their crystal shroud

And shed upon your blackened trunk beneath,

Their livery of death....

On windless nights between the beechen bars

I watched cold stars

Throb whitely in the sky, and dreamily

Wondered if any life lay locked in thee:

If still the hidden sap secretly moved,

As water in the icy winterbourne

Floweth unheard;

And half I pitied you your trance forlorn:

You could not hear, I thought, the voice of any bird,

The shadowy cries of bats in dim twilight

Or cool voices of owls crying by night....

Hunting by night under the hornèd moon:

Yet half I envied you your wintry swoon,

Till, on this morning mild, the sun, new-risen

Steals from his misty prison;

The frozen fallows glow, the black trees shaken

In a clear flood of sunlight vibrating awaken:

And lo, your ravaged bole, beyond belief

Slenderly fledged anew with tender leaf

As pale as those twin vanes that break at last

In a tiny fan above the black beech-mast

Where no blade springeth green

But pallid bells of the shy helleborine.

What is this ecstasy that overwhelms

The dreaming earth? See, the embrownèd elms

Crowding purple distances warm the depths of the wood;

A new-born wind tosses their tassels brown,

His white clouds dapple the down;

Into a green flame bursting the hedgerows stand;

Soon, with banners flying, Spring will walk the land....

There is no day for thee, my soul, like this,

No spring of lovely words. Nay, even the kiss

Of mortal love that maketh man divine

This light cannot outshine:

Nay, even poets, they whose frail hands catch

The shadow of vanishing beauty, may not match

This leafy ecstasy. Sweet words may cull

Such magical beauty as time may not destroy;

But we, alas, are not more beautiful:

We cannot flower in beauty as in joy.

We sing, our musèd words are sped, and then

Poets are only men

Who age, and toil, and sicken.... This maim'd tree

May stand in leaf when I have ceased to be.

THE JOYOUS LOVER

O, now that I am free as the air

And fleet as clouds above,

I will wander everywhere

Over the ways I love.

Lightly, lightly will I pass

Nor scatter as I go

A shadow on the blowing grass

Or a footprint in the snow.

All the wild things of the wood

That once were timid and shy

They shall not flee their solitude

For fear, when I pass by;

And beauty, beauty, the wide world over,

Shall blush when I draw near:

She knows her lover, the joyous lover,

And greets him without fear.

But if I come to the dark room

From which our love hath fled

And bend above you in the gloom

Or kneel beside your bed,

Smile soft in your sleep, my beautiful one,

For if you should say 'Nay'

To the dream which visiteth you alone,

My joy would wither away.

DEAD POETS

ODE WRITTEN AT WILTON HOUSE

Last night, amazed, I trod on holy ground

Breathing an air that ancient poets knew,

Where, in a valley compassed with sweet sound,

Beneath a garden's alley'd shades of yew,

With eager feet passèd that singer sweet

Who Stella loved, whom bloody Zutphen slew

In the starred zenith of his knightly fame.

There too a dark-stoled figure I did meet:

Herbert, whose faith burned true

And steadfast as the altar candle's flame.

Under the Wilton cedars, pondering

Upon the pains of Beauty and the wrong

That sealeth lovely lips, fated to sing,

Before they reach the cadence of their song,

I mused upon dead poets: mighty ones

Who sang and suffered: briefly heard were they

As Libyan nightingales weary of wing

Fleeing the temper of Saharan suns

To gladden our moon'd May,

And with the broken blossom vanishing.

So to my eyes a sorrowful vision came

Of one whose name was writ in water: bright

His cheeks and eyes burned with a hectic flame;

And one, alas! I saw whose passionate might

Was spent upon a fevered fen in Greece;

One shade there was who, starving, choked with bread;

One, a drown'd corpse, through stormy water slips;

One in the numbing poppy-juice found peace;

And one, a youth, lay dead

With powdered arsenic upon his lips.

O bitter were the sorrow that could dull

The sombre music of slow evening

Here, where the old world is so beautiful

That even lesser lips are moved to sing

How the wide heron sails into the light

Black as the cedarn shadows on the lawns

Or stricken woodlands patient in decay,

And river water murmurs through the night

Until autumnal dawns

Burn in the glass of Nadder's watery way.

Nay, these were they by whom the world was lost,

To whom the world most richly gave: forlorn

Beauty they worshipp'd, counting not the cost

If of their torment beauty might be born;

And life, the splendid flower of their delight,

Loving too eagerly, they broke, and spill'd

The perfume that the folded petals close

Before its prime; yet their frail fingers white

From that bruised bloom distill'd

Uttermost attar of the living rose.

Wherefore, O shining ones, I will not mourn

You, who have ravish'd beauty's secret ways

Beneath death's impotent shadow, suffering scorn,

Hatred, and desolation in her praise....

Thus as I spoke their phantom faces smiled,

As brooding night with heavy downward wing

Fell upon Wilton's elegiac stone,

On the dark woodlands and the waters wild

And every living thing--

Leaving me there amazèd and alone.