Works

All the trees and bushes of the garden
Display their bright new green.

But above them all, still bare,
The great old acacia stands,
His solitary bent black branches stark...

Gently the petals fall as the tree gently sways
That has known many springs and many petals fall
Year after year to strew the green deserted ways
And the statue and the pond and the low, broken wall.
...

I. MORNING

The village fades away
Where I last night came,
Where they housed me and fed me
And never asked my name.

The sun shines bright, my step is light,
I, who have no abode,...

The loose earth falls in the grave like a peaceful regular breathing;
Too like, for I was deceived a moment by the sound:
It has covered the heap of bracken that the gardener laid above him;...

(To K. Wigram.)

Sheltered, when the rain blew over the hills it was,
Sunny all day when the days of summer were long,
Beyond all rumour of labouring towns it was,...

Now am I a tin whistle
Through which God blows,
And I wish to God I were a trumpet
But why, God only knows.

There was a time that's gone
And will not come again,
We knew it was a pleasant time,
How good we never dreamed.

When, for a whimsy's sake,
We'd even play with pain,
For everything awaited us...

Now very quietly, and rather mournfully,
In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires,
And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him
Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.
...

A smooth blue sky with puffed motionless clouds.

Standing over the plain of red roofs and bushy trees
The bright coloured shell of the large enamelled sky.
...

(F.T.)


The cord broke, and the tent
Slipped, and the silken roof
Lay prone beneath the viewless hoof
Of the deliberate firmament.
Yet cared we not; how should we care?...

I. THE FLUKE

For two years you went
Through all the worst of it,
Men fell around you, but you did not fall.
On the Somme when the air was a sea
Of contesting flashes and clouds of smoke,...

There was a day, when I, if that was I,
Surrendered lay beneath a burning sky,
Where overhead the azure ached with heat,
And many red fierce poppies splashed the wheat;...

As I stand waiting in the rain
For the foggy hoot of the London train,
Gazing at silent wall and lamp
And post and rail and platform damp,
What is this power that comes to my sight...

Muse, you have opened like a flower.

* * * * *

Long ago I knew that brown integument,
Like a dead husk, had dormant life within it,
And waited till a first white point appeared...

When her eyes' sudden challenge first halted my feet on the path,
I stood like a shivering caught fugitive, and strained at my breath,
And the Truth in her eyes was the portent of Love and of Death,...

[To F., who complained of his vagueness and lack of dogmatic statement]

Not, I suppose, since I deny
Appearance is reality,
And doubt the substance of the earth
Does your remonstrance come to birth;...

O full of candour and compassion,
Whom love and worship both would praise,
Love cannot frame nor worship fashion
The image of your fearless ways!

How show your noble brow's dark pallor,...

Dark fir-tops foot the moony sky,
Blue moonlight bars the drive;
Here at the open window I
Sit smoking and alive.

Wind in the branches swells and breaks
Like ocean on a beach;...

(To F. S.)

In the smooth grey heaven is poised the pale half moon
And sheds on the wide grey river a broken reflection.
Out from the low church-tower the boats are moored...

My heart was like a bird and took to flight,
Around the rigging circling joyously;
The ship rolled on beneath a cloudless sky
Like a great angel drunken with the light.
...