Works

Have you no Bananas, simple townsmen all?
'Nay, but we have them certainly.
'We buy them off the barrows, with the vegetable-marrows
'And the cabbage of our own country,...

Unless you come of the gipsy stock
That steals by night and day,
Lock your heart with a double lock
And throw the key away.
Bury it under the blackest stone
Beneath your father's hearth,...

After the Battle. The PRINCESS by the Standard on the Ravelin.

Enter Gow, with the Crown of the Kingdom.

GOW. Here's earnest of the Queen's submission.
This by her last herald, and in haste.
...

Eyes aloft over dangerous places,
The children follow where Psyche flies,
And, in the sweat of their upturned faces,
Slash with a net at the empty skies.

So it goes they fall amid brambles,...

Harry, our King in England, from London town is gone,
And comen to Hamull on the Hoke in the Countie of Suthampton.
For there lay the Mary of the Tower, his ship of war so strong,...

So here's your Empire. No more wine, then?
Good.
We'll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away.
(You'll know that fat old fellow with the knife
He keeps the Name Book, talks in English too,...

It's forty in the shade to-day, the spouting eaves declare;
The boulders nose above the drift, the southern slopes are bare;
Hub-deep in slush Apollo's car swings north along the Zod,...

'Poison of asps is under our lips'?
Why do you seek us, then?
Breaking our knotted fellowships
With your noisy-footed men?

Time and time over we let them go;
Hearing and slipping aside;...

I have eaten your bread and salt,
I have drunk your water and wine,
The deaths ye died I have watched be-side,
And the lives that ye led were mine.

Was there aught that I did not share...

The God of Fair Beginnings
Hath prospered here my hand,
The cargoes of my lading,
And the keels of my command.
For out of many ventures
That sailed with hope as high,...

How do I know what Order brings
Me into being?
I only know, if you do certain things,
I must become your Hearing and your Seeing
Also your Strength, to make great wheels go round,...

Such as in Ships and brittle Barks
Into the Seas descend
Shall learn how wholly on those Arks
Our Victuals do depend.
For, when a Man would bite or sup,
Or buy him Goods or Gear,...

"Gay go up and gay go down
To ring the Bells of London Town."
When London Town's asleep in bed
You'll hear the Bells ring overhead.
In excelsis gloria!
Ringing for Victoria,...

England is a cosy little country,
Excepting for the draughts along the floor.
And that is why you're told,
When the passages are cold:
'Darling, you've forgot to shut the Door!'
...

Now the New Year, reviving last Year's Debt,
The Thoughtful Fisher casteth wide his Net;
So I with begging Dish and ready Tongue
Assail all Men for all that I can get.
...

We've sent our little Cupids all ashore,
They were frightened, they were tired, they were cold:
Our sails of silk and purple go to store,
And we've cut away our mast of beaten gold
(Foul weather!)...

The God of Fair Beginnings
Hath prospered here my hand,
The cargoes of my lading,
And the keels of my command.
For out of many ventures
That sailed with hope as high,...

A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you and I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair
(We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair...

Not in the thick of the fight,
Not in the press of the odds,
Do the heroes come to their height,
Or we know the demi-gods.

That stands over till peace.
We can only perceive...

To-day, across our fathers' graves,
The astonished years reveal
The remnant of that desperate host
Which cleansed our East with steel.

Hail and farewell! We greet you here,...