For all the eye could tell
The world went well.
Yet well, God knows, it went not,
God knows, it went awry;
For me, one flowery Maytime,
It went so ill that I
Designed to die.
And if so long I carry
The lot that season marred,
’Tis that the sons of Adam
Are not so evil-starred
As they are hard.
Young is the blood that yonder
Succeeds to rick and fold,
Fresh are the form and favour
And new the minted mould:
The thoughts are old.
XXXV
Half-way, for one commandment broken,
The woman made her endless halt,
And she to-day, a glistering token,
Stands in the wilderness of salt.
Behind, the vats of judgment brewing
Thundered, and thick the brimstone snowed:
He to the hill of his undoing
Pursued his road.
XXXVI
Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is, and we were young.
XXXVII
I did not lose my heart in summer’s even,
When roses to the moonrise burst apart:
When plumes were under heel and lead was flying,
In blood and smoke and flame I lost my heart.
I lost it to a soldier and a foeman,
A chap that did not kill me, but he tried;
That took the sabre straight and took it striking
And laughed and kissed his hand to me and died.
XXXVIII
By shores and woods and steeples
Rejoicing hearts receive
Poured on a hundred peoples
The far-shed alms of eve.
Her hands are filled with slumber
For world-wide labourers worn;
Yet those are more in number
That know her not from morn.
Now who sees night for ever,
He sees no happier sight:
Night and no moon and never
A star upon the night.
XXXIX
My dreams are of a field afar
And blood and smoke and shot.
There in their graves my comrades are,
In my grave I am not.
I too was taught the trade of man
And spelt my lesson plain;
But they, when I forgot and ran,
Remembered and remain.
XL
Farewell to a name and a number
Resigned again
To darkness and silence and slumber
In blood and pain.
So time coils round in a ring
And home comes he
A soldier cheap to the King
And dear to me;
So smothers in blood the burning
And flaming flight
Of valour and truth returning
To dust and night.
XLI
He looked at me with eyes I thought
I was not like to find,
The voice he begged for pence with brought
Another man to mind.
Oh no, lad, never touch your cap;
It is not my half-crown:
You have it from a better chap
That long ago lay down.
Once he stept out but now my friend
Is not in marching trim
And you must tramp to the world’s end
To touch your cap to him.
XLII
A. J. J.
When he’s returned I’ll tell him – oh,
Dear fellow, I forgot:
Time was you would have cared to know,
But now it matters not.
I mourn you, and you heed not how;
Unsaid the word must stay;
Last month was time enough, but now
The news must keep for aye.
Oh, many a month before I learn
Will find me starting still
And listening, as the days return,
For him that never will.
Strange, strange to think his blood is cold
And mine flows easy on,
And that straight look, that heart of gold,
That grace, that manhood, gone.
The word unsaid will stay unsaid
Though there was much to say;
The news must keep for aye.
XLIII
I wake from dreams and turning
My vision on the height
I scan the beacons burning
About the fields of night.
Each in its steadfast station
Inflaming heaven they flare;
They sign with conflagration
The empty moors of air.
The signal-fires of warning
They blaze, but none regard;
And on through night to morning
The world runs ruinward.
XLIV
Far known to sea and shore,
Foursquare and founded well,
A thousand years it bore,
And then the belfry fell.
The steersman of Triest
Looked where his mark should be,
But empty was the west
And Venice under sea.
From dusty wreck dispersed
Its stature mounts amain;
On surer foot than first
The belfry stands again.
At to-fall of the day
Again its curfew tolls
And burdens far away
The green and sanguine shoals.
It looks to north and south,
It looks to east and west;
It guides to Lido mouth
The steersman of Triest.
Andrea, fare you well;
Venice, farewell to thee.
The tower that stood and fell
Is not rebuilt in me.
XLV
Smooth between sea and land
Is laid the yellow sand,
And here through summer days
The seed of Adam plays.
Here the child comes to found
His unremaining mound,
And the grown lad to score
Two names upon the shore.
Here, on the level sand,
Between the sea and land,
What shall I build or write
Against the fall of night?
Tell me of runes to grave
That hold the bursting wave,
Or bastions to design
For longer date than mine.
Shall it be Troy or Rome
I fence against the foam,
Or my own name, to stay
When I depart for aye?
Nothing: too near at hand,
Planing the figured sand,
Effacing clean and fast
Cities not built to last
And charms devised in vain,
Pours the confounding main.
XLVI
The Land of Biscay
Hearken, landsmen, hearken, seamen,
to the tale of grief and me
Looking from the land of Biscay
on the waters of the sea.
Looking from the land of Biscay
over Ocean to the sky
On the far-beholding foreland
paced at even grief and I.
There, as warm the west was burning
and the east uncoloured cold,
Down the waterway of sunset
drove to shore a ship of gold.
Gold of mast and gold of cordage,
gold of sail to sight was she,
And she glassed her ensign golden
in the waters of the s
ea.
Oh, said I, my friend and lover,
take we now that ship and sail
Outward in the ebb of hues and
steer upon the sunset trail;
Leave the night to fall behind us
and the clouding countries leave:
Help for you and me is yonder,
in a haven west of eve.
Under hill she neared the harbour,
till the gazer could behold
On the golden deck the steersman
standing at the helm of gold,
Man and ship and sky and water
burning in a single flame;
And the mariner of Ocean,
he was calling as he came:
From the highway of the sunset
he was shouting on the sea,
‘Landsman of the land of Biscay,
have you help for grief and me?’
When I heard I did not answer,
I stood mute and shook my head:
Son of earth and son of Ocean,
much we thought and nothing said.
Grief and I abode the nightfall,
to the sunset grief and he
Turned them from the land of Biscay
on the waters of the sea.
XLVII
O thou that from thy mansion,
Through time and place to roam,
Dost send abroad thy children,
And then dost call them home,
That men and tribes and nations
And all thy hand hath made
May shelter them from sunshine
In thine eternal shade.
We now to peace and darkness
And earth and thee restore
Thy creature that thou madest
And wilt cast forth no more.
XLVIII
Parta Quies
Good-night; ensured release,
Imperishable peace,
Have these for yours,
While sea abides, and land,
And earth’s foundations stand,
And heaven endures.
When earth’s foundations flee,
Nor sky nor land nor sea
At all is found,
Content you, let them burn:
It is not your concern;
Sleep on, sleep sound.
ADDITIONAL POEMS
I
Atys
‘Lydians, lords of Hermus river,
Sifters of the golden loam,
See you yet the lances quiver
And the hunt returning home?’
‘King, the star that shuts the even
Calls the sheep from Tmolus down;
Home return the doves from heaven,
And the prince to Sardis town.’
From the hunting heavy laden
Up the Mysian road they ride;
And the star that mates the maiden
Leads his son to Croesus’ side.
‘Lydians, under stream and fountain
Finders of the golden vein,
Riding from Olympus mountain,
Lydians, see you Atys plain?’
‘King, I see the Phrygian stranger
And the guards in hunter’s trim,
Saviours of thy son from danger;
Them I see. I see not him.’
‘Lydians, as the troop advances,
– It is eve and I am old –
Tell me why they trail their lances,
Washers of the sands of gold.
‘I am old and day is ending
And the wildering night comes on;
Up the Mysian entry wending,
Lydians, Lydians, what is yon?’
Hounds behind their master whining,
Huntsmen pacing dumb beside,
On his breast the boar-spear shining,
Home they bear his father’s pride.
II
Oh were he and I together,
Shipmates on the fleeted main,
Sailing through the summer weather
To the spoil of France or Spain.
Oh were he and I together,
Locking hands and taking leave,
Low upon the trampled heather
In the battle lost at eve.
Now are he and I asunder
And asunder to remain;
Kingdoms are for others’ plunder,
And content for other slain.
III
When Adam walked in Eden young
Happy, ’tis writ, was he,
While high the fruit of knowledge hung
Unbitten on the tree.
Happy was he the livelong day:
I doubt ’tis written wrong:
The heart of man, for all they say,
Was never happy long.
And now my feet are tired of rest
And here they will not stay
And the soul fevers in my breast
And aches to be away.
IV
It is no gift I tender,
A loan is all I can;
But do not scorn the lender;
Man gets no more from man.
Oh, mortal man may borrow
What mortal man can lend;
And ’twill not end tomorrow,
Though sure enough ’twill end.
If death and time are stronger
A love may yet be strong;
The world will last for longer,
But this will last for long.
V
Here are the skies, the planets seven,
And all the starry train:
Content you with the mimic heaven,
And on the earth remain.*
VI
Ask me no more, for fear I should reply;
Others have held their tongues, and so can I,
Hundreds have died, and told no tale before:
Ask me no more, for fear I should reply –
How one was true and one was clean of stain
And one was braver than the heavens are high,
And one was fond of me: and all are slain.
Ask me no more, for fear I should reply.
VII
He would not stay for me; and who can wonder?
He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand and tore my heart in sunder
And went with half my life about my ways.
VIII
Now to her lap the incestuous earth
The son she bore has ta’en,
And other sons she brings to birth
But not my friend again.
IX
When the bells justle in the tower
The hollow night amid,
Then on my tongue the taste is sour
Of all I ever did.
X
Oh on my breast in days hereafter
Light the earth should lie,
Such weight to bear is now the air,
So heavy hangs the sky.
XI
Morning up the eastern stair
Marches, azuring the air,
And the foot of twilight still
Is stolen toward the western sill.
Blithe the maids go milking, blithe
Men in hayfields stone the scythe,
All the land’s alive around
Except the churchyard’s idle ground.
—There’s empty acres west and east
But aye ’tis God’s that bears the least:
This hopeless garden that they sow
With the seeds that never grow.
XIA
—They shall have breath that never were,
But he that was shall have it ne’er;
The unconceived and unbegot
Shall look on heaven, but he shall not.
—The heart with many wildfires lit,
Ice is not so cold as it.
The thirst that rivers could not lay
A little dust has quenched for aye;
And in a fathom’s compass lie
Thoughts much wider than the sky.
XII
Stay, if you list, O passer by the way;
Yet night approaches: better not to stay.
I never sigh, nor flush, nor knit the brow,
Nor grieve to think how ill God made me, now.
Here, with one balm for many fevers found,
Whole of an ancient evil, I sleep sound.
XIII
Oh turn not in from marching
To taverns on the way:
The drought and thirst and parching
A little dust will lay
And take desire away.
Oh waste no words a wooing
The soft sleep to your bed;
She is not worth pursuing,
You will so soon be dead,
And death will serve instead.
XIV
‘Oh is it the jar of nations,
The noise of a world run mad,
The fleeing of earth’s foundations?’
Yes, yes; lie quiet, my lad.
‘Oh is it my country calling,
And whom will my country find
To shore up the sky from falling?’
My business; never you mind.
‘Oh is it the newsboys crying
Lost battle, retreat, despair,
And honour and England dying?’
Well, fighting cock, what if it were?
The devil this side of the darnels
Is having a dance with man,
And quarrelsome chaps in charnels
Must bear it as best they can.
XV
’Tis five years since, ‘An end,’ said I,
‘I’ll march no further, time to die.
All’s lost; no worse has heaven to give.’
Worse it has given, and yet I live.
I shall not die to-day, no fear:
I shall live yet for many a year,
And see worse ills and worse again,
And die of age and not of pain.
When God would rear from earth aloof
The blue height of the hollow roof
He sought him pillars sure and strong
And ere he found them sought them long.
The stark steel splintered from the thrust,