A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
50
In the ground of our beseeching.
IV
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
5
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
10
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
[Commentary I 1036–39 · Textual History II 536–42]
V
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
5
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
10
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
15
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
20
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
25
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
[Commentary I 1040–42 · Textual History II 542–44]
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
30
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
35
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
40
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
45
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
[Commentary I 1042–44 · Textual History II 544–45]
Occasional Verses
Defence of the Islands
Defence of the Islands cannot pretend to be verse, but its date—just after the evacuation from Dunkirk—and occasion have for me a significance which makes me wish to preserve it. McKnight Kauffer was then working for the Ministry of Information. At his request I wrote these lines to accompany an exhibition in New York of photographs illustrating the war effort of Britain. They were subsequently published in Britain At War (the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1941). I now dedicate them to the memory of Edward McKnight Kauffer.
Let these memorials of built stone—music’s
enduring instrument, of many centuries of
patient cultivation of the earth, of English
verse
[5]
the islands
and the memory of those appointed to the grey
ships—battleship, merchantman, trawler—
contributing their share to the ages’ pavement
[10]
of British bone on the sea floor
and of those who, in man’s newest form of gamble
with death, fight the power of darkness in air
and fire
and of those who have followed their forebears
[15]
to Flanders and France, those undefeated in de-
feat, unalterable in triumph, changing nothing
of their ancestors’ ways but the weapons
[Commentary I 1046–49 · Textual History II 547–51]
and those again for whom the paths of glory are
the lanes and the streets of Britain:
<
[20]
to say, to the past and the future generations
of our kin and of our speech, that we took up
our positions, in obedience to instructions.
[Commentary I 1049–50 · Textual History II 551]
A Note on War Poetry
A Note on War Poetry was written at the request of Miss Storm Jameson, to be included in a book entitled London Calling (Harper Brothers, New York, 1942).
Not the expression of collective emotion
Imperfectly reflected in the daily papers.
Where is the point at which the merely individual
Explosion breaks
5
In the path of an action merely typical
To create the universal, originate a symbol
Out of the impact? This is a meeting
On which we attend
Of forces beyond control by experiment—
10
Of Nature and the Spirit. Mostly the individual
Experience is too large, or too small. Our emotions
Are only ‘incidents’
In the effort to keep day and night together.
It seems just possible that a poem might happen
15
To a very young man: but a poem is not poetry—
That is a life.
War is not a life: it is a situation,
One which may neither be ignored nor accepted,
A problem to be met with ambush and stratagem,
20
Enveloped or scattered.
The enduring is not a substitute for the transient,
Neither one for the other. But the abstract conception
Of private experience at its greatest intensity
Becoming universal, which we call ‘poetry’,
25
May be affirmed in verse.
[Commentary I 1050–54 · Textual History II 551–53]
To the Indians who Died in Africa
To the Indians who Died in Africa was written at the request of Miss Cornelia Sorabji for Queen Mary’s Book for India (Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1943). I dedicate it now to Bonamy Dobrée, because he liked it and urged me to preserve it.
A man’s destination is his own village,
His own fire, and his wife’s cooking;
To sit in front of his own door at sunset
And see his grandson, and his neighbour’s grandson
5
Playing in the dust together.
Scarred but secure, he has many memories
&n
bsp; Which return at the hour of conversation,
(The warm or the cool hour, according to the climate)
Of foreign men, who fought in foreign places,
10
Foreign to each other.
A man’s destination is not his destiny,
Every country is home to one man
And exile to another. Where a man dies bravely
At one with his destiny, that soil is his.
15
Let his village remember.
This was not your land, or ours: but a village in the Midlands,
And one in the Five Rivers, may have the same graveyard.
Let those who go home tell the same story of you:
Of action with a common purpose, action
20
None the less fruitful if neither you nor we
Know, until the judgment after death,
What is the fruit of action.
[Commentary I 1054–57 · Textual History II 553–54]
To Walter de la Mare
To Walter de la Mare was written for inclusion in Tribute to Walter de la Mare (Faber & Faber Ltd., 1948), a book presented to him on his seventy-fifth birthday.
The children who explored the brook and found
A desert island with a sandy cove
(A hiding place, but very dangerous ground,
For here the water buffalo may rove,
5
The kinkajou, the mangabey, abound
In the dark jungle of a mango grove,
And shadowy lemurs glide from tree to tree—
The guardians of some long-lost treasure-trove)
Recount their exploits at the nursery tea
10
And when the lamps are lit and curtains drawn
Demand some poetry, please. Whose shall it be,
At not quite time for bed? …
Or when the lawn
Is pressed by unseen feet, and ghosts return
Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn,
15
The sad intangible who grieve and yearn;
When the familiar scene is suddenly strange
Or the well known is what we have yet to learn,
And two worlds meet, and intersect, and change;
When cats are maddened in the moonlight dance,
20
Dogs cower, flitter bats, and owls range
At the witches’ sabbath of the maiden aunts;
<
[Commentary I 1057–59 · Textual History II 554–56]
When the nocturnal traveller can arouse
No sleeper by his call; or when by chance
An empty face peers from an empty house;
25
By whom, and by what means, was this designed?
The whispered incantation which allows
Free passage to the phantoms of the mind?
By you; by those deceptive cadences
Wherewith the common measure is refined;
30
By conscious art practised with natural ease;
By the delicate, invisible web you wove—
The inexplicable mystery of sound.
[Commentary I 1059–60 · Textual History II 556–58]
A Dedication to my Wife
To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our wakingtime
And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,
The breathing in unison
5
Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech
And babble the same speech without need of meaning.
No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
10
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only
But this dedication is for others to read:
These are private words addressed to you in public.
[Commentary I 1060–61 · Textual History II 558–559]
Uncollected Poems
A Lyric
If Time and Space, as Sages say,
Are things which cannot be,
The sun which does not feel decay
No greater is than we.
5
So why, Love, should we ever pray
To live a century?
The butterfly that lives a day
Has lived eternity.
The flowers I gave thee when the dew
10
Was trembling on the vine,
Were withered ere the wild bee flew
To suck the eglantine.
So let us haste to pluck anew
Nor mourn to see them pine,
15
And though our days of love be few
Yet let them be divine.
Song
If space and time, as sages say,
Are things that cannot be,
The fly that lives a single day
Has lived as long as we.
5
But let us live while yet we may,
While love and life are free,
For time is time, and runs away,
Though sages disagree.
<
[Commentary I 1069–70 · Textual History II 561–62]
The flowers I sent thee when the dew
10
Was trembling on the vine
Were withered ere the wild bee flew
To suck the eglantine.
But let us haste to pluck anew
Nor mourn to see them pine,
15
And though the flowers of life be few
Yet let them be divine.
A Fable for Feasters
In England, long before that royal Mormon
King Henry VIII found out that monks were quacks,
And took their lands and money from the poor men,
And brought their abbeys tumbling at their backs,
5
There was a village founded by some Norman
Who levied on all travelers his tax;
Nearby this hamlet was a monastery
Inhabited by a band of friars merry.
They were possessors of rich lands and wide,
10
An orchard, and a vineyard, and a dairy;
Whenever some old villainous baron died,
He added to their hoards—a deed which ne’er he
Had done before—their fortune multiplied,
As if they had been kept by a kind fairy.
15
Alas! no fairy visited their host,
Oh, no; much worse than that, they had a ghost.
Some wicked and heretical old sinner
Perhaps, who had been walled up for his crimes;
At any rate, he sometimes came to dinner,
20
Whene’er the monks were having merry times.
He stole the fatter cows and left the thinner
To furnish all the milk—upset the chimes,
And once he sat the prior on the steeple,
To the astonishment of all the people.
[Commentary I 1070–71 · Textual History II 562–63]
25
When Christmas time was near the Abbot vowed
They’d eat their meal from ghosts and phantoms free,
The fiend must stay at home—no ghosts allowed
At this exclusive feast. From over sea
He purchased at his own expense a crowd
30
Of relics from a Spanish saint—said he:
‘If ghosts come uninvited, then, of course,
I’ll be compelled to keep them off by force.’
He drencht the gown he wore with holy water,
The turkeys, capons, boars, they were to eat,
35
He even soakt the uncomplaining porter
Who stood outside the door from head to feet.
To make a rather lengthy story shorter,
He left no wise precaution incomplete;
He doused the room in which they were to dine,
40
And watered everything except the wine.
So when all preparations had been made,
The jovial epicures sat down to table.
The menus of that time I am afraid
I don’t know much about—as well’s I’m able
45
I’ll go through the account: They made a raid
On every bird and beast in Æsop’s fable
To fill out their repast, and pies and puddings,
And jellies, pasties, cakes among the good things.
A mighty peacock standing on both legs
50
With difficulty kept from toppling over,
Next came a viand made of turtle eggs,
And after that a great pie made of plover,
And flagons which perhaps held several kegs
Of ale, and cheese which they kept under cover.
55
Last, a boar’s head, which to bring in took four pages,
His mouth an apple held, his skull held sausages.
[Commentary I 1071 · Textual History II 563]
Over their Christmas wassail the monks dozed,
A fine old drink, though now gone out of use—
His feet upon the table superposed
60
Each wisht he had not eaten so much goose.
The Abbot with proposing every toast
Had drank more than he ought t’ have of grape juice.
The lights began to burn distinctly blue,
As in ghost stories lights most always do.