# Sonnets and poems

Lollingdon, Cholsey, Berkshire: John Masefield
Sonnets
Poems
John Masefield
SONNETS & POEMS
IN PREPARATION, UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME.
Good Friday, a Play in Verse. The Locked Chest, and The Sweeps of Ninety-Eight, two Plays in Prose. Personal Recollections of John M. Synge.
Price 3/6 net
Sonnets and Poems
By
JOHN MASEFIELD
PUBLISHED BY JOHN MASEFIELD AT LOLLINGDON, CHOLSEY, BERKSHIRE
PRINTED AT LETCHWORTH BY THE GARDEN CITY PRESS LTD. 1916
Copyright in U.S.A.
To My Wife
* I Long, long ago, when all the glittering earth
* II Night came again, but now I could not sleep
* III Even after all these years there comes the dream
* IV If I could come again to that dear place
* V Here in the self is all that man can know
* VI Flesh, I have knocked at many a dusty door
* VII But all has passed, the tune has died away
* VIII These myriad days, these many thousand hours
* IX There, on the darkened deathbed, dies the brain
* X So in the empty sky the stars appear
* XI It may be so with us, that in the dark
* XII What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt
* XIII If I could get within this changing I
* XIV What is this atom which contains the whole
* XV Ah, we are neither heaven nor earth, but men
* XVI Roses are beauty, but I never see
* XVII Over the church's door they moved a stone
* XVIII Out of the clouds come torrents, from the earth
* XIX O little self, within whose smallness lies
* XX I went into the fields, but you were there
* XXI This is the living thing that cannot stir
* XXII Here, where we stood together, we three men
* XXIII I saw her like a shadow on the sky
* XXIV Look at the grass, sucked by the seed from dust
* XXV There is no God, as I was taught in youth
* XXVI Wherever beauty has been quick in clay
* XXVII Beauty, let be; I cannot see your face
* XXVIII You are more beautiful than women are
* XXIX Beauty retires; the blood out of the earth
* XXX Not for the anguish suffered is the slur
* XXXI Beauty was with me once, but now, grown old
* XXXII So beauty comes, so with a failing hand
* XXXIII You will remember me in days to come
* XXXIV If Beauty be at all, if, beyond sense
* XXXV O wretched man, that, for a little mile
* XXXVI Night is on the downland, on the lonely moorland
* XXXVII If all be governed by the moving stars
* XXXVIII In emptiest furthest heaven where no stars are
* XXXIX Perhaps in chasms of the wasted past
* XL For, like an outcast from the city, I
* XLI Death lies in wait for you, you wild thing in the wood
* XLII They called that broken hedge The Haunted Gate
* XLIII There was an evil in the nodding wood
* XLIV Go, spend your penny, Beauty, when you will
* XLV Though in life's streets the tempting shops have lured
* XLVI When all these million cells that are my slaves
* XLVII Let that which is to come be as it may
I.
LONG, long ago, when all the glittering earth Was heaven itself, when drunkards in the street Were like mazed kings shaking at giving birth To acts of war that sickle men like wheat; When the white clover opened Paradise And God lived in a cottage up the brook, Beauty, you lifted up my sleeping eyes And filled my heart with longing with a look. And all the day I searched but could not find The beautiful dark-eyed who touched me there. Delight in her made trouble in my mind. She was within all Nature, everywhere. The breath I breathed, the brook, the flower, the grass, Were her, her word, her beauty, all she was.
II.
NIGHT came again, but now I could not sleep; The owls were watching in the yew, the mice Gnawed at the wainscot. The mid dark was deep. The death-watch knocked the dead man's summons thrice. The cats upon the pointed housetops peered About the chimneys, with lit eyes which saw Things in the darkness, moving, which they feared; The midnight filled the quiet house with awe. So, creeping down the stair, I drew the bolt And passed into the darkness, and I knew That Beauty was brought near by my revolt. Beauty was in the moonlight, in the dew, But more within myself, whose venturous tread Walked the dark house where death-ticks called the dead.
III.
EVEN after all these years there comes the dream Of lovelier life than this in some new earth, In the full summer of that unearthly gleam Which lights the spirit when the brain gives birth; Of a perfected I, in happy hours, Treading above the sea that trembles there, A path through thickets of immortal flowers That only grow where sorrows never were; And, at a turn, of coming face to face With Beauty's self, that Beauty I have sought In women's hearts, in friends, in many a place, In barren hours passed at grips with thought, Beauty of woman, comrade, earth and sea, Incarnate thought come face to face with me.
IV.
IF I could come again to that dear place Where once I came, where Beauty lived and moved, Where, by the sea, I saw her face to face, That soul alive by which the world has loved; If, as I stood at gaze among the leaves, She would appear again as once before, While the red herdsman gathered up his sheaves And brimming waters trembled up the shore; If, as I gazed, her Beauty that was dumb, In that old time, before I learned to speak, Would lean to me and revelation come, Words to the lips and colour to the cheek, Joy with its searing-iron would burn me wise; I should know all, all powers, all mysteries.
V.
HERE in the self is all that man can know Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power, All the unearthly colour, all the glow, Here in the self which withers like a flower; Here in the self which fades as hours pass, And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass In which it sees its glory still unrotten. Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind, Swift in the blood and throbbing on the bone, Beauty herself, the universal mind, Eternal April wandering alone; The god, the holy ghost, the atoning lord, Here in the flesh, the never yet explored.
VI.
FLESH, I have knocked at many a dusty door, Gone down full many a windy midnight lane, Probed in old walls and felt along the floor, Pressed in blind hope the lighted window-pane. But useless all, though sometimes when the moon Was full in heaven and the sea was full, Along my body's alleys came a tune Played in the tavern by the Beautiful. Then for an instant I have felt at point To find and seize her, whosoe'er she be, Whether some saint whose glory doth anoint Those whom she loves, or but a part of me, Or something that the things not understood Make for their uses out of flesh and blood.
VII.
BUT all has passed, the tune has died away, The glamour gone, the glory; is it chance? Is the unfeeling mud stabbed by a ray Cast by an unseen splendour's great advance? Or does the glory gather crumb by crumb Unseen, within, as coral islands rise, Till suddenly the apparitions come Above the surface, looking at the skies? Or does sweet Beauty dwell in lovely things Scattering the holy huntings of her name In women, in dear friends, in flowers, in springs, In the brook's voice, for us to catch the same? Or is it we who are Beauty, we who ask? We by whose gleams the world fulfils its task.
VIII.
THESE myriad days, these many thousand hours, A man's long life, so choked with dusty things, How little perfect poise with perfect powers, Joy at the heart and Beauty at the springs. One hour, or two, or three, in long years scattered, Sparks from a smithy that have fired a thatch, Are all that life has given and all that mattered; The rest, all heaving at a moveless latch. For these, so many years of useless toil, Despair, endeavour, and again despair, Sweat, that the base machine may have its oil, Idle delight to tempt one everywhere. A life upon the cross. To make amends, Three flaming memories that the deathbed ends.
IX.
THERE, on the darkened deathbed, dies the brain That flared three several times in seventy years. It cannot lift the silly hand again, Nor speak, nor sing, it neither sees nor hears; And muffled mourners put it in the ground And then go home, and in the earth it lies Too dark for vision and too deep for sound, The million cells that made a good man wise. Yet for a few short years an influence stirs, A sense or wraith or essence of him dead, Which makes insensate things its ministers To those beloved, his spirit's daily bread; Then that, too, fades; in book or deed a spark Lingers, then that, too, fades; then all is dark.
X.
SO in the empty sky the stars appear, Are bright in heaven marching through the sky, Spinning their planets, each one to his year, Tossing their fiery hair until they die; Then in the tower afar the watcher sees The sun, that burned, less noble than it was, Less noble still, until by dim degrees No spark of him is specklike in his glass. Then blind and dark in heaven the sun proceeds, Vast, dead and hideous, knocking on his moons, Till crashing on his like creation breeds, Striking such life, a constellation swoons; From dead things striking fire a new sun springs, New fire, new life, new planets with new wings.
XI.
IT may be so with us, that in the dark, When we have done with Time and wander Space, Some meeting of the blind may strike a spark, And to Death's empty mansion give a grace. It may be, that the loosened soul may find Some new delight of living without limbs, Bodiless joy of flesh-untrammelled mind, Peace like a sky where starlike spirit swims. It may be, that the million cells of sense, Loosed from their seventy years' adhesion, pass Each to some joy of changed experience, Weight in the earth or glory in the grass. It may be, that we cease; we cannot tell. Even if we cease, life is a miracle.
XII.
WHAT am I, Life? A thing of watery salt Held in cohesion by unresting cells Which work they know not why, which never halt, Myself unwitting where their master dwells. I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin; A world which uses me as I use them, Nor do I know which end or which begin, Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn. So, like a marvel in a marvel set, I answer to the vast, as wave by wave The sea of air goes over, dry or wet, Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave, Or the great sun comes north, this myriad I Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why.
XIII.
IF I could get within this changing I, This ever altering thing which yet persists, Keeping the features it is reckoned by, While each component atom breaks or twists, If, wandering past strange groups of shifting forms, Cells at their hidden marvels hard at work, Pale from much toil, or red from sudden storms, I might attain to where the Rulers lurk. If, pressing past the guards in those grey gates, The brain's most folded, intertwisted shell, I might attain to that which alters fates, The King, the supreme self, the Master Cell; Then, on Man's earthly peak, I might behold The unearthly self beyond, unguessed, untold.
XIV.
WHAT is this atom which contains the whole, This miracle which needs adjuncts so strange, This, which imagined God and is the soul, The steady star persisting amid change? What waste, that smallness of such power should need Such clumsy tools so easy to destroy, Such wasteful servants difficult to feed, Such indirect dark avenues to joy. Why, if its business is not mainly earth, Should it demand such heavy chains to sense? A heavenly thing demands a swifter birth, A quicker hand to act intelligence; An earthly thing were better like the rose, At peace with clay from which its beauty grows.
XV.
AH, we are neither heaven nor earth, but men; Something that uses and despises both, That takes its earth's contentment in the pen, Then sees the world's injustice and is wroth, And flinging off youth's happy promise, flies Up to some breach, despising earthly things, And, in contempt of hell and heaven, dies Rather than bear some yoke of priests or kings. Our joys are not of heaven nor earth, but man's, A woman's beauty, or a child's delight, The trembling blood when the discoverer scans The sought-for world, the guessed-at satellite; The ringing scene, the stone at point to blush For unborn men to look at and say "Hush."
XVI.
ROSES are beauty, but I never see Those blood drops from the burning heart of June Glowing like thought upon the living tree Without a pity that they die so soon, Die into petals, like those roses old, Those women, who were summer in men's hearts Before the smile upon the Sphinx was cold Or sand had hid the Syrian and his arts. O myriad dust of beauty that lies thick Under our feet that not a single grain But stirred and moved in beauty and was quick For one brief moon and died nor lived again; But when the moon rose lay upon the grass Pasture to living beauty, life that was.
XVII.
OVER the church's door they moved a stone, And there, unguessed, forgotten, mortared up, Lay the priest's cell where he had lived alone. There was his ashy hearth, his drinking cup, There was his window whence he saw the host, The God whose beauty quickened bread and wine; The skeleton of a religion lost, The ghostless bones of what had been divine. O many a time the dusty masons come Knocking their trowels in the stony brain To cells where perished priests had once a home, Or where devout brows pressed the window pane, Watching the thing made God, the God whose bones Bind underground our soul's foundation stones.
XVIII.
OUT of the clouds come torrents, from the earth Fire and quakings, from the shrieking air Tempests that harry half the planet's girth. Death's unseen seeds are scattered everywhere. Yet in his iron cage the mind of man Measures and braves the terrors of all these. The blindest fury and the subtlest plan He turns, or tames, or shows in their degrees. Yet in himself are forces of like power, Untamed, unreckoned; seeds that brain to brain Pass across oceans bringing thought to flower, New worlds, new selves, where he can live again Eternal beauty's everlasting rose Which casts this world as shadow as it goes.
XIX.
O LITTLE self, within whose smallness lies All that man was, and is, and will become, Atom unseen that comprehends the skies And tells the tracks by which the planets roam; That, without moving, knows the joys of wings, The tiger's strength, the eagle's secrecy, And in the hovel can consort with kings, Or clothe a God with his own mystery. O with what darkness do we cloak thy light, What dusty folly gather thee for food, Thou who alone art knowledge and delight, The heavenly bread, the beautiful, the good. O living self, O God, O morning star, Give us thy light, forgive us what we are.
XX.
I WENT into the fields, but you were there Waiting for me, so all the summer flowers Were only glimpses of your starry powers; Beautiful and inspired dust they were.
I went down by the waters, and a bird Sang with your voice in all the unknown tones Of all that self of you I have not heard, So that my being felt you to the bones.
I went into the house, and shut the door To be alone, but you were there with me; All beauty in a little room may be, Though the roof lean and muddy be the floor.
Then in my bed I bound my tired eyes To make a darkness for my weary brain; But like a presence you were there again, Being and real, beautiful and wise,
So that I could not sleep, and cried aloud, "You strange grave thing, what is it you would say?" The redness of your dear lips dimmed to grey, The waters ebbed, the moon hid in a cloud.
XXI.
THIS is the living thing that cannot stir. Where the seed chances there it roots and grows, To suck what makes the lily or the fir Out of the earth and from the air that blows, Great power of Will that little thing the seed Has, all alone in earth, to plan the tree, And, though the mud oppresses, to succeed And put out branches where the birds may be. Then the wind blows it, but the bending boughs Exult like billows, and their million green Drink the all-living sunlight in carouse, Like dainty harts where forest wells are clean, While it, the central plant, which looks o'er miles, Draws milk from the earth's breast, and sways, and smiles.
XXII.
HERE, where we stood together, we three men, Before the war had swept us to the East, Three thousand miles away, I stand agen And hear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast. We trod the same path, to the self-same place, Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves, Skyros whose shadows the great seas erase, And Sedd-el-Bahr that ever more blood craves. So, since we communed here, our bones have been Nearer, perhaps, than they again will be. Earth and the world-wide battle lie between, Death lies between, and friend-destroying sea. Yet here, a year ago, we talked and stood As I stand now, with pulses beating blood.
XXIII.
I SAW her like a shadow on the sky In the last light, a blur upon the sea; Then the gale's darkness put the shadow by. But from one grave that island talked to me; And in the midnight, in the breaking storm, I saw its blackness and a blinding light, And thought "So death obscures your gentle form, So memory strives to make the darkness bright; And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies, Part of the island till the planet ends, My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise, Part of this crag this bitter surge offends, While I, who pass, a little obscure thing, War with this force, and breathe, and am its king."
XXIV.
LOOK at the grass, sucked by the seed from dust, Whose blood is the spring rain, whose food the sun, Whose life the scythe takes ere the sorrels rust, Whose stalk is chaff before the winter's done. Even the grass its happy moment has In May, when glistering buttercups make gold; The exulting millions of the meadow-grass Give out a green thanksgiving from the mould. Even the blade that has not even a blossom Creates a mind, its joy's persistent soul Is a warm spirit on the old earth's bosom When April's fire has dwindled to a coal; The spirit of the grasses' joy makes fair The winter fields when even the wind goes bare.
XXV.
THERE is no God, as I was taught in youth, Though each, according to his stature, builds Some covered shrine for what he thinks the truth, Which day by day his reddest heart-blood gilds. There is no God; but death, the clasping sea, In which we move like fish, deep over deep, Made of men's souls that bodies have set free, Floods to a Justice though it seems asleep. There is no God; but still, behind the veil, The hurt thing works, out of its agony. Still like the given cruse that did not fail Return the pennies given to passers by. There is no God; but we, who breathe the air, Are God ourselves, and touch God everywhere.
XXVI.
WHEREVER beauty has been quick in clay Some effluence of it lives, a spirit dwells, Beauty that death can never take away Mixed with the air that shakes the flower bells; So that by waters where the apples fall, Or in lone glens, or valleys full of flowers, Or in the streets where bloody tidings call, The haunting waits the mood that makes it ours. Then at a turn, a word, an act, a thought, Such difference comes; the spirit apprehends That place's glory; for where beauty fought Under the veil the glory never ends; But the still grass, the leaves, the trembling flower Keep, through dead time, that everlasting hour.
XXVII.
BEAUTY, let be; I cannot see your face, I shall not know you now, nor touch your feet, Only within me tremble to your grace, Tasting this crumb vouchsafed which is so sweet. Even when the full-leaved Summer bore no fruit You gave me this, this apple of man's tree; This planet sings when other spheres were mute, This light begins when darkness covered me. Now, though I know that I shall never know All, through my fault, nor blazon with my pen That path prepared where only I could go, Still, I have this, not given to other men: Beauty, this grace, this spring, this given bread, This life, this dawn, this wakening from the dead.
XXVIII.
YOU are more beautiful than women are, Wiser than men, stronger than ribbèd death, Juster than Time, more constant than the star, Dearer than love, more intimate than breath, Having all art, all science, all control Over the still unsmithied, even as Time Cradles the generations of man's soul. You are the light to guide, the way to climb. So, having followed beauty, having bowed To wisdom and to death, to law, to power, I like a blind man stumble from the crowd Into the darkness of a deeper hour, Where in the lonely silence I may wait The prayed-for gleam—your hand upon the gate.
XXIX.
BEAUTY retires; the blood out of the earth Shrinks, the stalk dries, lifeless November still Drops the brown husk of April's greenest birth. Through the thinned beech clump I can see the hill. So withers man, and though his life renews In Aprils of the soul, an autumn comes Which gives an end, not respite, to the thews That bore his soul through the world's martyrdoms. Then all the beauty will be out of mind, Part of man's store, that lies outside his brain, Touch to the dead and vision to the blind, Drink in the desert, bread, eternal grain, Part of the untilled field that beauty sows With flowers untold, where quickened spirit goes.
XXX.
NOT for the anguish suffered is the slur, Not for the woman's taunts, the mocks of men; No, but because you never welcomed her, Her of whose beauty I am only the pen.
There was a dog, dog-minded, with dog's eyes, Damned by a dog's brute-nature to be true. Something within her made his spirit wise; He licked her hand, he knew her; not so you.
When all adulterate beauty has gone by, When all inanimate matter has gone down, We will arise and walk, that dog and I, The only two who knew her in the town.
We'll range the pleasant mountain side by side, Seeking the blood-stained flowers where Christs have died.
XXXI.
BEAUTY was with me once, but now, grown old, I cannot hear nor see her: thus a King In the high turret kept him from the cold Over the fire, with his magic ring, Which, as he wrought, made pictures come and go Of men and times, past, present, and to be; Now like a smoke, now flame-like, now a glow, Now dead, now bright, but always fantasy, While, on the stair without, a faithful slave Stabbed to the death, crawled bleeding, whispering, "Sir, They come to kill you, fly: I come to save, O you great gods, for pity let him hear." Then, with his last strength tapped, and muttered, "Sire." While the King smiled and drowsed above the fire.
XXXII.
SO beauty comes, so with a failing hand She knocks, and cries, and fails to make me hear, She who tells futures in the falling sand, And still, by signs, makes hidden meanings clear; She, who behind this many peopled smoke, Moves in the light and struggles to direct, Through the deaf ear and by the baffled stroke, The wicked man, the honoured architect. Yet at a dawn before the birds begin, In dreams, as the horse stamps and the hound stirs, Sleep slips the bolt and beauty enters in Crying aloud those hurried words of hers, And I awake and, in the birded dawn, Know her for Queen, and own myself a pawn.
XXXIII.
YOU will remember me in days to come, With love, or pride, or pity, or contempt, So will my friends (not many friends, yet some), When this my life will be a dream out-dreamt; And one, remembering friendship by the fire, And one, remembering love time in the dark, And one, remembering unfulfilled desire, Will sigh, perhaps, yet be beside the mark; For this my body with its wandering ghost Is nothing solely but an empty grange, Dark in a night that owls inhabit most, Yet when the King rides by there comes a change; The windows gleam, the cresset's fiery hair Blasts the blown branch and beauty lodges there.
XXXIV.
IF Beauty be at all, if, beyond sense, There be a wisdom piercing into brains, Why should the glory wait on impotence, Biding its time till blood is in the veins?
There is no beauty, but, when thought is quick, Out of the noisy sickroom of ourselves Some flattery comes to try to cheat the sick, Some drowsy drug is groped for on the shelves.
There is no beauty, for we tread a scene Red to the eye with blood of living things; Thought is but joy from murder that has been, Life is but brute at war upon its kings.
There is no beauty, nor could beauty care For us, this dust, that men make everywhere.
XXXV.
O WRETCHED man, that, for a little mile, Crawls beneath heaven for his brother's blood, Whose days the planets number with their style, To whom all earth is slave, all living, food;
O withering man, within whose folded shell, Lies yet the seed, the spirit's quickening corn, That Time and Sun will change out of the cell Into green meadows, in the world unborn;
If Beauty be a dream, do but resolve And fire shall come, that in the stubborn clay Works to make perfect till the rocks dissolve, The barriers burst and beauty takes her way,
Beauty herself, within whose blossoming Spring Even wretched man shall clap his hands and sing.
XXXVI.
NIGHT is on the downland, on the lonely moorland, On the hills where the wind goes over sheep-bitten turf, Where the bent grass beats upon the unploughed poorland And the pine woods roar like the surf.
Here the Roman lived on the wind-barren lonely, Dark now and haunted by the moorland fowl; None comes here now but the peewit only, And moth-like death in the owl.
Beauty was here, on this beetle-droning downland; The thought of a Cæsar in the purple came From his palace by the Tiber in the Roman townland To this wind-swept hill with no name.
Lonely Beauty came here and was here in sadness, Brave as a thought on the frontier of the mind, ​In the camp of the wild upon the march of madness, The bright-eyed Queen of the blind.
Now where Beauty was are the wind-withered gorses Moaning like old men in the hill-wind's blast, The flying sky is dark with running horses And the night is full of the past.
XXXVII.
IF all be governed by the moving stars, If passing planets bring events to be, Searing the face of Time with bloody scars, Drawing men's souls even as the moon the sea, If as they pass they make a current pass Across man's life and heap it to a tide, We are but pawns, ignobler than the grass Cropped by the beast and crunched and tossed aside. Is all this beauty that doth inhabit heaven Train of a planet's fire? Is all this lust A chymic means by warring stars contriven To bring the violets out of Cæsar's dust? Better be grass, or in some hedge unknown The spilling rose whose beauty is its own.
XXXVIII.
IN emptiest furthest heaven where no stars are, Perhaps some planet of our master sun Still rolls an unguessed orbit round its star, Unthought, unseen, unknown of anyone. Roving dead space according to its law, Casting our light on burnt-out suns and blind, Singing in the frozen void its word of awe, One wandering thought in all that idiot mind. And, in some span of many a thousand year, Passing through heaven its influence may arouse Beauty unguessed in those who habit here, And men may rise with glory on their brows And feel new life like fire, and see the old Fall from them dead, the bronze's broken mould.
XXXIX.
PERHAPS in chasms of the wasted past, That planet wandered within hail of ours, And plucked men's souls to loveliness and cast The old, that was, away, like husks of flowers; And made them stand erect and bade them build Nobler than hovels plaited in the mire, Gave them an altar and a God to gild, Bridled the brooks for them and fettered fire; And, in another coming, forged the steel Which, on life's scarlet wax, for ever set Longing for beauty bitten as a seal That blood not clogs nor centuries forget, That built Atlantis, and, in time, will raise That grander thing whose image haunts our days.
XL.
FOR, like an outcast from the city, I Wander the desert strewn with travellers' bones, Having no comrade but the starry sky Where the tuned planets ride their floating thrones. I pass old ruins where the kings caroused In cups long shards from vines long since decayed, I tread the broken brick where queens were housed In beauty's time ere beauty was betrayed, And in the ceaseless pitting of the sand On monolith and pyle, I see the dawn Making those skeletons of beauty grand By fire that comes as darkness is withdrawn, And, in that fire, the art of men to come Shines with such glow I bless my martyrdom.
XLI.
DEATH lies in wait for you, you wild thing in the wood, Shy-footed beauty dear, half-seen, half-understood, Glimpsed in the beech-wood dim and in the dropping fir, Shy like a fawn and sweet and beauty's minister. Glimpsed as in flying clouds by night the little moon, A wonder, a delight, a paleness passing soon.
Only a moment held, only an hour seen, Only an instant known in all that life has been, One instant in the sand to drink that gush of grace, The beauty of your way, the marvel of your face.
Death lies in wait for you, but few short hours he gives; I perish even as you by whom all spirit lives. Come to me, spirit, come, and fill my hour of breath With hours of life in life that pay no toll to death.
XLII.
THEY called that broken hedge The Haunted Gate. Strange fires (they said) burnt there at moonless times. Evil was there, men never went there late, The darkness there was quick with threatened crimes. And then one digging in that bloodied clay Found, but a foot below, a rotted chest. Coins of the Romans, tray on rusted tray, Hurriedly heaped there by a digger prest. So that one knew how, centuries before, Some Roman flying from the sack by night, Digging in terror there to hide his store, Sweating his pick, by windy lantern light, Had stamped his anguish on that place's soul, So that it knew and could rehearse the whole.
XLIII.
THERE was an evil in the nodding wood Above the quarry long since overgrown, Something which stamped it as a place of blood Where tortured spirit cried from murdered bone. Then, after years, I saw a rusty knife Stuck in a woman's skull, just as 'twas found, Blackt with a centuried crust of clotted life, In the red clay of that unholy ground. So that I knew the unhappy thing had spoken, That tongueless thing for whom the quarry spoke, The evil seals of murder had been broken By the red earth, the grass, the rooted oak. The inarticulate dead had forced the spade, The hand, the mind, till murder was displayed.
XLIV.
GO, spend your penny, Beauty, when you will, In the grave's darkness let the stamp be lost. The water still will bubble from the hill, And April quick the meadows with her ghost; Over the grass the daffodils will shiver, The primroses with their pale beauty abound, The blackbird be a lover and make quiver With his glad singing the great soul of the ground; So that if the body rot, it will not matter; Up in the earth the great game will go on, The coming of spring and the running of the water, And the young things glad of the womb's darkness gone. And the joy we felt will be a part of the glory In the lover's kiss that makes the old couple's story.
XLV.
THOUGH in life's streets the tempting shops have lured Because all beauty, howsoever base, Is vision of you, marred, I have endured, Tempted or fall'n, to look upon your face. Now through the grinning death's-head in the paint, Within the tavern-song, hid in the wine, In many-kinded man, emperor and saint, I see you pass, you breath of the divine. I see you pass, as centuries ago The long dead men with passionate spirit saw. O brother man, whom spirit habits so, Through your red sorrows Beauty keeps her law, Beauty herself, who takes your dying hand, To leave through Time the Memnon in the sand.
XLVI.
WHEN all these million cells that are my slaves Fall from my pourried ribs and leave me lone, A living speck among a world of graves, What shall I be, that spot in the unknown? A glow-worm in a night that floats the sun? Or deathless dust feeling the passer's foot? An eye undying mourning things undone? Or seed for quickening free from prisoning fruit? Or an eternal jewel on your robe, Caught to your heart, one with the April fire That made me yours as man upon the globe, One with the spring, a breath in all desire, One with the primrose, present in all joy? Or pash that rots, which pismires can destroy?
XLVII.
LET that which is to come be as it may, Darkness, extinction, justice, life intense, The flies are happy in the summer day, Flies will be happy many summers hence. Time with his antique breeds that built the Sphinx, Time with her men to come whose wings will tower, Poured and will pour, not as the wise man thinks, But with blind force, to each his little hour. And when the hour has struck, comes death or change, Which, whether good or ill we cannot tell, But the blind planet will wander through her range Bearing men like us who will serve as well. The sun will rise, the winds that ever move Will blow our dust that once were men in love.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1967, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 56 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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