Poems, 1916-1918 Part 5

O thou who comest to our wintry shade Gay and light-footed as the virgin Spring, Before whose shining feet the cherries fling Their moony tribute, when the sloe is sprayed With light, and all things musical are made: O thou who art Spring's daughter, who can bring Blossom, or song of bird, or anything To match the youth in which you stand arrayed?

Not that rich garland Meleager twined In his sun-guarded glade above the blue That flashes from the burning Tyrian seas: No, you are cooler, sweeter than the wind That wakes our woodlands; so I bring to you These wind-blown blossoms of anemones.

HER VARIETY

Soft as a pale moth flitting in moonshine I saw thee flutter to the shadowy call That beckons from the strings of Carneval, O frail and fragrant image of Columbine: So, when the spectre of the rose was thine, A flower wert thou, and last I saw thee fall In Cleopatra's stormy baccha.n.a.l Flown with the red insurgence of the vine.

O moth, O flower, O maenad, which art thou?

Shadowy, beautiful, or leaping wild As stormlight over savage Tartar skies?

Such were my ancient questionings; but now I know that you are nothing but a child With a red flower's mouth and hazel eyes.

HER SWIFTNESS

You are too swift for poetry, too fleet For any mused numbers to ensnare: Swifter than music dying on the air Or bloom upon rose-petals, fades the sweet Vanishing magic of your flying feet, Your poised finger, and your shining hair: Words cannot tell how wonderful you were, Or how one gesture made a joy complete.

And since you know my pen may never capture The transient swift loveliness of you, Come, let us salve our sense of the world's loss Remembering, with a melancholy rapture, How many dancing-girls ... and poets too...

Dream in the dust of Hecatompylos.

GHOSTLY LOVES

'Oh why,' my darling prayeth me, 'must you sing For ever of ghostly loves, phantasmal pa.s.sion?

Seeing that you never loved me after that fashion And the love I gave was not a phantom thing, But delight of eager lips and strong arms folding The beauty of yielding arms and of smooth shoulder, All fluent grace of which you were the moulder: And I.... Oh, I was happy for your holding.'

'Ah, do you not know, my dearest, have you not seen The shadow that broodeth over things that perish: How age may mock sweet moments that have been And death defile the beauty that we cherish?

Wherefore, sweet spirit, I thank thee for thy giving: 'Tis my spirit that embraceth thee dead or living.'

FEBRUARY

The robin on my lawn, He was the first to tell How, in the frozen dawn, This miracle befell, Waking the meadows white With h.o.a.r, the iron road Agleam with splintered light, And ice where water flowed: Till, when the low sun drank Those milky mists that cloak Hanger and hollied bank, The winter world awoke To hear the feeble bleat Of lambs on downland farms: A blackbird whistled sweet; Old beeches moved their arms Into a mellow haze Aerial, newly-born: And I, alone, agaze, Stood waiting for the thorn To break in blossom white Or burst in a green flame...

So, in a single night, Fair February came, Bidding my lips to sing Or whisper their surprise, With all the joy of spring And morning in her eyes.

SONG OF THE DARK AGES

We digged our trenches on the down Beside old barrows, and the wet White chalk we shovelled from below; It lay like drifts of thawing snow On parados and parapet:

Until a pick neither struck flint Nor split the yielding chalky soil, But only calcined human bone: Poor relic of that Age of Stone Whose ossuary was our spoil.

Home we marched singing in the rain, And all the while, beneath our song, I mused how many springs should wane And still our trenches scar the plain: The monument of an old wrong.

But then, I thought, the fair green sod Will wholly cover that white stain, And soften, as it clothes the face Of those old barrows, every trace Of violence to the patient plain.

And careless people, pa.s.sing by, Will speak of both in casual tone: Saying: 'You see the toil they made: The age of iron, pick, and spade, Here jostles with the Age of Stone.'

Yet either from that happier race Will merit but a pa.s.sing glance; And they will leave us both alone: Poor savages who wrought in stone-- Poor savages who fought in France.

WINTER SUNSET

Athwart the blackening bars of pines benighted, The sun, descending to the zones of denser Cloud that o'erhung the long horizon, lighted Upon the crown of earth a flaming censer From which white clouds of incense, overflowing, Filled the chill clarity from whence the swallows Had lately fled with wreathed vapours, showing Like a fine bloom over the lonely fallows: Where, with the pungent breath of mist was blended A faint aroma of pine-needles sodden By autumn rains, and fainter still, ascended Beneath high woods the scent of leaves downtrodden.

It was a moment when the earth, that sickened For Spring, as lover when the beloved lingers, Lay breathless, while the distant G.o.ddess quickened Some southern hill-side with her glowing fingers: And so, it seemed, the drowsy lands were shaken, Stirred in their sleep, and sighed, as though the pain Of a strange dream had bidden them awaken To frozen days and bitter nights again.

SONG

Why have you stolen my delight In all the golden shows of Spring When every cherry-tree is white And in the limes the thrushes sing,

O fickler than the April day, O brighter than the golden broom, O blyther than the thrushes' lay, O whiter than the cherry-bloom,

O sweeter than all things that blow ...

Why have you only left for me The broom, the cherry's crown of snow, And thrushes in the linden-tree?

ENGLAND--APRIL, 1918

Last night the North flew at the throat of Spring With spite to tear her greening banners down, Tossing the elm-tree's tender ta.s.sels brown, The virgin blossom of sloe burdening With colder snow; beneath his frosty sting Patient, the newly-wakened woods were bowed By drowned fields where stormy waters flowed: Yet, on the thorn, I heard a blackbird sing....

'Too late, too late,' he sang, 'this wintry spite; For molten snow will feed the springing gra.s.s: The tide of life, it floweth with the year.'

O England, England, thou that standest upright Against the tide of death, the bad days pa.s.s: Know, by this miracle, that summer is near.

SLENDER THEMES

When, by a happier race, these leaves are turned, They'll wonder that such quiet themes engaged A soldier's mind when noisy wars were waged, And half the world in one red bonfire burned.