Poems by Sir John Collings Squire Volume I Part 4

THE OTHER

This Voice you hear, this call you fear, is it unprophesied or new?

Were you so insolent to think its rope would never circle you?

Did you then beastlike live and walk with ears and eyes that would not turn?

Who bade you hope your service 'scape in that eternal retinue?

THE ONE

No; for I swear now bare's the tree and loud the moaning of the wind, I walked no rut with eyelids shut, my ears and eyes were never blind, Only my eager thoughts I bent on many things that I desired To make my greedy heart content ere flesh and blood I left behind.

THE OTHER

Ignorance, then, was all your fault and filmed eyes that could not know, That half discerned and never learned the temporal way that men must go; You set the image of the world high for your heart's idolatry, Though with your lips you called the world a toy, a ghost, a pa.s.sing show.

THE ONE

No, no; this is not true; my lips spoke only what my heart believed.

Called I the world a toy; I spoke not echo-like or self-deceived.

But that I thought the toy was mine to play with, and the pa.s.sing show Would sate at least my pa.s.sing l.u.s.ts, and did not, therefore am I grieved.

What did I do that I must bear this lifelong tyranny of my fate, That I must writhe in bonds unsought of accidental love and hate?

Had chance but joined different dice, but once or twice, but once or twice, All lovely things that I desired I should have held before too late.

Surely I knew that flesh was gra.s.s nor valued overmuch the prize, But all the powers of chance conspired to cheat a man both just and wise.

Happy I'd been had I but had my due reward, and not a sword Flaming in diabolic hand between me and my Paradise.

THE OTHER

No hooded band of fates did stand your heart's ambitions to gainsay, No flaming brand in evil hand was ever thrust across your way, Only the things all men must meet, the common attributes of men, That men may flinch to see or, seeing, deny, but avoid them no man may.

Fall the dice, not once or twice but always, to make the self-same sum; Chance what may, a life's a life and to a single goal must come; Though a man search far and wide, never is hunger satisfied; Nature brings her natural fetters, man is meshed and the wise are dumb.

O vain all art to a.s.suage a heart with accents of a mortal tongue, All earthly words are incomplete and only sweet are the songs unsung, Never yet was cause for regret, yet regret must afflict us all, Better it were to grasp the world 'thwart which this world is a curtain flung.

STARLIGHT

Last night I lay in an open field And looked at the stars with lips sealed; No noise moved the windless air, And I looked at the stars with steady stare.

There were some that glittered and some that shone With a soft and equal glow, and one That queened it over the sprinkled round, Swaying the host with silent sound.

"Calm things," I thought, "in your cavern blue, I will learn and hold and master you; I will yoke and scorn you as I can, For the pride of my heart is the pride of a man."

Gra.s.s to my cheek in the dewy field, I lay quite still with lips sealed, And the pride of a man and his rigid gaze Stalked like swords on heaven's ways.

But through a sudden gate there stole The Universe and spread in my soul; Quick went my breath and quick my heart, And I looked at the stars with lips apart.

SONG

There is a wood where the fairies dance All night long in a ring of mushrooms daintily, By each tree bole sits a squirrel or a mole, And the moon through the branches darts.

Light on the gra.s.s their slim limbs glance, Their shadows in the moonlight swing in quiet unison, And the moon discovers that they all have lovers, But they never break their hearts.

They never grieve at all for sands that run, They never know regret for a deed that's done, And they never think of going to a shed with a gun At the rising of the sun.

CREPUSCULAR

No creature stirs in the wide fields.

The rifted western heaven yields The dying sun's illumination.

This is the hour of tribulation When, with clear sight of eve engendered, Day's homage to delusion rendered, Mute at her window sits the soul.

Clouds and skies and lakes and seas, Valleys and hills and gra.s.s and trees, Sun, moon, and stars, all stand to her Limbs of one lordless challenger, Who, without deigning taunt or frown.

Throws a perennial gauntlet down: "Come conquer me and take thy toll."

No cowardice or fear she knows, But, as once more she girds, there grows An unresigned hopelessness From memory of former stress.

Head bent, she muses whilst he waits: How with such weapons dint his plates?

How quell this vast and sleepless giant Calmly, immortally defiant, How fell him, bind him, and control With a silver cord and a golden bowl?

FOR MUSIC

Death in the cold grey morning Came to the man where he lay; And the wind shivered, and the tree shuddered And the dawn was grey.

And the face of the man was grey in the dawn, And the watchers by the bed Knew, as they heard the shaking of the leaves, That the man was dead.

THE FUGITIVE

Flying his hair and his eyes averse, Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.

How could our song his charms rehea.r.s.e?

Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.

High on a down we found him last, Shy as a hare, he fled as fast; How could we clasp him or ever he pa.s.sed?