Poems of To-Day: an Anthology Part 22

100. THE LARK ASCENDING

He rises and begins to round, He drops the silver chain of sound, Of many links without a break, In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake, All intervolved and spreading wide, Like water-dimples down a tide Where ripple ripple overcurls And eddy into eddy whirls; A press of hurried notes that run So fleet they scarce are more than one, Yet changeingly the trills repeat And linger ringing while they fleet, Sweet to the quick o' the ear, and dear To her beyond the handmaid ear, Who sits beside our inner springs, Too often dry for this he brings, Which seems the very jet of earth At sight of sun, her music's mirth, As up he wings the spiral stair, A song of light, and pierces air With fountain ardour, fountain play, To reach the shining tops of day, And drink in everything discerned An ecstasy to music turned, Impelled by what his happy bill Disperses; drinking, showering still, Unthinking save that he may give His voice the outlet, there to live Renewed in endless notes of glee, So thirsty of his voice is he,

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For all to hear and all to know That he is joy, awake, aglow, The tumult of the heart to hear Through pureness filtered crystal-clear, And know the pleasure sprinkled bright By simple singing of delight, Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained, Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained Without a break, without a fall, Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical, Perennial, quavering up the chord Like myriad dews of sunny sward That trembling into fulness shine, And sparkle dropping argentine; Such wooing as the ear receives From zephyr caught in choric leaves Of aspens when their chattering net Is flushed to white with shivers wet; And such the water-spirit's chime On mountain heights in morning's prime, Too freshly sweet to seem excess, Too animate to need a stress; But wider over many heads The starry voice ascending spreads, Awakening, as it waxes thin, The best in us to him akin; And every face, to watch him raised, Puts on the light of children praised, So rich our human pleasure ripes When sweetness on sincereness pipes, Though nought be promised from the seas,

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But only a soft-ruffling breeze Sweep glittering on a still content, Serenity in ravishment.

For singing till his heaven fills, 'Tis love of earth that he instils, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup, And he the wine which overflows To lift us with him as he goes: The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine, He is, the hills, the human line, The meadows green, the fallows brown, The dreams of labour in the town; He sings the sap, the quickened veins; The wedding song of sun and rains He is, the dance of children, thanks Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks, And eye of violets while they breathe; All these the circling song will wreathe, And you shall hear the herb and tree, The better heart of men shall see, Shall feel celestially, as long As you crave nothing save the song.

Was never voice of ours could say Our inmost in the sweetest way, Like yonder voice aloft, and link All hearers in the song they drink.

Our wisdom speaks from failing blood, Our pa.s.sion is too full in flood,

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We want the key of his wild note Of truthful in a tuneful throat, The song seraphically free Of taint of personality, So pure that it salutes the suns The voice of one for millions, In whom the millions rejoice For giving their one spirit voice.

Yet men have we, whom we revere, Now names, and men still housing here, Whose lives, by many a battle-dint Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint, Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet For song our highest heaven to greet: Whom heavenly singing gives us new, Enspheres them brilliant in our blue, From firmest base to farthest leap, Because their love of Earth is deep, And they are warriors in accord With life to serve, and pa.s.s reward, So touching purest and so heard In the brain's reflex of yon bird: Wherefore their soul in me or mine, Through self-forgetfulness divine, In them, that song aloft maintains To fill the sky and thrill the plains With showerings drawn from human stores, As he to silence nearer soars, Extends the world at wings and dome, More s.p.a.cious making more our home,

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Till lost on aerial rings In light, and then the fancy sings.

_George Meredith._

101. INTO THE TWILIGHT

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the gray twilight; Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is always young, Dew ever shining and twilight gray; Though hope fall from you and love decay Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill; For there the mystical brotherhood Of sun and moon and hollow and wood And river and stream work out their will;

And G.o.d stands winding His lonely horn; And time and the world are ever in flight, And love is less kind than the gray twilight, And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

_W. B. Yeats._

102. BY A BIER-SIDE

This is a sacred city built of marvellous earth.

Life was lived n.o.bly here to give such beauty birth.

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Beauty was in this brain and in this eager hand: Death is so blind and dumb Death does not understand.

Death drifts the brain with dust and soils the young limbs' glory, Death makes justice a dream, and strength a traveller's story.

Death drives the lovely soul to wander under the sky.

Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die.

_John Masefield._

103. 'TIS BUT A WEEK

'Tis but a week since down the glen The trampling horses came --Half a hundred fighting men With all their spears aflame!

They laughed and clattered as they went, And round about their way The blackbirds sang with one consent In the green leaves of May.

Never again shall I see them pa.s.s; They'll come victorious never; Their spears are withered all as gra.s.s, Their laughter's laid for ever; And where they clattered as they went, And where their hearts were gay, The blackbirds sing with one consent In the green leaves of May.

_Gerald Gould._

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104. I LOVE ALL BEAUTEOUS THINGS

I love all beauteous things, I seek and adore them; G.o.d hath no better praise, And man in his hasty days Is honoured for them.

I too will something make And joy in the making; Altho' to-morrow it seem Like the empty words of a dream Remembered on waking.

_Robert Bridges._

105. ALL FLESH

I do not need the skies'

Pomp, when I would be wise; For pleasaunce nor to use Heaven's champaign when I muse.

One gra.s.s-blade in its veins Wisdom's whole flood contains; Thereon my foundering mind Odyssean fate can find.

O little blade, now vaunt Thee, and be arrogant!

Tell the proud sun that he Sweated in shaping thee; Night, that she did unvest Her mooned and argent breast To suckle thee. Heaven fain

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Yearned over thee in rain, And with wide parent wing Shadowed thee, nested thing, Fed thee, and slaved for thy Impotent tyranny.

Nature's broad thews bent Meek for thy content.

Mastering littleness Which the wise heavens confess, The frailty which doth draw Magnipotence to its law-- These were, O happy one, these Thy laughing puissances!