The Ballad of St. Barbara Part 4

For men grow weary of fairyland When the Dragon is a dream, And tire of the talking bird in the tree, The singing fish in the stream; And the wandering stars grow stale, grow stale, And the wonder is stiff with scorn; For this is the honour of fairyland And the following of the horn;

Beauty on beauty called us back When we could rise and ride, And a woman looked out of every window As wonderful as a bride: And the tavern-sign as a tabard blazed, And the children cheered and ran, For the love of the hate of the Dragon That is the pride of a man.

The sages called him a shadow And the light went out of the sun: And the wise men told us that all was well And all was weary and one: And then, and then, in the quiet garden, With never a weed to kill, We knew that his shining tail had shone In the white road over the hill: We knew that the clouds were flakes of flame, We knew that the sunset fire Was red with the blood of the Dragon Whose death is the world's desire.

For the horn was blown in the heart of the night That men should rise and ride, Keeping the tryst of a terrible jest Never for long untried; Drinking a dreadful blood for wine, Never in cup or can, The death of a deathless Dragon, That is the life of a man.

SONNET

High on the wall that holds Jerusalem I saw one stand under the stars like stone.

And when I perish it shall not be known Whether he lived, some strolling son of Shem, Or was some great ghost wearing the diadem Of Solomon or Saladin on a throne: I only know, the features being unshown, I did not dare draw near and look on them.

Did ye not guess ... the diadem might be Plaited in stranger style by hands of hate ...

But when I looked, the wall was desolate And the grey starlight powdered tower and tree: And vast and vague beyond the Golden Gate Heaved Moab of the mountains like a sea.

FANTASIA

The happy men that lose their heads They find their heads in heaven, As cherub heads with cherub wings, And cherub haloes even: Out of the infinite evening lands Along the sunset sea, Leaving the purple fields behind, The cherub wings beat down the wind Back to the groping body and blind As the bird back to the tree.

Whether the plumes be pa.s.sion-red For him that truly dies By headsmen's blade or battle-axe, Or blue like b.u.t.terflies, For him that lost it in a lane In April's fits and starts, His folly is forgiven then: But higher, and far beyond our ken, Is the healing of the unhappy men, The men that lost their hearts.

Is there not pardon for the brave And broad release above, Who lost their heads for liberty Or lost their hearts for love?

Or is the wise man wise indeed Whom larger thoughts keep whole?

Who sees life equal like a chart, Made strong to play the saner part, And keep his head and keep his heart, And only lose his soul.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

_(The Chief Constable has issued a statement declaring that carol singing in the streets by children is illegal, and morally and physically injurious. He appeals to the public to discourage the practice.-Daily Paper.)_

G.o.d rest you merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay; The Herald Angels cannot sing, The cops arrest them on the wing, And warn them of the docketing Of anything they say.

G.o.d rest you merry gentlemen, May nothing you dismay: On your reposeful cities lie Deep silence, broken only by The motor horn's melodious cry, The hooter's happy bray.

So, when the song of children ceased And Herod was obeyed, In his high hall Corinthian With purple and with peac.o.c.k fan, Rested that merry gentleman; And nothing him dismayed.

TO CAPTAIN FRYATT

Trampled yet red is the last of the embers, Red the last cloud of a sun that has set; What of your sleeping though Flanders remembers, What of your waking, if England forget?

Why should you share in the hearts that we harden, In the shame of our nature, who see it and live?

How more than the G.o.dly the greedy can pardon, How well and how quickly the hungry forgive.

Ah, well if the soil of the stranger had wrapped you, While the lords that you served and the friends that you knew Hawk in the marts of the tyrants that trapped you, Tout in the shops of the butchers that slew.

Why should you wake for a realm that is rotten, Stuffed with their bribes and as dead to their debts?

Sleep and forget us, as we have forgotten; For Flanders remembers and England forgets.

FOR FOUR GUILDS

FOR FOUR GUILDS:

I. THE GLa.s.s-STAINERS

To every Man his Mystery, A trade and only one: The masons make the hives of men, The domes of grey or dun, But we have wrought in rose and gold The houses of the sun.

The shipwrights build the houses high, Whose green foundations sway Alive with fish like little flames, When the wind goes out to slay.

But we abide with painted sails The cyclone of the day.

The weavers make the clothes of men And coats for everyone; They walk the streets like sunset clouds; But we have woven and spun In scarlet or in golden-green The gay coats of the sun.

You whom the usurers and the lords With insolent liveries trod, Deep in dark church behold, above Their lance-lengths by a rod, Where we have blazed the tabard Of the trumpeter of G.o.d.

FOR FOUR GUILDS:

II. THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS

In the world's whitest morning As h.o.a.ry with hope, The Builder of Bridges Was priest and was pope: And the mitre of mystery And the canopy his, Who darkened the chasms And domed the abyss.

To eastward and westward Spread wings at his word The arch with the key-stone That stoops like a bird; That rides the wild air And the daylight cast under; The highway of danger, The gateway of wonder.

Of his throne were the thunders That rivet and fix Wild weddings of strangers That meet and not mix; The town and the cornland; The bride and the groom: In the breaking of bridges Is treason and doom.

But he bade us, who fashion The road that can fly, That we build not too heavy And build not too high: Seeing alway that under The dark arch's bend Shine death and white daylight Unchanged to the end.

Who walk on his mercy Walk light, as he saith, Seeing that our life Is a bridge above death; And the world and its gardens And hills, as ye heard, Are born above s.p.a.ce On the wings of a bird.

Not high and not heavy Is building of his: When ye seal up the flood And forget the abyss, When your towers are uplifted, Your banners unfurled, In the breaking of bridges Is the end of the world.