Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. | Page 4

snow,
This
northern sky;
Soldiers, this solitude
Through which we go
Is I."
ENGLAND
No lovelier hills than thine have laid
My tired thoughts to rest:
No
peace of lovelier valleys made
Like peace within my breast.
Thine are the woods whereto my soul,
Out of the noontide beam,

Flees for a refuge green and cool
And tranquil as a dream.
Thy breaking seas like trumpets peal;
Thy clouds--how oft have I

Watched their bright towers of silence steal
Into infinity!
My heart within me faults to roam
In thought even far from thee:

Thine be the grave whereto I come,
And thine my darkness be.
TRUCE
Far inland here Death's pinions mocked the roar
Of English seas;
We sleep to wake no more,
Hushed, and at ease;
Till sound a trump, shore on to echoing shore,

Rouse from a peace, unwonted then to war,
Us and our enemies.
EVENING
When twilight darkens, and one by one,
The sweet birds to their nests
have gone;
When to green banks the glow-worms bring
Pale lamps
to brighten evening;
Then stirs in his thick sleep the owl
Through
the dewy air to prowl.

Hawking the meadows swiftly he flits,
While the small mouse
atrembling sits
With tiny eye of fear upcast
Until his brooding
shape be past,
Hiding her where the moonbeams beat,
Casting black
shadows in the wheat.
Now all is still: the field-man is
Lapped deep in slumbering silentness.

Not a leaf stirs, but clouds on high
Pass in dim flocks across the
sky,
Puffed by a breeze too light to move
Aught but these wakeful
sheep above.
O what an arch of light now spans
These fields by night no longer
Man's!
Their ancient Master is abroad,
Walking beneath the
moonlight cold:
His presence is the stillness, He
Fills earth with
wonder and mystery.
NIGHT
All from the light of the sweet moon
Tired men lie now abed;
Actionless, full of visions, soon
Vanishing, soon sped.
The starry night aflock with beams
Of crystal light scarce stirs:
Only its birds--the cocks, the streams,
Call 'neath heaven's wanderers.
All silent; all hearts still;
Love, cunning, fire fallen low:
When faint morn straying on the hill
Sighs, and his soft airs flow.
THE UNIVERSE

I heard a little child beneath the stars
Talk as he ran along
To some sweet riddle in his mind that seemed
A-tiptoe into song.
In his dark eyes lay a wild universe,--
Wild forests, peaks, and crests;
Angels and fairies, giants, wolves and
he
Were that world's only guests.
Elsewhere was home and mother, his warm bed:--
Now, only God alone
Could, armed with all His power and wisdom,
make
Earths richer than his own.
O Man!--thy dreams, thy passions, hopes, desires!--
He in his pity keep
A homely bed where love may lull a child's
Fond Universe asleep!
GLORIA MUNDI
Upon a bank, easeless with knobs of gold,
Beneath a canopy of
noonday smoke,
I saw a measureless Beast, morose and bold,
With
eyes like one from filthy dreams awoke,
Who stares upon the
daylight in despair
For very terror of the nothing there.
This beast in one flat hand clutched vulture-wise
A glittering image
of itself in jet,
And with the other groped about its eyes
To drive
away the dreams that pestered it;
And never ceased its coils to toss
and beat
The mire encumbering its feeble feet.

Sharp was its hunger, though continually
It seemed a cud of stones to
ruminate,
And often like a dog let glittering lie
This meatless fare,
its foolish gaze to sate;
Once more convulsively to stoop its jaw,
Or
seize the morsel with an envious paw.
Indeed, it seemed a hidden enemy
Must lurk within the clouds above
that bank,
It strained so wildly its pale, stubborn eye,
To pierce its
own foul vapours dim and dank;
Till, wearied out, it raved in wrath
and foam,
Daring that Nought Invisible to come.
Ay, and it seemed some strange delight to find
In this unmeaning din,
till, suddenly,
As if it heard a rumour on the wind,
Or far away its
freer children cry,
Lifting its face made-quiet, there it stayed,
Till
died the echo its own rage had made.
That place alone was barren where it lay;
Flowers bloomed beyond,
utterly sweet and fair;
And even its own dull heart might think to stay

In livelong thirst of a clear river there,
Flowing from unseen hills
to unheard seas,
Through a still vale of yew and almond trees.
And then I spied in the lush green below
Its tortured belly, One, like
silver, pale,
With fingers closed upon a rope of straw,
That bound
the Beast, squat neck to hoary tail;
Lonely in all that verdure faint and
deep,
He watched the monster as a shepherd sheep.
I marvelled at the power, strength, and rage
Of this poor creature in
such slavery bound;
Tettered with worms of fear; forlorn with age;

Its blue wing-stumps stretched helpless on the ground;
While twilight
faded into darkness deep,
And he who watched it piped its pangs
asleep.
IDLENESS
I saw old Idleness, fat, with great cheeks
Puffed to the huge
circumference of a sigh,
But past all tinge of apples long ago.
His

boyish fingers twiddled up and down
The filthy remnant of a cup of
physic
That thicked in odour all the