Forty-Two Poems | Page 3

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FORTY-TWO POEMS
Contents
To a Poet a thousand years hence?Riouperoux?The Town without a Market?The Balled of Camden Town?Mignon?Felo de se?Tenebris Interlucentem?Invitation to a young but learned friend . . .?Balled of the Londoner?The First Sonnet of Bathrolaire?The Second Sonnet of Bathrolaire?The Masque of the Magi?The Balled of Hampstead Heath?Litany to Satan?The Translator and the Children?Opportunity?Destroyer of Ships, Men, Cities?War Song of the Saracens?Joseph and Mary?No Coward's Song?A Western Voyage?Fountains?The Welsh Sea?Oxford Canal?Hialmar speaks to the Raven?The Ballad of the Student in the South?The Queen's song?Lord Arnaldos?We that were friends?My Friend?Ideal?Mary Magdalen?I rose from dreamless hours?Prayer?A Miracle of Bethlehem?Gravis Dulcis Immutabilis?Pillage?The Ballad of Zacho?Pavlovna in London?The Sentimentalist?Don Juan in Hell?The Ballad of Iskander
TO A POET?A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE
I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,?Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.
I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,?Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.
But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,?And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?
How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,?And old Moeonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago.
O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,?Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.
Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,?I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.
RIOUPEROUX
High and solemn mountains guard Riouperoux,?- Small untidy village where the river drives a mill:?Frail as wood anemones, white and frail were you,?And drooping a little, like the slender daffodil.
Oh I will go to France again, and tramp the valley through, And I will change these gentle clothes for clog and corduroy, And work with the mill-hands of black Riouperoux,?And walk with you, and talk with you, like any other boy.
THE TOWN WITHOUT A MARKET
There lies afar behind a western hill?The Town without a Market, white and still;?For six feet long and not a third as high?Are those small habitations. There stood I,?Waiting to hear the citizens beneath?Murmur and sigh and speak through tongueless teeth.?When all the world lay burning in the sun?I heard their voices speak to me. Said one:?"Bright lights I loved and colours, I who find?That death is darkness, and has struck me blind."?Another cried: "I used to sing and play,?But here the world is silent, day by day."?And one: "On earth I could not see or hear,?But with my fingers touched what I was near,?And knew things round and soft, and brass from gold,?And dipped my hand in water, to feel cold,?And thought the grave would cure me, and was glad?When the time came to lose what joy I had."?Soon all the voices of a hundred dead?Shouted in wrath together. Someone said,?"I care not, but the girl was sweet to kiss?At evening in the meadows." "Hard it is"?Another cried, "to hear no hunting horn.?Ah me! the horse, the hounds, and the great grey morn?When I rode out a-hunting." And one sighed,?"I did not see my son before I died."?A boy said, "I was strong and swift to run:?Now they have tied my feet: what have I done?"?A man, "But it was good to arm and fight?And storm their