Miscellany of Poetry

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Title: Miscellany of Poetry
1919
Author: Various
Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9652]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on October 13, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
? START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISCELLANY OF POETRY ***
Produced by Clytie Siddall, Keren Vergon?and the online Distributed Proofreading Team!
A MISCELLANY OF POETRY
1919
Edited by W. Kean Seymour.
With decorations by Doris Palmer, Cecil Palmer and Hayward.
To
SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH
1919
PREFATORY NOTE
This 'Miscellany of Poetry, 1919', is issued to the public as a truly catholic anthology of contemporary poetry. The poems here printed are new, in the sense that they have not previously been issued by their authors in book form--a fact which surely gives the Miscellany an unique place among modern collections. My deep thanks are due to my fellow-contributors for their generous and hearty co-operation, and to the editors of the 'English Review', 'To-day', 'Voices', 'New Witness', 'Observer', 'Saturday Westminster', 'Art and Letters', 'Cambridge Magazine' and the 'Nation' for permission to reprint certain poems.
W. K. S.
'September, 1919'
CONTENTS
BINYON, LAURENCE
Song?Commercial?Numbers?The Children Dancing
BRANFORD, F. V.
Farewell to Mathematics?Return?Over the Dead
CHESTERTON, GILBERT KEITH
Elegy in a Country Churchyard?The Ballad of St. Barbara
CHURCH, RICHARD?Psyche goes forth to Life
DAVIES, WILLIAM H.
The Villain?Bird and Brook?Passion's Hounds?The Truth?The Force of Love?April's Lambs
DEARMER, GEOFFREY
Nous Autres?She to Him
DRINKWATER, JOHN
Malediction?Spectral
GIBSON, WILFRED WILSON
IN WAR-TIME
1. Troopship
2. The Conscript
3. Air-Raid
4. In War-Time
5. Ragtime
6. Leave
7. Bacchanal
GOLDING, Louis
Shepherd Singing Ragtime?The Singer of High State
GOULD, GERALD
Freedoms (Eight Sonnets)
HOUSMAN, LAURENCE
Summer Night
LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD
The Palaces of The Rose
MACAULAY, ROSE
Peace, June 28th, 1919
MASON, EUGENE
Antony and Cleopatra
MAYNARD, THEODORE
Dirge?Desideravi?Laus Deo!
MOORE, T. STURGE
Aforetime
MOULT, THOMAS
Down here the Hawthorn?Invocation
NICHOLS, ROBERT
On Seeing a Portrait of Blake
PHILLPOTTS, EDEN
The Fall?Ghosties at the Wedding
SABIN, ARTHUR K.
Four Lyrics
SACKVILLE, LADY MARGARET
The Return?To--
SEYMOUR, WILLIAM KEAN
Fruitage?In the Wood?Siesta?To One who Eats Larks?If Beauty Came to You
SHIPP, HORACE
Prison?The Sixth Day
SITWELL, EDITH
Eventail?The Lady with the Sewing Machine?Portrait of a Barmaid?Solo for Ear-Trumpet
STUART, MURIEL
The Father?The Shore?Thélus Wood?The Thief of Beauty
TITTERTON, W. R.
The High Wall?The Broken Sword?Night-Shapes?The Silent People
VISIAK, E. H.
Lamps and Lanterns?Stranded
WAUGH, ALEC.
Rubble
WILLIAMS, CHARLES
Christmas?Briseis

LAURENCE BINYON
A SONG
For Mercy, Courage, Kindness, Mirth,?There is no measure upon earth.?Nay, they wither, root and stem,?If an end be set to them.
Overbrim and overflow,?If your own heart you would know;?For the spirit born to bless?Lives but in its own excess.
COMMERCIAL
Gross, with protruding ears,?Sleek hair, brisk glance, fleshy and yet alert,?Red, full, and satisfied,?Cased in obtuseness confident not to be hurt,
He sits at a little table?In the crowded congenial glare and noise, jingling?Coin in his pocket; sips?His glass, with hard eye impudently singling
A woman here and there:--?Women and men, they are all priced in his thought,?All commodities staked?In the market, sooner or later sold and bought.
"Were I he," you are thinking,?You with the dreamer's forehead and pure eyes,?"What should I lose?--All,?All that is worthy the striving for, all my prize,
"All the truth of me, all?Life that is wonder, pity, and fear, requiring?Utter joy, utter pain,?From the heart that the infinite hurts with deep desiring
"Why is it I am not he??Chance? The grace of God? The mystery's plan??He, too, is human stuff,?A kneading of the old, brotherly slime of man.
"Am I a lover of men,?And turn abhorring as from fat slug or snake??Lives obstinate in me too?Something the power of angels could not unmake?"
O self-questioner! None?Unlocks your answer. Steadily look, nor flinch.?This belongs to your kind,?And knows its aim and fails not itself at a pinch.
It is here in the world and works,?Not done with yet.--Up, then, let the test be tried!?Dare your uttermost, be?Completely, and of your own, like him, be justified.
NUMBERS
Trefoil and Quatrefoil!?What shaped those destinied small silent leaves?Or numbered them under the soil??I lift my dazzled sight?From grass to sky,?From humming and hot perfume?To scorching, quivering light,?Empty blue!--Why,?As I bury my face afresh?In a sunshot vivid gloom--?Minute infinity's mesh,?Where spearing side by side?Smooth stalk and furred uplift?Their luminous green secrets from the grass,?Tower to a bud and delicately divide--?Do I think of the things unthought?Before man was?
Bodiless Numbers!?When there was none to explore?Your winding labyrinths occult,?None to delve your ore?Of strange virtue, or do?Your magical business, you?Were there, never old nor new,?Veined in the world