This man of oak, this son of blended breed,

This soul that holds an empire in its round,

This will defensive of our freedom’s creed,

This heart that draws from out the deep profound.

This vital flame, this passion incarnate

Caught from the central Fire, this chosen ore,

This iron, edged to quell the hordes of hate,

This rugged mind, this mighty counsellor.

Churchill, these years were lean had you not fed

A lagging nation in its hungry need;

These years were lean had you not bravely led

Through tears and toil, and taught men how to bleed.

Britannia knows, and all her serried host,

How you have given to your uttermost.

Memory has a power to cross far seas,

To trim, for sailing, long-beached argosies,

To turn lost tunes to tempt the merry dance,

To mend torn silks, to dream, to gaze, perchance

To quicken scenes long since to silence wed,

Or open ears to music long since dead.

Her ways are hallowèd; in maiden grace

She steals amid the meads to interlace

Sweet garlands kissed with laughter, and her song,

A haunting cadence, drifts old paths along.

Through many lands her way she wends, ’mid shades

Of friendly roaming, by hills and pleasant glades,

Yet always homing turns to one fond bourne

Where England sweetly greets the misty morn.

All hedged and hawthorn crowned, this merry plot,

Filling its lap with daisies, ne’er forgot,

Colours all distant dreams and softly brings

Home, to its hearth, its child’s heart-hoverings.

    Where’er the rose has blooming,

    Where’er the oak holds sap,

    Wherever there’s a gloaming

    And the embers slowly die,

    Where’er the earth’s warm rooming

    Holds harvest in its lap,

    There, memory will go homing

    Beneath an English sky.

By lingering lanes within an evening mist,

Will live again a long-lost lover’s tryst:

A stile will turn, and gentle fingers cling,

And lips will utter love’s lost whispering,

As, soft within the dusk, a distant lowing

Will bring the scents and sounds of England’s knowing.

          Where’er a sheepdog nestles

          A nose against a knee,

          Where’er adventure wrestles

          With hard won destiny,

          There England will be calling

          Her sons beyond the foam;

          There memory’s strange thralling

          Will draw her children home.

Some dancing gnats upon a sun-warmed porch,

Among cool trees the spire of a church,

A lingering scent that haunts the new mown hay,

A glint of blue, within a golden day,

Where humble speedwell or mild milkwort press

Their little tendernesses on the grass;

These wistful thought will rouse, and eyes will gaze

Knowing that England lives beyond the haze.

So would we sing of England’s innocence,

Of all that’s sweet and fair above offence,

Of all that’s lissom, shy, and blithe, and young,

By her embodied, of her nobly sprung;

Of sinew strengthened by her ancient creed

To bear in courage and in beauty breed;

Of wisdom lipped in song; of blessedness

That comes of growing age’s dear caress. . . .

When tender fingers steal in dusk,

And all is mist, and all is musk,

And earth is yielding to a dream,

Mid murmurings of vale and stream;

When lips from language softly turn

A sweeter language so to learn,

And nature needs no searching eyes

To find life’s lovelier paradise;

When dearest drifts of hidden thought

Are by the purest passion taught

To merge with muted melody

Of lisping leaf and whispering tree. . . .

With all else hushed that lingers there,

Then Love, his own artificer,

Lays tools aside and only breathes

Upon the beauty he bequeathes.

If softly so the days confess

Their hovering thought, shall I do less

Than gather to a quiet breast

The peace that comes at thy behest?

Shall I, within the evening dusk,

When all is mist, and all is musk,

Hold less of yielding to my dream

Within the vale, beside the stream?

Shall I, alone, the heart of memory chide

Because her yearning tempts me o’er the wide

Expanse of ocean’s stern and surging drift

The curtain of her friendly mists to lift

Who is forever lovely? Freely she

Has given, freely shall she have the fee

Of loyalty. Her whited cliffs, her lanes

Fresh greening to the spring, her storied fanes

Soft flooded by the dim of prayer’s desire,

Upreaching from the earth to heaven’s fire,

Her humble roof and garden’s open gate

All welcome proffer and on memory wait.

Let me go sleep beneath her friendly thatch

A little dream of England so to snatch. . . .

    O once again to wake at dawn

    And hear the morning lark and thrush,

    To look upon an English lawn

    And see the growing, rosy flush

    Of June announce the summer’s day

    Along the hedge, among the hay.

    O once again to wander through

    A meadowland ’mid gentle hills,

    Or by a fieldpath moist with dew,

    Among the laughing daffodils,

    Again the scents of England knowing,

    To see the saucy cowslips blowing.

    To come upon some gloomy grove

    Where still the azure haunts the haze

    With memories of treasure trove,

    And there, with misty eyes to gaze,

    Remembering the forms that hide

    Within some long-lost eventide

    Or on a night, through grassy rooms,

    By silent copse and haunted hedge,

    To steal, ’mid summer’s fragrant glooms

    Along a darkling meadow’s edge,

    And hear within a friendly vale

    The love call of the nightingale.

    By dale or fen or moor or down,

    By pilgrim way or shepherd pass,

    Through village green or gabled town,

    At Hilary or Michaelmas,

    Again, by quiet memory brought,

    To tend old bivouacs of thought.

    Dear little land of lusty loves,

    Of songs that sink yet linger on,

    Whence many a heart of courage roves

    To search some earth’s receding dawn,

    Breathe on our thought your blessed breeze,

    The poignancy of toil to ease.

She gave me love, did England; but a lad

She drew me close and gave me all she had.

She kissed my brow and bade my trembling cease;

She breathed on me her spirit’s sweet release.

She smiled on me when I was young and shy,

And soothed my youthful shrinking with her sigh.

For she was winsome, and her ardour’s kiss

Had something in it of an elfin bliss.

I could but look on her; I could but yield;

Could but kiss the bosom she revealed . . .

Seek through the quiet passion of her eyes

The opening of love’s divine surprise.

      A lad must think of something

      And it might as well be love,

      When the breeze is on the bracken

      And the sun is up above,

      And there’s gold-brown on the blossom

      Where the common’s ringed with furze,

      Where the cuckoo is a-calling

      And a lazy coppice stirs.

Through many a glade we roamed, ’mid leafy rooms,

Where lofty beeches spread their friendly glooms.

      A lad must think of something

      Where the wide-eyed daisies look

      With laughter and with wonder

      On the graylings in the brook;

      Yet what is there of wonder

      Or of laughter for his soul,

      If song there is in heaven

      But love is not his goal?

Ah, she was lovely, yet she had passion too:

Not all of her was heather kissed with dew.

She knew the tempest and the surge of tide,

And sometimes, when her eyes would open wide,

There’d look from out the wonder of their deeps

A troubled calm, as when the ocean sleeps

Aware that in its very bosom lies

The surge and sweep of mighty destinies,

And yet is prone in liquid peace to well

In boundless drift of thought immutable.

Passion she had, not born of heady pride,

Not such as in a moment flamed and died,

But such abiding passion, bitter sweet,

As comes of sorrow suffered in retreat,

Stilled by the silent alchemy of sooth,

And held, age long, in patient, gentle ruth;

The passion of great music, sombre, slow

And simply told in mood adagio.

Passion she had; the love she gave was strong.

As love, redeemed from out an age’s wrong

By some high sacrifice upon the cross,

Is precious, knowing such escape from dross,

So hers would gather from some boundless thought

Heartsease; an age’s gift its beauty wrought.

Yet sheltered by the eaves of pastoral peace

She lived ’mid nature’s sounds and sweet release.

O when I think of England,

I think not of her might;

When I think of England

There comes, for my delight,

A dream of laughing cowslips,

Of bluebells in a copse,

Of ruddy haws and rosehips,

And rainbows in dewdrops.

O when I think of England,

Not majesty invades

The vision of her greatness

Emboldened by parades;

But, through a pleasant meadow,

I tread a grassy path,

Or find, in a hedge’s shadow,

The peace that England hath.

So many tell of England

As great in storied tale;

For me a greater England

Lies sleeping in the vale;

A land of quiet homing,

Where pleasant dreams are born;

A land of quiet roaming

Through poppies in the corn.

She lived where loamy furrows lined their chart

In fields that held the forest to their heart.

The glory of Old England

Lies not in pelf and power;

Of greatness, dear old England

Holds yet a richer dower;

For England is a good land

Where love may keep its tryst,

Of song within a woodland,

Of nightingales and mist.

So when I think of England

I think of pleasant leas,

Of dear old dreamy England

That basks by azure seas,

Of sheep among the heather

That browse on purple hills,

Of balmy April weather,

And dancing daffodils.

This merry sod that taunts the sun to glee

Holds mingling rare of dust and deity. . . .

But no mean dust, for still sweet Avon flows,

And there are banks whereon the wild thyme grows.

Does he still wander through her meads

Who Avon’s limpid waters blessed?

Does he still dream of England’s deeds

Who Arden’s gentle land caressed?

No other happy scenes he knew,

No other hills or valley green,

No other dawn, no other dew

His muse from Warwick’s lanes to wean.

He wrote of Caesar and the Dane,

Of tiltings on a ‘cloth of gold’,

Of Crecy and the Spanish Main,

But only wandered Warwick’s wold.

Here he had seen the fairies dance,

Watched Puck, and Adon’s hunted boar,

And blended with such high romance

The daisy’s and the cuckoo’s lore.

For anxious gods had brought to birth

A soul so tuned to high desire

That it must have impassioned earth

And well they chose fair Warwickshire.

O Will of Avon, who didst within thy breast

The tempest carry, or the peace of stars;

Couldst bring, in service to thy quill’s behest,

The blush of Venus, or outbattle Mars;

Couldst weave a stave to give a summer zest,

Or with thy snow outwinter winter’s frost;

Pipe with Pan a meadow’s floral quest,

Or blatantly the ribald night accost:

How didst thou so contrive that love should live

Though Romeo should die? How glibly tap

Old Falstaff as a butt and make him give,

Even in debauchery, rare wisdom’s sap?

How through a Goneril establish ruth,

Or from Iago’s lying lips tear truth?

Yes, he was England’s, and she freely gave

Him all that human heart could dearly crave.

It was her way. It ever shall be so

In this fair Isle of beauty’s ebb and flow.

Beauty, passion, truth and love, all these

She dearly holds in holy treasuries

Of act and thought. Each jewelled syllable,

Each sigh that from a hidden sorrow fell

In some far searching past, each hope’s desire

That gleams as gold from the Refiner’s fire

All these she opens, and we fondly gaze

Held by their warmth and humbled with amaze.

No oak that suckles for its sturdy worth

Draws moisture from the clay of holier earth.

No rose that softly breathes a budding sigh

Unfolds its bloom to more contented sky

Than that whose azure looks on England’s heart,

Knowing itself of her fair life a part.

By Windermere does Wordsworth still

Hold converse on a lowly hill?

Do thrushes from a copse take wing

In nature’s friendly neighbouring,

And give him pause that he may say

What they have carolled in their lay?

Do primrose clusters, soft and sweet,

In friendly homage crowd his feet

Or, for the feasting of his eyes,

Do fairy-frail anemones

Bespeak for him, in faith, the whole

Fair unity of sod and soul?

Are there such intimations given

Him, of that indwelling heaven

Which nature warms within her breast,

That he must move more softly, lest

He startle, on his little mound,

The life that makes earth holy ground?

I’ve trod the greening meadows Shelley trod,

Lain lazily upon the very sod

His boyhood dreams inhabited; I’ve heard

The measures of his azure mounting bird

Flood waking dawn with golden ecstasy;

In Autumn breasted there the wild west wind

A wilder passion for my heart to find;

In Spring, have opened wide my senses’ dearth

To hear his ‘clarion o’er the dreaming earth’.

‘Mad Shelley’! (Mad, as wisdom oft is mad

That music makes of all that’s free and glad)

A wraith, ethereal, no longer bound,

Soars with his lark from his beloved ground

With thought full-winged as for celestial song,

A ready guest the happy host among.

I’ve stood in peace beneath the cottage thatch

Where Milton, blind, was fondly wont to watch

The heavens constellate, and seen but half the beam

That, sightless, he could conjure in his dream,

Yet learned enough to know beneath those skies

I’d found at last some long-lost paradise.

She has not changed, nor will she say him nay

Who in a haunt sequestered seeks the play

Of thought’s own hallowed searching; she herself

Has ever harboured fairy, gnome and elf.

By some dim path still will the poet roam

Where soft the coulter turns the moistened loam,

Still view green rushes round a moss-bound moat,

Still hear the lay from out some fluted throat.

What strange mysterious stuff this dust we tread⁠—

Eyeless now, but once with eyes that gazed

On lovelinesses long, oh, long since dead;

Lipless now but once with lips that praised

Dim hues of floating mist, or contours seen

Through evening’s ruddy glooms, as to the west

Some ancient sun, old friendly hills between,

Roamed slowly down the valley of its quest!

Could it but wake again, what flight would wing

In joyous thrill of song long sepulchred!

Could it but sigh, what seasons would it bring

Of buried pain, what poignancy of dread!

What echo, lifting o’er an ancient lea,

Would drift to us, of some still ecstasy!

  Softly, Brother, breathe a bated breath,

  And what thou breathest utter with a sigh.

  Thou knowest not what spirit hovereth,

  What wraith unhoused and mutely floating by,

  Inhabits so the pale and phantom flush

  Of evening . . . This English evening’s hush.

  A little mead within a little Isle,

  A little river lazing to the sea,

  A little path, a hedge, a weathered stile,

  A haze, a star . . . a hushed immensity

  Of thought transfigured in the friendly gloom,

  Woven in the woof of memory’s loom.

She is a maiden in whose yielding kiss

The passion of the centuries abides,

Within whose shy disarming artifice

There lurks a pregnant meaning. She confides

Her secret only to those patient eyes

That seek, in beauty, truth’s celestial prize.

Her warriors have fought, her poets dreamed;

No right she has that has not been redeemed

By thought and thew, ’mid earnest watches mute,

No grace unrescued from the fearsome bruit

Of pagan strife. Long-sunk, the centuries

Still minister her unassailed decrees:

Fearless, her children come, through feast and fast,

To pledge the golden chalice of the past. . . .

A living past that on the present waits

To spur to life and spurn all opiates.

Within her quiet land there lies

The ardour of all time.

The dream of agelong verities

And tragedy sublime.

Primeval terrors have their lair

Far in her hidden deep;

Unuttered wonders slumber there,

And beauties latent sleep.

As waves that curl within the sun

Encrust a vaster wide,

As through each timorous swell there run

The tremors of the tide,

So here, within each sun-taught gleam,

Caught from the spume of life,

There thrills the cadence of a theme

Won from our tidal strife,

And we its ancient glories show

Upon our cross-bound shield,

And we our duty learn to know,

Our homage learn to yield.

Yes, England lives—and in her soul a fire,

Warming her tender life to love’s desire.

Here is no hearth unhallowèd by flame,

No house unpassioned, no dearth, no hollow name;

No chimney mute for unaspiring smoke

The blessing of the friendly stars to invoke;

Here is no door unhinged to heart’s desire,

No lonely corner for an untouched lyre. . . .

Here is home, and song, and heart of kindred love,

The wassail bowl, and golden thatch above

The welcome of an entrance undenied,

A beaten path, a gate that’s open wide.

Here men have lived and roystered in their joy;

Have thanked the gods for beauty’s sweet employ;

Known laughter and the season’s merry rout

Of yule or harvest, the May-pole danced about;

All floral crowned have ushered in the Spring

With song, and pledged earth’s ruddy autumning.

        Hey nonny, her harvest is heavy;

        Hey nonny, her harvest is glad;

        For her maids in a bevy

        Claim kisses for levy

        If any dull soul would be sad.

        Hey nonny, her harvest is merry;

        Hey nonny, her harvest is gay;

        For when lips are of cherry

        What lad would be wary

        Of song on a high harvest day?

Are not her shadows peopled yet with those

Who came to age-old loves through age-old throes?

On dusky hillsides still are clustering

Flares of some torch-illumined mustering

To guard her wattled towns. Brave banners rise

To follow where some saintly crusade cries

And, there, where whited cliffs stand stark and whist,

Tense archers speed their arrows through the mist.

Still, Sainted Bede an hour will beguile

With holy parchment in his Holy Isle.

There is no glade within a bosky wood

That is not haunted by its Robin Hood,

And Arthur still does grace his table round

With presences that are full knightly found.

        Time cannot mar this countenance,

        Nor fleshly lust, nor worldly chance.

        Beyond this glory, glory lies

        Of deeper joy, of bluer skies,

        And heady din or waste of strife

        Cannot annul this Love, this Life.

        Time cannot smirch the heart’s desire

        Of her for whom the gods conspire;

        Beyond the singer is a Song

        Untouched by sorrow, pain or wrong,

        And she who harbours Beauty’s elf

        Harbours likewise Beauty’s self.

This her strength and this her greatness is,

Herein lies her splendour, grace and bliss,

That she has gone, full ardent-eyed and free,

To each sweet several spring in zeal or glee,

And drawn from it of water for her thirst . . .

In storied love and storied lore immersed,

Each Austral beauty, or each Orient grace,

Has found her waiting with a welcome place

Of holy havening. Her songs have sung

Of far-flung garnerings; her very tongue

Is quickened by the speech of other lands

Self mellowed to her lips; her strands

Have listened to the choric interchange

Of tone and antitone, at first full strange

But soon in native rhythm made her own,

Until her warp and woof of life, from serf to throne,

Is found all intermeshed with threads of gold

Won from distant climes and ages old.

This her strength, her beauty likewise this,

On whom so wills, freely she’ll breathe her bliss

If he but dedicate an equal vow

To what is fair. If truth he has betrayed

He need not come, or if he is afraid,

Or if he hatred hold, or any lust;

With him she will not share her treasure’s trust.

Yet only will she shrink the shallow hour

Of those who seek her freedom to deflower.

Her heart is everywhere, but much it dwells

In little native bournes, on native fells.

Here still a man may wander o’er the rise

And see a shepherd leading home his sheep

From pastures green, to fearless fold and sleep

Within a quiet vale, ’neath quiet skies.

Here sounds still come from pastoral emprise,

Or from the home that feeds the evening brood.

Here still, within an evening interlude,

A hush along the misty upland lies. . . .

A hush oft breathed about the plodding sound

That tells the weary tread of patient feet

Moving homeward o’er such holy ground

To peace and rest, a kindred love to greet.

What holier coming has there ever been

To cloistered welcome, amid a pastoral scene?

Ah, little land, a torch did glow with flame,

When first the gods awakened to thy name.

Sing then thy heart, and let thy lips employ

Such liquid notes of beauteous melody

That Earth shall rise impassioned by thy joy

And dancing sway, sway to thy ecstasy

Made vocal. Hill and mead and vale shall tread

Such measure as that laughing tears shall well

From eyes that late have held a heavy bed,

And thy own rhythm in the dance shall tell,

Forth-tripping in the beauty of delight.

Sing, till the very soul of Nature start;

For with his music Love hath filled thy night,

And thou hast in his melody thy part.

Her heart is everywhere, but one fair bourne

I came to, once, upon a summer morn,

Where most I found her fair, where most she gave

Her very self, holy, gay and grave.

Here, where the Isis overflowed its bank

Among the bending rushes, rank on rank,

I crossed the grey old bridge by Magdalen’s wall

To enter on a sweet and holy thrall.

I came in diffidence, and came alone,

And England claimed me, claimed me as her own.

Ah, when now I look, o’er far-borne seas

Usurped by fear and man’s idolatries,

What counter beauty floods my pensive breast

With memories that mark a youthful quest!

How joy will come aknocking at the pane

Of windows that have looked upon the slain!

Laughter for the glory of our dream;

Tears for dampened passion dimly lit;

Tears that we have failed the glowing gleam,

Nor given it our beauty, nor our wit;

These I hold commingled in distress

Yet listen for her song of loveliness.

If I could tread the meadowland

That nestles near the dreamy Thames

By Oxford’s gentle breezes fanned,

Where many a laughing daisy hems

The broidery of nature’s grace;

If I could see her smiling face,

See it once more as once I saw

It wake to laughter in the sun,

Acknowledging her innate law

That heart may woo what heart has won;

If I could walk that shady path

With nothing of war’s aftermath;

If I could once more search the sky

For liquid music from a wing

Unseen and azure bound, or, nigh,

Listen where freshened cresses cling

The violet-laden banks, to hear

The stream glide blithely o’er the weir⁠—

O, at such memories the mind will leap

With love that grows so fathomlessly deep!

Could I but roam where Iffley’s tower,

Foursquare within the sunset mist,

Chimes forth in peace the vesper hour

And all the pastoral rise is kissed

To quietude; knowing no stress,

But conscious of earth’s loveliness—

If I could tread again the grass

Of that fair stream-enthreaded land . . .

But life has no such hourglass

To turn again the selfsame sand

In patient thread of time, to run

The selfsame silting it has won.

Does any water flow so richly banked?

Do any ways steal forth so richly flanked?

The stream flows on its misty way;

The boatman deftly plies his pole;

Spring comes again with hedge-clad May;

The fields are full of song. The whole

Wide valley land, with copse-bound hills,

Holds every feature beauty wills.

All this I know, but I am far

Away. It may be vision dims,

Or, like an overwearied star

Found lone where dawn the morning rims,

With misty eyes, my quivering thought

Measures a mind that’s overwrought,

For through that daisy patterned woof

I trace the shuttle of distress.

I see the years that hold aloof

Flash through its weft in bitterness,

And all its sweet and silver stream

Flows darkly through a lampless dream.

Such mingled sounds, so many tones

Come now when Iffley’s tower chimes,

I wonder how their blood atones

Who lie so still in other climes,

Who once shared youth’s own laughter here

Along the stream, beside the weir.

She gave me friends, yet friends she took away.

Never a sorrow bended to such sway

Of sweeter breath. Never a joy was fraught

With deeper pain—

And yet when I awake in May

I tread again that lovely shire,

Thinking it was but yesterday

I heard at dawn old Magdalen’s choir,

Thinking that “Hilary” is past,

That fritillaries bloom at last,

That copses are with bluebell strewn,

That lanes, through flower-laden thorn,

Wend fragrantly to summer’s noon.

I hear the lark again at morn

In deathless lyric, skyward bound,

Pour liquid notes upon the ground.

The friendly ferryman I hail;

The lapping waters lave the prow;

I watch a little urchin sail

His playtime craft, . . . until the bow

Is thrust upon the other shore,

And I can loiter there no more.

Ah, this was England! high sea-wind or sigh,

A tempest or a honeysuckle nigh;

The moorland’s gloomy glory fondly kissed

With heather purple and with amethyst;

Wild, weathered rocks and by the tempest grooved,

Yet, too, by fragrant zephyrs warmly loved;

Here a desolation, here a dream,

Here a thicket, here a grayling stream

Threading its mossbound way, here huddled towns

(But human), here the sweep of rolling downs . . .

If nature in her growth from primal thought

Still harbours in her bosom, dearly brought

Through aeons of distress, some warmth indwelling,

Surely it is here we see it welling

In England’s meads of peace. Here in sweet

Solitude might those fair dryads greet

Who once gave Greece her laughter and her song.

Even her hamlets gray, old trees among,

Weathered by winter storms and silvered o’er

By moons of summer, have their ancient lore.

From Haworth’s village, black on Yorkshire’s roof

And drear, as though the very Devil’s hoof

Had spurned it, to London’s gray old ghostly town,

No footworn flag, no sod for harvest sown

But whispers, “Softly Brother, softly tread;

Lest you disturb the slumbers of the dead . . .”

The living dead; for Haworth, bleak and drear,

Is heather crowned and holds her Brontes dear,

And London’s very sounds and sighings steep

With memories of those whose slumbers keep

A vital vigilance of thought to guard

Her hoary plot. They hold a glorious ward

Who haunt her glooms. There, too, does memory find

Sure sanctuary, holy, sweet and kind.

Dream of Cumberland or dream of Kent,

Of Durham or of Devon, if you will;

Courage you will find with beauty blent

In every valley and on every hill.

This the England was that once I knew;

Salt with the tang of seas, sweet with the dew.

She had contentment dreamed; song and mirth

Were as her fragrant garland plucked from earth.

Her springs led on to summer, and the round

Of seed and harvest blessed her fertile ground.

Her mien was knightly, and there still must be

For her a golden age of chivalry.

She will withstand the winter of her rain,

The hungry dread, the anguish and the pain.

A little while may vision be denied,

The cliffs be gray, and heaven heavy skied,

Yet she will hold her peace within her heart,

A thing unseen, but waiting and alert

Once more to sow the seed and reap the swath

Of all the harvest beauty nature hath.

It must be so; Love has not lost his cloak.

The heart of things is kindly, holy, pure;

Love’s not annulled. But we are simple folk

And want to see the form, and feel the sure

Sweet kiss of lip on lip, and hear the low

Familiar word once more invade the blest

Precincts of our peace. We want to know

Possession sweet and sweetly be possessed.

This is our right, that life should dearly grow

From twig to bough and bough to tender bloom,

Until, through autumn to the timely snow,

We give relinquishment its seasoned room.

We were not given yearnings to be taught

That all that’s lovely is with anguish fraught.

If all else fail, a lilt of merry song

Shall hold us to the rhythm of the spheres,

Shall well annul the sadness and the wrong,

Shall well enhance the beauty that endears.

All that is sweet and fair and nobly sired,

All that has kissed adventure on the brow,

Of tempest strength, by passion nobly fired,

That swifts as may an arrow from the bow . . .

All shall in essence bide its sunny day

In seed that will a golden harvest bring,

Through testing storms of peril and dismay,

To wait upon a merry winnowing.

Though all else fail, there haunts the heart of man

An echo of that inborn melody,

Long uttered ere his sordid strife began,

Sung by the stars, immersed in the gleaming sea.

Though barren earth come to a dusty shrift,

Or winds sweep only round a sailless mast,

The soul shall answer the Eternal Drift;

There shall be song and laughter at the last.

For her, to crown the glory of her worth,

Shall come the homage of a fairer earth.

Man’s soul shall still outlast his sorrow;

    Past autumn’s wintering

Sere leafage shall find budding morrow;

    Laughter shall wait on spring.

Man’s vision still shall wear out weeping;

    Sunset and night’s descent

Bring many a sob, but after sleeping,

    A sigh, and sweet content.

Man’s peace shall still outrun his passion;

    For him there shall befall,

After nature’s quiet fashion,

    A lovelier pastoral.

Then England, even England’s heart shall know

A richer dawn, a rarer sunset’s glow.

Swing wide wild bells above earth’s Easter hour;

Heave high and lowly sweep, in festal faith.

Swing full and wide with undulating power;

Ring joyously despite war’s gloomy wraith.

Spill merry tenors with your tonguèd wands,

In answer to the heavenly Ringer’s hand;

Grave bourdons pour from out your urns of bronze,

To hover and to brood above the land.

Swing full and wide, as love is full and wide;

Swing high and low, with deep to answer deep,

As love holds high and low and shall abide.

Chime through the earth, assault the celestial steep,

Nor let your holy convocation cease

Until you’ve won for earth immortal peace.

Easter in Wartime

Beauty is not banished from our age;

’Tis we who swoon in soft forgetful sleep

Before we see her lovely fingers creep

To draw the curtain of our heritage.

In ill-consorted dream we toss and rage

With shadow vultures hovering about

Our puny griefs, so impotent to rout

Our fears, oblivious of her tender gauge.

Could we but rise to greet the smiling dawn

And look where, through the casement of our dearth,

The glorious East reorients our lawn,

There we would see her, plucking from our earth

Her blooms of gently tended loveliness,

Still kind, still waiting with her dear caress.

Ah Ploughman, holding so your simple rite,

Know you what memories around you wing,

Ancient as autumn, fresh as that first spring

When verdure budded in the cosmic night

And claimed fair seeding from the wind’s delight?

Is it for Ceres homage you prepare?

Are you, perchance, of some dark Ruth aware

Who’ll come, in harvest days, her troth to plight?

Know you what soilsmen in your line have trod

Down furrows brown and pipèd once by Pan

To turn through time the meadowland of God

Into the golden kernelled bread of Man?

If you but knew you’d even more blithely breast

The winds of autumn in your golden quest.

On Seeing an Autumn Ploughman

Equipt as Hermes yet unwooed to flight,

So heavy footed on so heavy ground,

With nymphs and dryads dancing all around

Unapprehended by our blinded sight,

We look at Ida and behold no white

Of snows upon a fair and holy mount;

In Tempe’s vale we find no crystal fount

To cool or sooth our melancholy plight.

We starve upon a surfeit unabsorbed,

Of colour, melody and rhythmic word,

Uncharmed, unconquered, unamazed, unheld,

Untouched, though heaven and earth be golden orbed;

And though our drifting tide be island shored,

Our barque by Beauty’s breezes unimpelled.

How oft in that strange realm of imagery,

Where Mind may play at ease divorced from fact,

Where Love, alone, her all-sufficient pact

Makes with desire and seals with ecstasy,

I’ve wandered far with sanguine hearted glee,

Tuning such pipe as Pan in lustier days

Would tune to tempt fair Syrinx from her ways,

Wild notes to sound, and lovely dreams to see!

How often then, no more with bitter bread,

But with such feasting as the Gods of old

Upon the floral green have sweetly spread,

I, too, have quaffed an ancient cup of gold,

I, too, have pledged the wine of Love’s desire

And felt the flame of life’s undying fire.

Now is our hour, this dawn, this only air,

This orient light that wakes us in its quest

To lure us gladly to the golden west,

This breathing of high hope to quench despair,

This time, this day. No other can impair

The vision that is ours alone. We soar

On our self-pinions; no ancient lore

Will guide or make us of our star aware.

There is a glory that will gild our wings

As, swifting in the roseate light of dawn,

In our own freedom our own spirit springs

Heavenward, there amazed to gaze upon

The beauty of our earth, with those same eyes

Which waked the golden age to glad surmise.

Here as little children in the sun,

So little knowing how or caring why,

We play our little games of hide and spy

Until the darkness comes, then homeward run,

Still knowing little, weary and content.

Our dreams come willy nilly; whither or whence

We question not, until with sleep they’re blent

Beneath the roof of Love’s dear Providence.

Happy the heart that from Life’s high romance

Comes free of care, contented in its glee,

With song and laughter amid the winds of chance,

Bearing its childlike laurels gloriously.

Happy the childlike soul that, in its growing,

Plays on, only the Sun of Beauty knowing.

No more we set our sails by island seas;

No more within the grove a happy chance

Brings us the vision of the floral dance;

Great Pan is dead; there are no Arcadys

Where mists of song veil still and roseate leas

And dryads bathe within the golden light.

Our noons are grey; no more our moons delight;

With rusty chains are moored our argosies.

But not by deprivation are we dulled:

Our sin to sit as sated at a feast,

All heavy paunched, with appetites annulled,

Beside a board where Beauty’s very least

Out-features what was once with glory crowned;

Blind to her dream, deaf to her sweetest sound.

On Returning from a Discussion on Greece

O there are times when I could write with ease

Such lyric ditties to the ancient moon

That she would wake from out her misty swoon

To sigh in ecstasy; or I could tease

A joyous lilt more musical than these,

Of tender tune, so to intrigue the stars

That Venus would be found embracing Mars.

Thus many an ancient hunger I’d appease.

But when to earth I must my muse entice

To round a rhythmic garland for your dream

I find no lyric measure to suffice

Nor kindred music for your lovely theme.

For you yourself are fairest poesy,

A Song of Love, from floral Arcady.

Our thought a fire is, upon whose forge

The mind will heat its own prefigured ends,

Needing no other breath than Beauty’s urge.

In its creative flame each feature bends

To its imagined form. Here in ourselves

And native so, there dwells the self-same Gleam

That in the universal realm nor builds nor delves,

But of itself embodies forth its dream.

This loveliness that in our day encloaks

Us round, this dawn emerging from our dark,

Enfeatures only what our mind invokes.

All else is crude, unquickened, cold and stark.

Within desire’s womb we form our fate,

And slowly grow like that we contemplate.

So while I live and while this merry rhyme

Laughs upon April and her gentle hues

You’ll hold assurance of abiding time

To wait upon your beauty with its dues.

April who yearly tells her heart’s degree

In fragrant humours of the verdant dell

Will weave with ours her own heart’s history

In yearly constancy naught else can tell.

In every vale where warming breezes blow

Shall bloom fresh flowers of remembered thought;

With song the tendrils of your love shall grow

As once again they are by April taught,

And this my rhyme like her, fresh, fair and blithe,

Shall laugh at Time and shame his rusty scythe.

We know so little more than those of old

Who wove sweet stories round the drifting stars.

We battle without grace of blaming Mars.

Like them we love and hate, are hot or cold,

But unlike, wonder not that there unfold

Such mystic beauties in the tranquil vale.

Our touch untender to the pipèd scale,

We hymn no more the lyric Age of Gold.

How little do we tend Prometheus’ fire;

How little share the search of Demeter

For beauty ravished from the earth! Our hire

The livery of craven coin to wear!

Their little sails welled to a lesser sigh:

Their lesser summits touched a loftier sky.

So do they measure out the vaulted sky,

And draught the way elliptical of star

With star, marking each ancient symmetry

That they may know the coming from afar,

In certitude, of some red comet sweep;

So do they trace, with poise of calipers,

A circling lost in some lone azure deep

In presage of the hidden course it bears.

But I, not knowing whither, whence or how,

May only gaze at gleamings in the mist

That ripple where the evening zephyrs blow

And round to beauty where some beam has kissed.

For me no map of contours for the night;

I do but gaze in wonder and delight.

The Astronomers