The Penguin Book of English Verse

by Paul Keegan

  Or the wave.

  All are at one now, roses and lovers.

  Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.

  Not a breath of the time that has been hovers

  In the air now soft with a summer to be.

  Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter

  Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,

  When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter

  We shall sleep.

  Here death may deal not again for ever:

  Here change may come not till all change end.

  From the graves they have made they shall rise up never,

  Who have left nought living to ravage and rend.

  Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing.

  While the sun and the rain live, these shall be:

  Till a last wind’s breath upon all these blowing

  Roll the sea.

  Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,

  Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,

  Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble

  The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,

  Here now in his triumph where all things falter,

  Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,

  As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,

  Death lies dead.

  ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE A Vision of Spring in Winter

  O tender time that love thinks long to see,

  Sweet foot of spring that with her footfall sows

  Late snowlike flowery leavings of the snows,

  Be not too long irresolute to be;

  O mother-month, where have they hidden thee?

  Out of the pale time of the flowerless rose

  I reach my heart out toward the springtime lands,

  I stretch my spirit forth to the fair hours,

  The purplest of the prime:

  I lean my soul down over them, with hands

  Made wide to take the ghostly growths of flowers:

  I send my love back to the lovely time.

  Where has the greenwood hid thy gracious head?

  Veiled with what visions while the grey world grieves,

  Or muffled with what shadows of green leaves,

  What warm intangible green shadows spread

  To sweeten the sweet twilight for thy bed?

  What sleep enchants thee? what delight deceives?

  Where the deep dreamlike dew before the dawn

  Feels not the fingers of the sunlight yet

  Its silver web unweave,

  Thy footless ghost on some unfooted lawn

  Whose air the unrisen sunbeams fear to fret

  Lives a ghost’s life of daylong dawn and eve.

  Sunrise it sees not, neither set of star,

  Large nightfall, nor imperial plenilune,

  Nor strong sweet shape of the full-breasted noon;

  But where the silver-sandalled shadows are,

  Too soft for arrows of the sun to mar,

  Moves with the mild gait of an ungrown moon:

  Hard overhead the half-lit crescent swims,

  The tender-coloured night draws hardly breath,

  The light is listening;

  They watch the dawn of slender-shapen limbs,

  Virginal, born again of doubtful death,

  Chill foster-father of the weanling spring.

  As sweet desire of day before the day,

  As dreams of love before the true love born,

  From the outer edge of winter overworn

  The ghost arisen of May before the May

  Takes through dim air her unawakened way,

  The gracious ghost of morning risen ere morn.

  With little unblown breasts and child-eyed looks

  Following, the very maid, the girl-child spring,

  Lifts windward her bright brows,

  Dips her light feet in warm and moving brooks,

  And kindles with her own mouth’s colouring

  The fearful firstlings of the plumeless boughs.

  I seek thee sleeping, and awhile I see,

  Fair face that art not, how thy maiden breath

  Shall put at last the deadly days to death

  And fill the fields and fire the woods with thee

  And seaward hollows where my feet would be

  When heaven shall hear the word that April saith

  To change the cold heart of the weary time,

  To stir and soften all the time to tears,

  Tears joyfuller than mirth;

  As even to May’s clear height the young days climb

  With feet not swifter than those fair first years

  Whose flowers revive not with thy flowers on earth.

  I would not bid thee, though I might, give back

  One good thing youth has given and borne away;

  I crave not any comfort of the day

  That is not, nor on time’s retrodden track

  Would turn to meet the white-robed hours or black

  That long since left me on their mortal way;

  Nor light nor love that has been, nor the breath

  That comes with morning from the sun to be

  And sets light hope on fire;

  No fruit, no flower thought once too fair for death,

  No flower nor hour once fallen from life’s green tree,

  No leaf once plucked or once fulfilled desire.

  The morning song beneath the stars that fled

  With twilight through the moonless mountain air,

  While youth with burning lips and wreathless hair

  Sang toward the sun that was to crown his head,

  Rising; the hopes that triumphed and fell dead,

  The sweet swift eyes and songs of hours that were;

  These may’st thou not give back for ever; these,

  As at the sea’s heart all her wrecks lie waste,

  Lie deeper than the sea;

  But flowers thou may’st, and winds, and hours of ease,

  And all its April to the world thou may’st

  Give back, and half my April back to me.

  1880ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON Rizpah

  17–

  Wailing, wailing, wailing, the wind over land and sea –

  And Willy’s voice in the wind, ‘O mother, come out to me.’

  Why should he call me tonight, when he knows that I cannot go?

  For the downs are as bright as day, and the full moon stares at the snow.

  We should be seen, my dear; they would spy us out of the town.

  The loud black nights for us, and the storm rushing over the down,

  When I cannot see my own hand, but am led by the creak of the chain,

  And grovel and grope for my son till I find myself drenched with the rain.

  Anything fallen again? nay – what was there left to fall?

  I have taken them home, I have numbered the bones, I have hidden them all.

  What am I saying? and what are you? do you come as a spy?

  Falls? what falls? who knows? As the tree falls so must it lie.

  Who let her in? how long has she been? you – what have you heard?

  Why did you sit so quiet? you never have spoken a word.

  O – to pray with me – yes – a lady – none of their spies –

  But the night has crept into my heart, and begun to darken my eyes.

  Ah – you, that have lived so soft, what should you know of the night,

  The blast and the burning shame and the bitter frost and the fright?

  I have done it, while you were asleep – you were only made for the day.

  I have gathered my baby together – and now you may go your way.

  Nay – for it’s kind of you, Madam, to sit by an old dying wife.

  But say nothing hard of my boy, I have only an hour of life.

  I kissed my boy in the prison, before he went out to die.

>   ‘They dared me to do it,’ he said, and he never has told me a lie.

  I whipt him for robbing an orchard once when he was but a child –

  ‘The farmer dared me to do it,’ he said; he was always so wild –

  And idle – and couldn’t be idle – my Willy – he never could rest.

  The King should have made him a soldier, he would have been one of his best.

  But he lived with a lot of wild mates, and they never would let him be good;

  They swore that he dare not rob the mail, and he swore that he would;

  And he took no life, but he took one purse, and when all was done

  He flung it among his fellows – I’ll none of it, said my son.

  I came into court to the Judge and the lawyers. I told them my tale,

  God’s own truth – but they killed him, they killed him for robbing the mail.

  They hanged him in chains for a show – we had always borne a good name –

  To be hanged for a thief – and then put away – isn’t that enough shame?

  Dust to dust – low down – let us hide! but they set him so high

  That all the ships of the world could stare at him, passing by.

  God ’ill pardon the hell-black raven and horrible fowls of the air,

  But not the black heart of the lawyer who killed him and hanged him there.

  And the jailer forced me away. I had bid him my last goodbye;

  They had fastened the door of his cell. ‘O mother!’ I heard him cry.

  I couldn’t get back though I tried, he had something further to say,

  And now I never shall know it. The jailer forced me away.

  Then since I couldn’t but hear that cry of my boy that was dead,

  They seized me and shut me up: they fastened me down on my bed.

  ‘Mother, O mother!’ – he called in the dark to me year after year –

  They beat me for that, they beat me – you know that I couldn’t but hear;

  And then at the last they found I had grown so stupid and still

  They let me abroad again – but the creatures had worked their will.

  Flesh of my flesh was gone, but bone of my bone was left –

  I stole them all from the lawyers – and you, will you call it a theft? –

  My baby, the bones that had sucked me, the bones that had laughed and had cried –

  Theirs? O no! they are mine – not theirs – they had moved in my side.

  Do you think I was scared by the bones? I kissed ’em, I buried ’em all –

  I can’t dig deep, I am old – in the night by the churchyard wall.

  My Willy ’ill rise up whole when the trumpet of judgment ’ill sound,

  But I charge you never to say that I laid him in holy ground.

  They would scratch him up – they would hang him again on the cursed tree.

  Sin? O yes – we are sinners, I know – let all that be,

  And read me a Bible verse of the Lord’s good will toward men –

  ‘Full of compassion and mercy, the Lord’ – let me hear it again;

  ‘Full of compassion and mercy – long-suffering.’ Yes, O yes!

  For the lawyer is born but to murder – the Saviour lives but to bless.

  He’ll never put on the black cap except for the worst of the worst,

  And the first may be last – I have heard it in church – and the last may be first.

  Suffering – O long-suffering – yes, as the Lord must know,

  Year after year in the mist and the wind and the shower and the snow.

  Heard, have you? what? they have told you he never repented his sin.

  How do they know it? are they his mother? are you of his kin?

  Heard! have you ever heard, when the storm on the downs began,

  The wind that ’ill wail like a child and the sea that ’ill moan like a man?

  Election, Election and Reprobation – it’s all very well.

  But I go tonight to my boy, and I shall not find him in Hell.

  For I cared so much for my boy that the Lord has looked into my care,

  And He means me I’m sure to be happy with Willy, I know not where.

  And if he be lost – but to save my soul that is all your desire:

  Do you think that I care for my soul if my boy be gone to the fire?

  I have been with God in the dark – go, go, you may leave me alone –

  You never have borne a child – you are just as hard as a stone.

  Madam, I beg your pardon! I think that you mean to be kind,

  But I cannot hear what you say for my Willy’s voice in the wind –

  The snow and the sky so bright – he used but to call in the dark,

  And he calls to me now from the church and not from the gibbet for hark!

  Nay – you can hear it yourself – it is coming – shaking the walls –

  Willy – the moon’s in a cloud – Good-night. I am going. He calls.

  CHARLES TURNER Letty’s Globe

  When Letty had scarce pass’d her third glad year,

  And her young, artless words began to flow,

  One day we gave the child a colour’d sphere

  Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,

  By tint and outline, all its sea and land.

  She patted all the world; old empires peep’d

  Between her baby fingers; her soft hand

  Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap’d,

  And laugh’d, and prattled in her world-wide bliss;

  But when we turned her sweet unlearned eye

  On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry,

  ‘Oh! yes, I see it, Letty’s home is there!’

  And, while she hid all England with a kiss,

  Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.

  JOSEPH SKIPSEY ‘GetUp!’ 1881

  ‘Get up!’ the caller calls, ‘Get up!’

  And in the dead of night,

  To win the bairns their bite and sup,

  I rise a weary wight.

  My flannel dudden donn’d, thrice o’er

  My birds are kiss’d, and then

  I with a whistle shut the door,

  I may not ope again.

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI ‘Summer is Ended’

  To think that this meaningless thing was ever a rose,

  Scentless, colourless, this!

  Will it ever be thus (who knows?)

  Thus with our bliss,

  If we wait till the close?

  Tho’ we care not to wait for the end, there comes the end

  Sooner, later, at last,

  Which nothing can mar, nothing mend:

  An end locked fast,

  Bent we cannot re-bend.

  GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Inversnaid

  This darksome burn, horseback brown,