The primrosing and promise of good sport,
Shut up the score book, laid the ribbands by.
Such bodings mustered from the fevered sky;
But now the spring well through the honeycomb
Of scored stone rumbling tokened them near home,
The whip-lash clacked, the jog-trot sharpened, all
Sang Farmer’s Boy as loud as they could bawl,
And at the Walnut Tree the homeward brake
Stopt for hoarse ribaldry to brag and slake.
The weary wildfire faded from the dark;
While this one damned the parson, that the clerk;
And anger’s balefire forked from the unbared blade
At word of things gone wrong or stakes not paid:
While Joe the driver stooped with oath to find
A young jack rabbit in the roadway, blind
Or dazzled by the lamps, as stiff as steel
With fear. Joe beat its brains out on the wheel.
Cloudy June
Above the hedge the spearman thistle towers
And thinks himself the god of all he sees;
But nettles jostle fearless where he glowers,
Like old and stained and sullen tapestries;
And elbowing hemlocks almost turn to trees,
Proud as the sweetbriar with her bubble flowers,
Where puft green spider cowers
To trap the toiling bees.
Here joy shall muse what melancholy tells,
And melancholy smile because of joy,
Whether the poppy breathe arabian spells
To make them friends, or whistling gipsy-boy
Sound them a truce that nothing comes to cloy.
No sunray burns through this slow cloud, nor swells
Noise save the browsing-bells,
Half sorrow and half joy.
Night comes; from fens where blind grey castles frown
A veiled moon ventures on the cavernous sky,
No stir, no tassel-tremble on the down:
Mood dims to nothing: atom-like I lie
Where nightjars burr and yapping fox steps by
And hedgehogs wheeze and play in glimmering brown;
And my swooned passions drown,
Nor tell me I am I.
Mole Catcher
With coat like any mole’s, as soft and black,
And hazel bows bundled beneath his arm,
With long-helved spade and rush bag on his back,
The trapper plods alone about the farm
And spies new mounds in the ripe pasture-land,
And where the lob-worms writhe up in alarm
And easy sinks the spade, he takes his stand
Knowing the moles’ dark highroad runs below:
Then sharp and square he chops the turf, and day
Gloats on the opened turnpike through the clay.
Out from his wallet hurry pin and prong,
And trap, and noose to tie it to the bow;
And then his grand arcanum, oily and strong,
Found out by his forefather years ago
To scent the peg and witch the moles along.
The bow is earthed and arched ready to shoot
And snatch the death-knot fast round the first mole
Who comes and snuffs well pleased and tries to root
Past the sly nose peg; back again is put
The mould, and death left smirking in the hole.
The old man goes and tallies all his snares
And finds the prisoners there and takes his toll.
And moles to him are only moles; but hares
See him afield and scarcely cease to nip
Their dinners, for he harms not them; he spares
The drowning fly that of his ale would sip
And throws the ant the crumbs of comradeship.
And every time he comes into his yard
Grey linnet knows he brings the groundsel sheaf,
And clatters round the cage to be unbarred,
And on his finger whistles twice as hard. –
What his old vicar says, is his belief,
In the side pew he sits and hears the truth
And never misses once to ring his bell
On Sundays night and morn, nor once since youth
Has heard the chimes afield, but has heard tell
There’s not a peal in England sounds so well.
The Scythe Struck by Lightning
A thick hot haze had choked the valley grounds
Long since, the dogday sun had gone his rounds
Like a dull coal half lit with sulky heat;
And leas were iron, ponds were clay, fierce beat
The blackening flies round moody cattle’s eyes.
Wasps on the mudbanks seemed a hornet’s size
That on the dead roach battened. The plough’s increase
Stood under a curse.
Behold, the far release!
Old wisdom breathless at her cottage door
‘Sounds of abundance’ mused, and heard the roar
Of marshalled armies in the silent air,
And thought Elisha stood beside her there,
And clacking reckoned ere the next nightfall
She’d turn the looking-glasses to the wall.
Faster than armies out of the burnt void
The hourglass clouds innumerably deployed,
And when the hay-folks next look up, the sky
Sags black above them; scarce is time to fly.
And most run for their cottages; but Ward,
The mower for the inn beside the ford,
And slow strides he with shouldered scythe still bare,
While to the coverts leaps the great-eyed hare.
As he came in the dust snatched up and whirled
Hung high, and like a bell-rope whipped and twirled;
The brazen light glared round, the haze resolved
Into demoniac shapes bulged and convolved.
Well might poor ewes afar make bleatings wild,
Though this old trusting mower sat and smiled,
For from the hush of many days the land
Had waked itself: and now on every hand
Shrill swift alarm-notes, cries and counter-cries,
Lowings and crowings came and throbbing sighs.
Now atom lightning brandished on the moor,
Then out of sullen drumming came the roar
Of thunder joining battle east and west:
In hedge and orchard small birds durst not rest,
Flittering like dead leaves and like wisps of straws,
And the cuckoo called again, for without pause
Oncoming voices in the vortex burred.
The storm came toppling like a wave, and blurred
In grey the trees that like black steeples towered.
The sun’s last yellow died. Then who but cowered?
Down ruddying darkness floods the hideous flash,
And pole to pole the cataract whirlwinds clash.
Alone within the tavern parlour still
Sat the grey mower, pondering his God’s will,
And flinching not to flame or bolt, that swooped
With a great hissing rain till terror drooped
In weariness: and then there came a roar
Ten-thousand-fold, he saw not, was no more –
But life bursts on him once again, and blood
Beats droning round, and light comes in a flood.
He stares and sees the sashes battered awry,
The wainscot shivered, the crocks shattered, and nigh,
His twisted scythe, melted by its fierce foe,
Whose Parthian shot struck down the chimney. Slow
Old Ward lays hand to his old working-friend,
And thanking God Whose mercy did defend
His servant, yet must drop a tear or two
And think of times when that old scythe was new;
And stands in silent grief,
nor hears the voices
Of many a bird that through the land rejoices,
Nor sees through the smashed panes the seagreen sky,
That ripens into blue, nor knows the storm is by.
The Poor Man’s Pig
Already fallen plum-bloom stars the green,
And apple-boughs as knarred as old toads’ backs
Wear their small roses ere a rose is seen;
The building thrush watches old Job who stacks
The bright-peeled osiers on the sunny fence,
The pent sow grunts to hear him stumping by,
And tries to push the bolt and scamper thence,
But her ringed snout still keeps her to the sty.
Then out he lets her run; away she snorts
In bundling gallop for the cottage door,
With hungry hubbub begging crusts and orts,
Then like the whirlwind bumping round once more;
Nuzzling the dog, making the pullets run,
And sulky as a child when her play’s done.
Behind the Line
Treasure not so the forlorn days
When dun clouds flooded the naked plains
With foul remorseless rains;
Tread not those memory ways
Where by the dripping alien farms,
Starved orchards with their shrivelled arms,
The bitter mouldering wind would whine
At the brisk mules clattering towards the Line.
Remember not with so sharp skill
Each chasm in the clouds that with strange fire
Lit pyramid-fosse and spire
Miles and miles from our hill;
In the magic glass, aye, then their lure
Like heaven’s houses gleaming pure
Might soothe the long-imprisoned sight
And put the seething storm to flight.
Enact not you so like a wheel
The round of evenings in sandbagged rooms
Where candles flicked the glooms;
The jests old time could steal
From ugly destiny, on whose brink
The poor fools grappled fear with drink,
And snubbed the hungry raving guns
With endless tunes on gramophones.
About you spreads the world anew,
The old fields for all your sense rejoice,
Music has found her ancient voice,
From the hills there’s heaven on earth to view;
And kindly Mirth will raise his glass
With you to bid dull Care go pass –
And still you wander muttering on
Over the shades of shadows gone.
Reunion in War
The windmill in his smock of white
Stared from his little crest,
Like a slow smoke was the moonlight
As I went like one possessed
Where the glebe path makes shortest way;
The stammering wicket swung.
I passed amid the crosses grey
Where opiate yew-boughs hung.
The bleached grass shuddered into sighs,
The dogs that knew this moon
Far up were harrying sheep, the cries
Of hunting owls went on.
And I among the dead made haste
And over flat vault stones
Set in the path unheeding paced
Nor thought of those chill bones.
Thus to my sweetheart’s cottage I,
Who long had been away,
Turned as the traveller turns adry
To brooks to moist his clay.
Her cottage stood like a dream, so clear
And yet so dark; and now
I thought to find my more than dear
And if she’d kept her vow.
Old house-dog from his barrel came
Without a voice, and knew
And licked my hand; all seemed the same
To the moonlight and the dew.
By the white damson then I took
The tallest osier wand
And thrice upon her casement strook,
And she, so fair, so fond,
Looked out, and saw in wild delight
And tiptoed down to me,
And cried in silent joy that night
Beside the bullace tree.
O cruel time to take away,
Or worse to bring agen;
Why slept not I in Flanders clay
With all the murdered men?
For I had changed, or she had changed,
Though true loves both had been,
Even while we kissed we stood estranged
With the ghosts of war between.
We had not met but a moment ere
War baffled joy, and cried,
‘Love’s but a madness, a burnt flare;
The shell’s a madman’s bride.’
The cottage stood, poor stone and wood,
Poorer than stone stood I;
Then from her kind arms moved in a mood
As grey as the cereclothed sky.
The roosts were stirred, each little bird
Called fearfully out for day;
The church clock with his dead voice whirred
As if he bade me stay
To trace with madman’s fingers all
The letters on the stones
Where thick beneath the twitch roots crawl
In dead men’s envied bones.
A Farm near Zillebeke
Black clouds hide the moon, the amazement is gone;
The morning will come in weeping and rain;
The Line is all hushed – on a sudden anon
The fool bullets clack and guns mouth again.
I stood in the yard of a house that must die,
And still the black hame was stacked by the door,
And harness still hung there, and the dray waited by.
Black clouds hid the moon, tears blinded me more.
Festubert, 1916 [1916 Seen from 1921]
Tired with dull grief, grown old before my day,
I sit in solitude and only hear
Long silent laughters, murmurings of dismay,
The lost intensities of hope and fear;
In those old marshes yet the rifles lie,
On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags,
The very books I read are there – and I
Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags
Its wounded length from those sad streets of war
Into green places here, that were my own;
But now what once was mine is mine no more,
I look for such friends here and I find none.
With such strong gentleness and tireless will
Those ruined houses seared themselves in me,
Passionate I look for their dumb story still,
And the charred stub outspeaks the living tree.
I rise up at the singing of a bird
And scarcely knowing slink along the lane,
I dare not give a soul a look or word
For all have homes and none’s at home in vain:
Deep red the rose burned in the grim redoubt,
The self-sown wheat around was like a flood,
In the hot path the lizards lolled time out,
The saints in broken shrines were bright as blood.
Sweet Mary’s shrine between the sycamores!
There we would go, my friend of friends and I,
And snatch long moments from the grudging wars;
Whose dark made light intense to see them by …
Shrewd bit the morning fog, the whining shots
Spun from the wrangling wire; then in warm swoon
The sun hushed all but the cool orchard plots,
We crept in the tall grass and slept till noon.
Third Ypres: a Reminiscence
Triumph! How strange, how strong had triumph come
On weary hate of foul and endless war
When from its
grey gravecloths awoke anew
The summer day. Among the tumbled wreck
Of fascined lines and mounds the light was peering,
Half-smiling upon us, and our newfound pride;
The terror of the waiting night outlived,
The time too crowded for the heart to count
All the sharp cost in friends killed on the assault.
No sap of all the octopus had held us,
Here stood we trampling down the ancient tyrant.
So shouting dug we among the monstrous pits.
Amazing quiet fell upon the waste,
Quiet intolerable to those who felt
The hurrying batteries beyond the masking hills
For their new parley setting themselves in array
In crafty fourms unmapped.
No, these, smiled faith,
Are dumb for the reason of their overthrow.
They move not back, they lie among the crews
Twisted and choked, they’ll never speak again.
Only the copse where once might stand a shrine
Still clacked and suddenly hissed its bullets by.
The War would end, the Line was on the move,
And at a bound the impassable was passed.
We lay and waited with extravagant joy.
Now dulls the day and chills; comes there no word
From those who swept through our new lines to flood
The lines beyond? but little comes, and so
Sure as a runner time himself’s accosted.
And the slow moments shake their heavy heads,
And croak, ‘They’re done, they’ll none of them get through.’
They’re done, they’ve all died on the entanglements,
The wire stood up like an unplashed hedge and thorned
With giant spikes – and there they’ve paid the bill.
Then comes the black assurance, then the sky’s
Mute misery lapses into trickling rain,
Selected Poems Page 4
