by John Buchan
In toil of tempest and the dust of war
Seek your continuing city. Seek and pray,
Gird ye and strive and faint not on the way.
God be your strength, your buckler and your sword.
Then forth my sons! Who followeth with the Lord?
What came you out to seek? A path of flowers,
A sleep-lulled valley and the silent bowers
Of sinless Edens, where the slumbrous days
Slip past unheeded, and the noon-day blaze
Is cheered by zephyrs born of the warm South,
And grapes of Eschol cool the parched mouth?
Thirst ye for these, or for the soft green fold
Of summer hills, where like a chart unrolled
Lie town and hamlet girt with woody lea
And dewy lawns and the unchanging sea?
Long leagues of ocean whitening to the sky
Sever our path from lands of infancy.
Our homes are lost us, lost the song and rhyme,
The hearth’s red glow, the stories of old time,
Com on the holm-land, fruit upon the tree
And the far-hallowed seats of memory.
But clear our faith as April’s first sunrise,
Which bursts the dark and cheers the lonely eyes:
No faltering shakes their steadfastness whose ways
Lie on the King’s Path to the end of days.
Ay! on the King’s Path! Men have toiled and bled
On the old quest; and we, with the king-like head,
Fronting the sword of monarchs and their scorn,
Have dared their terrors; and have trod forlorn
A prouder path than captains of great might
Fair with the pomp and panoply of fight.
Ours is the weary way, which knows no end
Save with the coming of great Death, the Friend;
Ours is the ageless day which sees no close
Till the last sunset bring the set of woes.
Each moment throngs with strife, the lists are built,
The untiring foe is near to ride a-tilt.
Our arm is never slack, our eyes are sore
With dust of tumult surging evermore:
While, like a clarion, rings the immortal word,
“Not peace I bring, not comfort, but a sword.”
What came you out to seek? A wilderness
Untilled, untouched, a home of loneliness
Set in some forest haunt whose trackless deeps
Darken the shining dawn? The wild deer sleeps
On fields which ye must sow, and by the spring,
Which now is stirred but by the mere-fowl’s wing,
The austere chant of thanksgiving must rise
And rugged hearths smoke to the morning skies.
Ours was the quiet lot, where each new day
Brought the old duties. Clear our passage lay
‘Mid sunlit meadows; smoothly through each stage
Life’s journey ran, an easy pilgrimage.
So fond our hopes; but sudden came the frost,
Untimely, bitter, and our peace was lost.
“Quit ye like men” — Who wills it, let him hear,
And his the faith which casteth out all fear!
Steeled in his heart to bid the long good-night,
Unblenched he fronts the desert and the fight.
What came ye out to seek? Regret and tears
And the long void of immemorial years?
Not so, my children. Shall a man be upbraid
The Lord who him and all his joys hath made?
He, the poor creature, born of grief and shame,
A clot of dust, a spark of heavenly flame!
Shall he by seeking find the majesty
That plants its footsteps on the hills and sea?
For man the servant’s task, the bond-slave’s place,
To toil and see not of his labour’s grace.
The wide creation travaileth in pain;
And shall the pigmy in his griefs complain?
Our lot hath blessings. Fare we near or far,
Our quiet mind shall light its evening star;
Wearied with toil, our bed in desert lands
Shall be the old green couch not made with hands;
The twilights cool our mead when day is done,
And the sweet comfort of the morning sun.
For us, unasked, the autumn fruit shall glow,
The loud fire crackle when the winters blow.
Ours the forgotten life, the elder birth
Of men unwearied in the ancient earth.
Though o’er our path the wrack of battle roll,
No wars perplex the sabbath of our soul.
What though the body be a sacrifice
To the fierce sun or the inclement skies,
The lurking wild beast or the savage king,
We are not sad for all their threatening.
Life is not meat nor drink nor raiment fine,
But a man’s courage and the fire divine.
Yea, hearts insurgent ‘mid the obedient crowd
We ever bore, and walked upon the loud
And perilous road of honour. Man may fall
And yet attain. And he who hears the call,
And tracks the gleam through rock and wood and fen,
Haps on the treasure hid from petty men.
And as in desert sands the holy race,
Fleeing from Egypt to their destined place,
Nursing their hope through pity and distress,
Set up a shrine amid the wilderness;
So we, lone outlaws in these evening lands,
Yet to the past hold forth unfaltering hands,
And bear old faiths in vanguard of our wars,
And set our eyes upon the ancient stars.
Then forth my children! lo! the gold of dawn
Bums on yon eastern hill; the grassy lawn,
The tangled forests, fire with mom; the beams
Of a new sun fall on the virgin streams.
Clear sings the bird of hope, and far and nigh
Winds wake the embattled silence of the sky.
The shining footprints of the light to be
Tremble and glow along the inviolate sea.
The world awakes for you, the young the strong;
And we, the old, who wait and wait not long
On the last call, give you a glad God-speed,
True heart in peril and stout arm in need,
While with untroubled eyes we watch and pray
Till the brief dark that fadeth into day.
Ballad for Grey Weather
1898
Cold blows the drift on the hill,
Sere is the heather,
High goes the wind and shrill,
Mirk is the weather.
Stout be the front I show,
Come what the gods send!
Plaided and girt I go
Forth to the world’s end.
My brain is the stithy of years,
My heart the red gold
Which the gods with sharp anguish and tears
Have wrought from the old.
In the shining first dawn o’ the world
I was old as the sky, —
The morning dew on the field
Is no younger than I.
I am the magician of life,
The hero of runes;
The sorrows of eld and old strife
Ring clear in my tunes.
The sea lends her minstrel voice,
The storm-cloud its grey;
And ladies have wept at my notes,
Fair ladies and gay.
My home is the rim of the mist,
The ring of the spray.
The hart has his corrie, the hawk has her nest,
But I — the Lost Way.
Come twilight or morning, come winter or spring,
Come leisure, come war,
I tarry not, I, but my b
urden I sing
Beyond and afar.
I sing of lost hopes and old kings,
And the maids of the past.
Ye shiver adread at my strings,
But ye bear them at last.
I sing of vain quests and the grave, —
Fools tremble, afraid.
I sing of hot life, and the brave
Go forth, undismayed.
I sleep by the well-head of joy
And the fountain of pain.
Man lives, loves, and fights, and then is not, —
I only remain.
Ye mock me and hold me to scorn, —
I seek not your grace.
Ye gird me with terror — forlorn,
I laugh in your face.
Lady Keith’s Lament
1898
This poem appeared in ‘A Lost Lady of Old Years’ (1899).
“A’are gane, the gude, the kindly,
Low in the moss and far on the sea,
Men o’ the North, men o’ the muirlands,
Brave to battle and laith to flee.
I was aince a lady o’pride,
High my hame abune the heather;
Now my silken gown I tine,
I maun fare in wind and weather.”
“Kin and kith in weary battle
By stranger waters across the faem
Fell, and dying had mind o’ sweet Argos,
The man of auld and the hills of hame
The ship is rocking by the pier,
The hour draws nigh when we maun pairt.
Then fare thee weel, my loved, my dear,
Bide I canna, though breaks my hert.”
“But though I now maun wander dowie,
And drap the tear on cheek sae pale,
Yet shall our dule be turned to joy,
For God maun let the richt prevail.
My father was a guid lord’s son,
My mither was an earl’s daughter;
And I’ll be Lady Keith again
The day the King comes ower the water.”
The Gipsy’s Song to the Lady Cassilis
1898
The door is open wide, my love,
The air is bright and free;
Adown the stair, across the hall,
And then — the world and me;
The bare grey bent, the running stream,
The fire beside the shore;
And we will bid the hearth farewell,
And never seek it more,
My love,
And never crave it more.
And you will wear no silken gown,
No maid shall bind your hair;
The yellow broom shall be your gem,
Your braid the heather rare.
Athwart the moor, adown the hill,
Across the world away; —
The path is long for happy hearts
That sing to greet the day,
My love,
That sing to greet the day.
And at the last no solemn stole
Shall on thy breast be laid;
No mumbling priest shall speed thy soul,
No charnel vault thee shade.
But by the shadowed hazel copse,
Aneath the greenwood tree,
Where airs are soft and waters sing,
Thou’lt ever sleep by me,
My love,
Thou’lt ever sleep by me.
The door is open to the wall,
The air is bright and free;
Adown the stair, across the hall,
And then — the world and me;
The bare grey bent, the running stream,
The fire beside the shore,
And we will bid the hearth farewell,
And never seek it more,
My love,
And never crave it more.
And you shall wear no silken gown,
No maid shall bind your hair;
The yellow broom shall be your gem,
Your braid the heather rare.
Athwart the moor, adown the hill,
Across the world away;
The path is long for happy hearts
That sing to greet the day,
My love,
That sing to greet the day.
When morning cleaves the eastern grey
And the lone hills are red;
When sunsets light the evening way
And birds are quieted;
In autumn noon and spring-tide dawn,
By hill and dale and sea,
The world shall sing its ancient song
Of hope and joy for thee,
My love,
Of hope and joy for thee.
And at the last no solemn stole
Shall on thy breast be laid;
No mumbling priest shall speed thy soul,
No charnel vault thee shade.
But by the shadowed hazel copse,
Aneath the greenwood tree
Where airs are soft and waters sing,
Thou’lt ever sleep by me,
My love,
Thou’lt ever sleep by me.
The Soldier of Fortune
1899
I have seen thy face in the foray, I have heard thy voice in the fray,
When the stars shrunk in the silence or the great midnights blew;
Men have worn their steel-blades, seeking by night and day,
Selling their souls for the vain dreams, — I have followed the true.
Frosts have dulled the scabbard, suns have furrowed the thong,
And the great winds of the north-west have steeled the vagrant eye;
So through the world I wander, haggard and fierce and strong,
Seeking the goal I see not, toiling I tell not why.
I have loved all good things, song and foray and wine,
The hearth’s red glow at the even, the gladsome face of a friend,
The sun and snows of the hill-lands, the sting of the winter’s brine,
Dawn and noon and the twilight, day and the day-light’s end.
I have ridden the old path, ridden it fierce and strong,
By camp and city and moorland and the grey face of the sea;
Wrath abides on my forehead, but at my heart a song,
The ancient wayfaring ballad, the royal chaunt of the free.
For ever in cloud or May-tide thy voice has been in my ear,
In the quivering mists of battle thy face has shone like a star;
Never the steel ranks broke when the Lord sent forth His fear,
But thy hand has held my bridle and girt my soul for war.
I am broken and houseless, lost my clan and my name,
A stranger treads on my homelands, no heart remembereth me.
But be thou my portion, lady of stars and flame,
Little I ask of the red gold, having the winds and thee.
The Last Song of Oisin
(1901)
Here is the cold, and there the sun and spring-tide,
Here the grey dunes, and there the meads of peace,
Here the dim silence, there the joys of song-tide,
Dull longing here, and pain that shall not cease.
Lo! I am wrinkled, old, and worn unsightly,
Weary my step and faint my faltering knee,
Yet was I joyful once, and blithe, and knightly,
In the lost lands adown the western sea.
From hut and hall the little peoples hasten:
Crooked they come, and fickle in their ways:
They toil and sweat with weary breath to chasten
The niggard earth through melancholy days.
And black-stoled men with dirge and chant assail them,
And pedlar monarchs fatten on their woe.
Then at the even, when their sinews fail them,
From the great toil to the great dark they go.
I was a lord and prince in the Far Islands,
Where in the seas the dawn and twilight die,
Sweet with the winds of mom, the scent of highlands,
The blush of fruit, the gold of western sky.
There dwell the kings who rode the kingly questing,
The bards who chanted in the long ago,
There the high warriors from the battle resting
Drink the full cups which the immortals know.
Among the lilied fields of the Hereafter
Dwell they whom all men sought the wide world through,
Star-eyed, bright-tressed, before whose tears and laughter
Steel turned to wax, and rosemary to me.
More faint and far than elfin bells in May-time
Comes their dear voice across the sundering snow,
And through the mist and sleet of this dark daytime
Their rose-fringed garments trail and gleam and go.
I shiver! Lo! the little peoples cluster,
Poor twisted things that stare and, wondering, flee.
‘Tis even; from afar the toilers muster;
A little bell rings by the cold grey sea.
They laugh and flaunt among their barren places,
Poor joyless mirth, poor passionless base tears!
A coward death grins from their pallid faces,
For truth has fled with the old kingly years.
My breath is heavy. Haste thou, Death the master,
Come with the great winds from the shoreless deep!
Carry me far into the hills, O! faster,
Through white-fanged pass to the still place of sleep.
Snow blinds my eyes: I faint: a light is glowing:
The last shrill music in the tempest rings.
And the great midnight, wide and wild and blowing,
Gathers my heart into its wandering wings.
The Semitic Spirit Speaks (1902/1903)
Before was made the earth and sea
Or Adam sprang from God his sire,
Of equal parts of guile and mire
The Lord in jest created me.
Though men may curse and men may laud,
Even now as when the world was young,
Inserting in my cheek my tongue,
I am the oldest kind of Fraud.
For me the courage of the lare,
The humour of the affair is mine,
My tastes are even of the swine,
