Fear? Yes . . . I heard you saying
In an Oxford common-room
Where the hearth-light's kindly raying
Stript the empanelled walls of gloom,
Silver groves of candles playing
In the soft wine turned to bloom—
At the word I see you now
Blandly push the wine-boat's prow
Round the mirror of that scored
Yellow old mahogany board—
I confess to one fear! this,
To be buried alive!
My Lord,
Your fancy has played amiss.
Fear not. When in farewell
While guns toll like a bell
And the bell tolls like a gun
Westminster towers call
Folk and state to your funeral,
And robed in honours won,
Beneath the cloudy pall
Of the lifted shreds of glory
You lie in the last stall
Of that grey dormitory—
Fear not lest mad mischance
Should find you lapt and shrouded
Alive in helpless trance
Though seeming death-beclouded:
For long ere so you rest
On that transcendent bier
Shall we not have addressed
One summons, one last test,
To your reluctant ear?
O believe it! we shall have uttered
In ultimate entreaty
A name your soul would hear
Howsoever thickly shuttered;
We shall have stooped and muttered
England! in your cold ear. . . .
Then, if your great pulse leap
No more, nor your cheek burn,
Enough; then shall we learn
'Tis time for us to weep.
Herbert Trench.
"Ye have robbed," said he, "ye have slaughtered and made an end,
Take your ill-got plunder, and bury the dead;
What will ye more of your guest and sometime friend?"
"Blood for our blood," they said.
He laughed: "If one may settle the score for five,
I am ready; but let the reckoning stand till day:
I have loved the sunlight as dearly as any alive."
"You shall die at dawn," said they.
He flung his empty revolver down the slope,
He climb'd alone to the Eastward edge of the trees;
All night long in a dream untroubled of hope
He brooded, clasping his knees.
He did not hear the monotonous roar that fills
The ravine where the Yassin river sullenly flows;
He did not see the starlight on the Laspur hills,
Or the far Afghan snows.
He saw the April noon on his books aglow,
The wistaria trailing in at the window wide;
He heard his father's voice from the terrace below
Calling him down to ride.
He saw the gray little church across the park,
The mounds that hid the loved and honoured dead;
The Norman arch, the chancel softly dark,
The brasses black and red.
He saw the School Close, sunny and green,
The runner beside him, the stand by the parapet wall,
The distant tape, and the crowd roaring between
His own name over all.
He saw the dark wainscot and timbered roof,
The long tables, and the faces merry and keen;
The College Eight and their trainer dining aloof,
The Dons on the daïs serene.
He watch'd the liner's stem ploughing the foam,
He felt her trembling speed and the thrash of her screw;
He heard her passengers' voices talking of home,
He saw the flag she flew.
And now it was dawn. He rose strong on his feet,
And strode to his ruin'd camp below the wood;
He drank the breath of the morning cool and sweet;
His murderers round him stood.
Light on the Laspur hills was broadening fast,
The blood-red snow-peaks chilled to a dazzling white;
He turn'd, and saw the golden circle at last,
Cut by the eastern height.
"O glorious Life, Who dwellest in earth and sun,
I have lived, I praise and adore Thee."
A sword swept.
Over the pass the voices one by one
Faded, and the hill slept.
Henry Newbolt.
Shall we but turn from braggart pride
Our race to cheapen and defame?
Before the world to wail, to chide,
And weakness as with vaunting claim?
Ere the hour strikes, to abdicate
The steadfast spirit that made us great,
And rail with scolding tongues at fate?
If England's heritage indeed
Be lost, be traded quite away
For fatted sloth and fevered greed;
If, inly rotting, we decay;
Suffer we then what doom we must,
But silent, as befits the dust
Of them whose chastisement was just.
But rather, England, rally thou
Whatever breathes of faith that still
Within thee keeps the undying vow
And dedicates the constant will.
For such yet lives, if not among
The boasters, or the loud of tongue,
Who cry that England's knell is rung.
The fault of heart, the small of brain,
In thee but their own image find;
Beyond such thoughts as these contain
A mightier Presence is enshrined.
Nor meaner than their birthright grown
Shall these thy latest sons be shown,
So thou but use them for thine own.
By those great spirits burning high
In our home's heaven, that shall be stars
To shine, when all is history
And rumour of old, idle wars;
By all those hearts which proudly bled
To make this rose of England red;
The living, the triumphant dead;
By all who suffered and stood fast
That Freedom might the weak uphold,
And in men's ways of wreck and waste
Justice her awful flower unfold;
By all who out of grief and wrong
In passion's art of noble song
Made Beauty to our speech belong;
By those adventurous ones who went
Forth overseas, and, self-exiled,
Sought from far isle and continent
Another England in the wild,
For whom no drums beat, yet they fought
Alone, in courage of a thought
Which an unbounded future wrought;
Yea, and yet more by those to-day
Who toil and serve for naught of gain,
That in thy purer glory they
May melt their ardour and their pain;
By these and by the faith of these,
The faith that glorifies and frees,
Thy lands call on thee, and thy seas.
If thou hast sinned, shall we forsake
Thee, or the less account us thine?
Thy sores, thy shames on us we take.
Flies not for us thy famed ensign?
Be ours to cleanse and to atone;
No man this burden bears alone;
England, our best shall be thine own.
Lift up thy cause into the light!
Put all the factious lips to shame!
Our loves, our faiths, our hopes unite
And strike into a single flame!
Whatever from without betide,
O purify the soul of pride
In us; thy slumbers cast aside;
And of thy sons be justified!
Laurence Binyon.
"He leapt to arms unbidden,
Unneeded, over-bold;
His face by earth is hidden,
His heart in earth is cold.
"Curse on the reckless daring
That could not wait the call,
The proud fantastic bearing
That would be first to fall!"
O tears of human passion,
Blur not the image true;
This was not folly's fashion,
This was the man we knew.
Henry Newbolt.
When we fought campaigns (in the long Christmas rains)
With soldiers spread in troops on the floor,
I shot as straight as you, my losses were as few,
My victories as many, or more.
And when in naval battle, amid cannon's rattle,
Fleet met fleet in the bath,
My cruisers were as trim, my battleships as grim,
My submarines cut as swift a path.
Or, when it rained too long, and the strength of the strong
Surged up and broke a way with blows,
I was as fit and keen, my fists hit as clean,
Your black eye matched my bleeding nose.
Was there a scrap or ploy in which you, the boy,
Could better me? You could not climb higher,
Ride straighter, run as quick (and to smoke made you sick)
. . . But I sit here, and you're under fire.
Oh, it's you that have the luck, out there in blood and muck:
You were born beneath a kindly star;
All we dreamt, I and you, you can really go and do,
And I can't, the way things are.
In a trench you are sitting, while I am knitting
A hopeless sock that never gets done.
Well, here's luck, my dear;—and you've got it, no fear;
But for me . . . a war is poor fun.
Rose Macaulay.
His wage of rest at nightfall still
He takes, who sixty years has known
Of ploughing over Cotsall hill
And keeping trim the Cotsall stone.
He meditates the dusk, and sees
Folds of his wonted shepherdings
And lands of stubble and tall trees
Becoming insubstantial things.
And does he see on Cotsall hill—
Thrown even to the central shire—
The funnelled shapes forbidding still
The stranger from his cottage fire?
John Drinkwater.
These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs, and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.
Rupert Brooke.
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Rupert Brooke.
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time:
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are duet
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Laurence Binyon.
What gods have met in battle to arouse
This whirling shadow of invisible things,
These hosts that writhe amid the shattered sods?
O Father, and O Mother of the gods,
Is there some trouble in the heavenly house?
We who are captained by its unseen kings
Wonder what thrones are shaken in the skies,
What powers who held dominion o'er our will
Let fall the sceptre, and what destinies
The younger gods may drive us to fulfil.
Have they not swayed us, earth's invisible lords,
With whispers and with breathings from the dark?
The very border stones of nations mark
Where silence swallowed some wild prophet's words
That rang but for an instant and were still,
Yet were so burthened with eternity,
They maddened all who heard to work their will,
To raise the lofty temple on the hill,
And many a glittering thicket of keen swords
Flashed out to make one law for land and sea,
That earth might move with heaven in company.
The cities that to myriad beauty grew
Were altars raised unto old gods who died,
And they were sacrificed in ruins to
The younger gods who took their place of pride;
They have no brotherhood, the deified,
No high companionship of throne by throne,
But will their beauty still to be alone.
What is a nation but a multitude
United by some god-begotten mood,
Some hope of liberty or dream of power
That have not with each other brotherhood
But warred in spirit from their natal hour,
Their hatred god-begotten as their love
Reverberations of eternal strife?
For all that fury breathed in human life,
Are ye not guilty, answer, ye above?
Ah, no, the circle of the heavenly ones,
That ring of burning, grave, inflexible powers,
Array in harmony amid the deep
The shining legionaries of the suns,
That through their day from dawn to twilight keep
The peace of heaven, and have no feuds like ours.
The morning Stars their labours of the dawn
Close at the advent of the Solar Kings,
And these with joy their sceptres yield, withdrawn
When the still Evening Stars begin their reign,
And twilight time is thrilled with homing wings
To the All-Father being turned again.
No, not on high begin divergent ways,
The galaxies of interlinked lights
Rejoicing on each other's beauty gaze,
'Tis we who do make errant all the rays
That stream upon us from the astral heights.
Love in our thickened air too redly burns;
And unto vanity our beauty turns;
Wisdom, that gently whispers us to part
From evil, swells to hatred in the heart.
Dark is the shadow of invisible things
On us who look not up, whose vision fails.
The glorious shining of the heavenly kings
To mould us in their image naught avails,
They weave a robe of many-coloured fire
To garb the spirits thronging in the deep,
And in the upper air its splendours keep
Pure and unsullied, but below it trails
Darkling and glimmering in our earthly mire.
With eyes bent ever earthwards we are swayed
But by the shadows of eternal light,
And shadow against shadow is arrayed
So that one dark may dominate the night.
Though kindred are the lights that cast the shade,
We look not up, nor see how, side by side,
The high originals of all our pride
In crowned and sceptred brotherhood are throned,
Compassionate of our blindness and our hate
That own the godship but the love disowned.
Ah, let us for a little while abate
The outward roving eye, and seek within
Where spirit unto spirit is allied;
There, in our inmost being, we may win
The joyful vision of the heavenly wise
To see the beauty in each other's eyes.
A. E.
Oh shall I never never be home again!
Meadows of England shining in the rain
Spread wide your daisied lawns: your ramparts green
With briar fortify, with blossom screen
Till my far morning—and O streams that slow
And pure and deep through plains and playlands go,
For me your love and all your kingcups store,
And—dark militia of the southern shore,
Old fragrant friends—preserve me the last lines
Of that long saga which you sang me, pines,
When, lonely boy, beneath the chosen tree
I listened, with my eyes upon the sea.
O traitor pines, you sang what life has found
The falsest of fair tales.
Earth blew a far-horn prelude all around,
That native music of her forest home,
While from the sea's blue fields and syren dales
Shadows and light noon spectres of the foam
Riding the summer gales
On aery viols plucked an idle sound.
Hearing you sing, O trees,
Hearing you murmur, "There are older seas,
That beat on vaster sands,
Where the wise snailfish move their pearly towers
To carven rocks and sculptured promont'ries,"
Hearing you whisper, "Lands
Where blaze the unimaginable flowers."
Beneath me in the valley waves the palm,
Beneath, beyond the valley, breaks the sea;
Beneath me sleep in mist and light and calm
Cities of Lebanon, dream-shadow-dim,
Where Kings of Tyre and Kings of Tyre did rule
In ancient days in endless dynasty,
And all around the snowy mountains swim
Like mighty swans, afloat in heaven's pool.
But I will walk upon the wooded hill
Where stands a grove, O pines, of sister pines,
And when the downy twilight droops her wing
And no sea glimmers and no mountain shines
My heart shall listen still.
For pines are gossip pines the wide world through
And full of runic tales to sigh or sing.
'Tis ever sweet through pines to see the sky
Blushing a deeper gold or darker blue.
'Tis ever sweet to lie
On the dry carpet of the needles brown,
And though the fanciful green lizard stir
And windy odours light as thistledown
Breathe from the lavdanon and lavender,
Half to forget the wandering and pain,
Half to remember days that have gone by,
And dream and dream that I am home again!
James Elroy Flecker.
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