He's gone.

I do not understand.

I only know

That as he turned to go

And waved his hand

In his young eyes a sudden glory shone:

And I was dazzled by a sunset glow.

And he was gone.

 

23rd April, 1915.

CONTENTS

Rupert Brooke
William Denis Browne
Tenants
Sea-change
Gold
The Old Bed
Trees
Oblivion
Retreat
Colour
Night
The Orphans
The Pessimist
?
The Sweet-Tooth
Girl's Song
The Ice Cart
To E. M.
Marriage
Roses
For G.
Home

RUPERT BROOKE

I.

Your face was lifted to the golden sky

Ablaze beyond the black roofs of the square,

As flame on flame leapt, flourishing in air

Its tumult of red stars exultantly,

To the cold constellations dim and high;

And as we neared, the roaring ruddy flare

Kindled to gold your throat and brow and hair

Until you burned, a flame of ecstasy.

 

The golden head goes down into the night

Quenched in cold gloom--and yet again you stand

Beside me now with lifted face alight,

As, flame to flame, and fire to fire you burn...

Then, recollecting, laughingly you turn,

And look into my eyes and take my hand.

II.

Once in my garret--you being far away

Tramping the hills and breathing upland air,

Or so I fancied--brooding in my chair,

I watched the London sunshine feeble and grey

Dapple my desk, too tired to labour more,

When, looking up, I saw you standing there,

Although I'd caught no footstep on the stair,

Like sudden April at my open door.

 

Though now beyond earth's farthest hills you fare,

Song-crowned, immortal, sometimes it seems to me

That, if I listen very quietly,

Perhaps I'll hear a light foot on the stair,

And see you, standing with your angel air,

Fresh from the uplands of eternity.

III.

Your eyes rejoiced in colour's ecstasy

Fulfilling even their uttermost desire,

When, over a great sunlit field afire

With windy poppies, streaming like a sea

Of scarlet flame that flaunted riotously

Among green orchards of that western shire,

You gazed as though your heart could never tire

Of life's red flood in summer revelry.

 

And as I watched you little thought had I

How soon beneath the dim low-drifting sky

Your soul should wander down the darkling way,

With eyes that peer a little wistfully,

Half-glad, half-sad, remembering, as they see

Lethean poppies, shrivelling ashen grey.

IV.

October chestnuts showered their perishing gold

Over us as beside the stream we lay

In the Old Vicarage garden that blue day,

Talking of verse and all the manifold

Delights a little net of words may hold,

While in the sunlight water-voles at play

Dived under a trailing crimson bramble-spray,

And walnuts thudded ripe on soft black mould.

 

Your soul goes down unto a darker stream

Alone, O friend, yet even in death's deep night

Your eyes may grow accustomed to the dark,

And Styx for you may have the ripple and gleam

Of your familiar river, and Charon's bark

Tarry by that old garden of your delight.

WILLIAM DENIS BROWNE

(GALLIPOLI, 1915)

Night after night we two together heard

The music of the Ring,

The inmost silence of our being stirred

By voice and string.

 

Though I to-night in silence sit, and you

In stranger silence sleep,

Eternal music stirs and thrills anew

The severing deep.

TENANTS

Suddenly, out of dark and leafy ways,

We came upon the little house asleep

In cold blind stillness, shadowless and deep,

In the white magic of the full moon-blaze.

Strangers without the gate, we stood agaze,

Fearful to break that quiet, and to creep

Into the home that had been ours to keep

Through a long year of happy nights and days

 

So unfamiliar in the white moon-gleam,

So old and ghostly like a house of dream

It seemed, that over us there stole the dread

That even as we watched it, side by side,

The ghosts of lovers, who had lived and died

Within its walls, were sleeping in our bed.

SEA-CHANGE

Wind-flicked and ruddy her young body glowed

In sunny shallows, splashing them to spray;

But when on rippled, silver sand she lay,

And over her the little green waves flowed,

Coldly translucent and moon-coloured showed

Her frail young beauty, as if rapt away

From all the light and laughter of the day

To some twilit, forlorn sea-god's abode.

 

Again into the sun with happy cry

She leapt alive and sparkling from the sea,

Sprinkling white spray against the hot blue sky,

A laughing girl ... and yet, I see her lie

Under a deeper tide eternally

In cold moon-coloured immortality.

GOLD

All day the mallet thudded, far below

My garret, in an old ramshackle shed

Where ceaselessly, with stiffly nodding head

And rigid motions ever to and fro

A figure like a puppet in a show

Before the window moved till day was dead,

Beating out gold to earn his daily bread,

Beating out thin fine gold-leaf blow on blow.

 

And I within my garret all day long

Unto that ceaseless thudding tuned my song,

Beating out golden words in tune and time

To that dull thudding, rhyme on golden rhyme.

But in my dreams all night in that dark shed

With aching arms I beat fine gold for bread.

THE OLD BED

Streaming beneath the eaves, the sunset light

Turns the white walls and ceiling to pure gold,

And gold, the quilt and pillows on the old

Fourposter bed--all day a cold drift-white--

As if, in a gold casket glistering bright,

The gleam of winter sunshine sought to hold

The sleeping child safe from the dark and cold

And creeping shadows of the coming night.

 

Slowly it fades: and stealing through the gloom

Home-coming shadows throng the quiet room,

Grey ghosts that move unrustling, without breath,

To their familiar rest, and closer creep

About the little dreamless child asleep

Upon the bed of bridal, birth and death.

TREES

(To LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE)

The flames half lit the cavernous mystery

Of the over-arching elm that loomed profound

And mountainous above us, from the ground

Soaring to midnight stars majestically,

As, under the shelter of that ageless tree

In a rapt dreaming circle we lay around

The crackling faggots, listening to the sound

Of old words moving in new harmony.

 

And as you read, before our wondering eyes

Arose another tree of mighty girth--

Crested with stars though rooted in the earth,

Its heavy-foliaged branches, lit with gleams

Of ruddy firelight and the light of dreams--

Soaring immortal to eternal skies.

OBLIVION

Near the great pyramid, unshadowed, white,

With apex piercing the white noon-day blaze,

Swathed in white robes beneath the blinding rays

Lie sleeping Bedouins drenched in white-hot light.

About them, searing to the tingling sight

Swims the white dazzle of the desert ways

Where the sense shudders, witless and adaze,

In a white void with neither depth nor height.

 

Within the black core of the pyramid

Beneath the weight of sunless centuries

Lapt in dead night King Cheops lies asleep;

Yet in the darkness of his chamber hid

He knows no black oblivion more deep

Than that blind white oblivion of noon skies.

RETREAT

Broken, bewildered by the long retreat

Across the stifling leagues of southern plain,

Across the scorching leagues of trampled grain,

Half-stunned, half-blinded, by the trudge of feet

And dusty smother of the August heat,

He dreamt of flowers in an English lane,

Of hedgerow flowers glistening after rain--

All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet.

 

All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet--

The innocent names kept up a cool refrain--

All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet,

Chiming and tinkling in his aching brain,

Until he babbled like a child again--

"All-heal and willow-herb and meadow-sweet."

COLOUR

A blue-black Nubian plucking oranges

At Jaffa by a sea of malachite

In red tarboosh, green sash, and flowing white

Burnous--among the shadowy memories

That haunt me yet by these bleak northern seas

He lives for ever in my eyes' delight,

Bizarre, superb in young immortal might--

A god of old barbaric mysteries.

 

Maybe he lived a life of lies and lust:

Maybe his bones are now but scattered dust

Yet, for a moment he was life supreme

Exultant and unchallenged: and my rhyme

Would set him safely out of reach of time

In that old heaven where things are what they seem.

NIGHT

Vesuvius, purple under purple skies

Beyond the purple, still, unrippling sea;

Sheer amber lightning, streaming ceaselessly

From heaven to earth, dazzling bewildered eyes

With all the terror of beauty; thus day dies

That dawned in blue, unclouded innocency;

And thus we look our last on Italy

That soon, obscured by night, behind us lies.

 

And night descends on us, tempestuous night,

Night, torn with terror, as we sail the deep,

And like a cataract down a mountain-steep

Pours, loud with thunder, that red perilous fire...

Yet shall the dawn, O land of our desire,

Show thee again, re-orient, crowned with light!

THE ORPHANS

At five o'clock one April morn

I met them making tracks,

Young Benjamin and Abel Horn,

With bundles on their backs.

 

Young Benjamin is seventy-five,

Young Abel, seventy-seven--

The oldest innocents alive

Beneath that April heaven.

 

I asked them why they trudged about

With crabby looks and sour--

"And does your mother know you're out

At this unearthly hour?"

 

They stopped: and scowling up at me

Each shook a grizzled head,

And swore; and then spat bitterly,

As with one voice they said:

 

"Homeless, about the country-side

We never thought to roam;

But mother, she has gone and died,

And broken up the home."

THE PESSIMIST

His body bulged with puppies--little eyes

Peeped out of every pocket, black and bright;

And with as innocent, round-eyed surprise

He watched the glittering traffic of the night.

 

"What this world's coming to I cannot tell,"

He muttered, as I passed him, with a whine--

"Things surely must be making slap for hell,

When no one wants these little dogs of mine."

?

Mooning in the moonlight

I met a mottled pig,

Grubbing mast and acorn,

On the Gallows Rigg.

 

"Tell, oh, tell me truly,

While I wander blind,

Do your peepy pig's eyes

Really see the wind--

 

"See the great wind flowing

Darkling and agleam,

Through the fields of heaven,

In a crystal stream?

 

"Do the singing eddies

Break on bough and twig,

Into silvery sparkles

For your eyes, O pig?

 

"Do celestial surges

Sweep across the night,

Like a sea of glory

In your blessed sight?

 

"Tell, oh, tell me truly!"

But the mottled pig

Grubbing mast and acorns

Did not care a fig.

THE SWEET-TOOTH

Taking a turn after tea

Through orchards of Mirabelea,

Where clusters of yellow and red

Dangled and glowed overhead,

Who should I see

But old Timothy,

Hale and hearty as hearty could be--

Timothy under a crab-apple tree.

 

His blue eyes twinkling at me,

Munching and crunching with glee,

And wagging his wicked old head,

"I've still got a sweet-tooth," he said.

"A hundred and three

Come January,

I've one tooth left in my head," said he--

Timothy under the crab-apple tree.

GIRL'S SONG

I saw three black pigs riding

In a blue and yellow cart--

Three black pigs riding to the fair

Behind the old grey dappled mare--

But it wasn't black pigs riding

In a gay and gaudy cart

That sent me into hiding

With a flutter in my heart.

 

I heard the cart returning,

The jolting jingling cart--

Returning empty from the fair

Behind the old jog-trotting mare--

But it wasn't the returning

Of a clattering, empty cart

That sent the hot blood burning

And throbbing through my heart

THE ICE CART

Perched on my city office-stool,

I watched with envy, while a cool

And lucky carter handled ice...

And I was wandering in a trice,

Far from the grey and grimy heat

Of that intolerable street,

O'er sapphire berg and emerald floe,

Beneath the still, cold ruby glow

Of everlasting Polar night,

Bewildered by the queer half-light,

Until I stumbled, unawares,

Upon a creek where big white bears

Plunged headlong down with flourished heels,

And floundered after shining seals

Through shivering seas of blinding blue.

And as I watched them, ere I knew,

I'd stripped, and I was swimming, too,

Among the seal-pack, young and hale,

And thrusting on with threshing tail,

With twist and twirl and sudden leap

Through crackling ice and salty deep--

Diving and doubling with my kind,

Until, at last, we left behind

Those big, white, blundering bulks of death,

And lay, at length, with panting breath

Upon a far untravelled floe,

Beneath a gentle drift of snow--

Snow drifting gently, fine and white,

Out of the endless Polar night,

Falling and falling evermore

Upon that far untravelled shore,

Till I was buried fathoms deep

Beneath that cold white drifting sleep--

Sleep drifting deep,

Deep drifting sleep...

 

The carter cracked a sudden whip:

I clutched my stool with startled grip,

Awakening to the grimy heat

Of that intolerable street.

TO E. M.

(IN MEMORY OF R. B.)

The night we saw the stacks of timber blaze

To terrible golden fury, young and strong

He watched between us with dream-dazzled gaze

Aflame, and burning like a god of song,

As we together stood against the throng

Drawn from the midnight of the city ways.

 

To-night the world about us is ablaze

And he is dead, is dead ... Yet, young and strong

He watches with us still with deathless gaze

Aflame, and burning like a god of song,

As we together stand against the throng

Drawn from the bottomless midnight of hell's ways.

 

10th June, 1915.

MARRIAGE

Going my way of old,

Contented more or less,

I dreamt not life could hold

Such happiness.

 

I dreamt not that love's way

Could keep the golden height

Day after happy day,

Night after night.

ROSES

Red roses floating in a crystal bowl

You bring, O love; and in your eyes I see,

Blossom on blossom, your warm love of me

Burning within the crystal of your soul--

Red roses floating in a crystal bowl.

FOR G.

All night under the moon

Plovers are flying

Over the dreaming meadows of silvery light,

Over the meadows of June,

Flying and crying--

Wandering voices of love in the hush of the night.

 

All night under the moon,

Love, though we're lying

Quietly under the thatch, in silvery light

Over the meadows of June

Together we're flying--

Rapturous voices of love in the hush of the night.

 

1915

HOME

I. RETURN

Under the brown bird-haunted eaves of thatch

The hollyhocks in crimson glory burned

Against black timbers and old rosy brick,

And over the green door in clusters thick

Hung tangled passion-flowers, when we returned

To our own threshold: and with hand on latch

We stood a moment in the sunset gleam

And looked upon our home as in a dream.

 

Rapt in a golden glow of still delight

Together on the threshold in the sun

We stood rejoicing that we two had won

To this deep golden peace ere day was done,

That over gloomy plain and storm-swept height

We two, O love, had won to home ere night.

II. CANDLE-LIGHT

Where through the open window I could see

The supper-table in the golden light

Of tall white candles--brasses glinting bright

On the black gleaming board, and crockery

Coloured like gardens of old Araby--

In your blue gown against the walls of white

You stood adream, and in the starry night

I felt strange loneliness steal over me.

 

You stood with eyes upon the candle flame

That kindled your thick hair to burnished gold,

As in a golden spell that seemed to hold

My heart's love rapt from me for evermore...

And then you stirred, and opening the door,

Into the starry night you breathed my name.

III. FIRELIGHT

Against the curtained casement wind and sleet

Rattle and thresh, while snug by our own fire

In dear companionship that naught may tire

We sit--you listening, sewing in your seat

Half-dreaming in the glow of light and heat,

I reading some old tale of love's desire

That swept on gold wings to disaster dire

Then rose re-orient from black defeat.

 

I close the book, and louder yet the storm

Threshes without. Your busy hands are still;

And on your face and hair the light is warm,

As we sit gazing on the coals' red gleam

In a gold glow of happiness, and dream

Diviner dreams the years shall yet fulfil.

IV. MIDNIGHT

Between the midnight pillars of black elms

The old moon hangs, a thin, cold, amber flame

Over low ghostly mist: a lone snipe wheels

Through shadowy moonshine, droning; and there steals

Into my heart a fear without a name

Out of primæval night's resurgent realms,

Unearthly terror, chilling me with dread

As I lie waking wide-eyed on the bed.

 

And then you turn towards me in your sleep

Murmuring, and with a sigh of deep content

You nestle to my breast and over me

Steals the warm peace of you; and, all fear spent,

I hold you to me sleeping quietly,

Till I, too, sink in slumber sound and deep.

*      *      *      *      *      *      *      *

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED.

By Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

BATTLE. Crown 8vo. 1s. net. [Third Thousand]

Some Extracts from early Press Notices

"With the exception of Rupert Brooke's five sonnets, '1914,' 'Battle' contains, we think, the only English poems about the war--so far--for which anyone would venture to predict a future on their own merits."--The Athenæum.

"Among the many books which the war has drawn forth it may safely be said that none contains more concentrated poignancy than the tiny pamphlet of verses which Mr. Gibson entitles 'Battle.' Sympathy and irony strive for the palm throughout. The little book is a monument to the wantonness of it all, to the cheapness of life in war, the carelessness as to the individual, the disregard alike of promise and performance, the elimination of personality. When war is declared, said Napoleon, there are no longer men, there is only a man. Napoleon spoke for the clear-sighted general in command; Mr. Gibson speaks for the perplexed soldier under orders, and, doing so, illustrates the other side of the medal. In war, he says, in effect, there are no longer men, there is no longer man, there are only sports of chance, pullers of triggers, bewildered fulfillers of instructions, cynical acceptors of destiny."--The Times.

"Each separate vision, though realised in the particular case, has universal range--that is where the greatness of the art lies."--GERALD GOULD in The Herald.

"They are extremely objective; a series of short dramatic lyrics, written with the simplicity and directness which Mr. Gibson chiefly studies in his exceptional art, expressing, without any implied comment, but with profoundly implied emotion, the feelings, thoughts, sensations of soldiers in the midst of the actual experiences of modern warfare. The emotion they imply is not patriotic, but simply and broadly human; this is what war means, we feel; these exquisite bodies insulted by agony and death, these incalculable spirits devastated. What all this destruction is for is taken for granted. Modern warfare is not beautiful, and Mr. Gibson does not try to gloss it in the usual way, by underlining the heroism and endurance it evokes. All that is simply assumed in these poems, just as the common soldier himself assumes it. An almost appalling heroism is unemphatically revealed in them as the fundamental fact of usual human nature. This is the ground-bass, and above its constancy plays the ever-varying truth of what fighting means to some individual piece of human nature. The poems are moments isolated and fixed out of the infinite changing flux of human reaction to the terrible galvanism of war. But that thrilling galvanism does not alter human kind; and sometimes Mr. Gibson forces us to realise the vast unreason of war by bringing into withering contact with its current a mind still preoccupied with the habits of peace."--MR. LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE in The Quarterly Review.

"Mr. Gibson's 'Battle' is the first considerable attempt (and we may easily expect that it will remain by far the most important attempt) to look at the war through the main plane, the basic facet, of the crystal of English war-spirit."

"Are they true? Does experience vouch for them? As a matter of fact, the veracity of these poems has been already vouched for from the trenches; we make no doubt that the more they are known, the more experience will endorse them."

"But, though these poems would have failed if their psychology had been plainly faulty, their worth as psychological documents is not the main thing about them. The main thing about them is just that they are extraordinary poems; by means of their psychology, no less and no more than by means of their metre, their rhyme, their intellectual form and their concrete imagery, they pierce us with flashing understanding of what the war is and means--not merely what it is to these individual pieces of ordinary human nature who are injured by it and who yet dominate it, but, by evident implication, what the war is in itself, as a grisly multitudinous whole. It seems to us beyond question that Mr. Gibson's 'Battle' is one of the most remarkable results the war has had in literature."--The Nation.

BY THE SAME WRITER

STONEFOLDS. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. net

(Uniform with 'Thoroughfares' and 'Borderlands')

LONDON: ELKIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET, W.

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRIENDS ***