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Title: Tides: A Book of Poems

Author: John Drinkwater

Release date: July 16, 2016 [eBook #52584]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Bryan Ness, Carolyn Jablonski and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TIDES: A BOOK OF POEMS *** 



bookcover









This is the first book issued by The Beaumont Press


20 copies have been printed on Japanese vellum


signed by the author and numbered 1 to 20 and


250 copies on hand-made paper numbered 21 to 270


This is No. 232










 TIDES








A BOOK OF POEMS BY


JOHN DRINKWATER








DEDICATION 
 
 TO GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON










Because the darling chivalries,


That light your battle-line, belong


To music’s heart no less than these,


I bring you my campaigns of song.










CONTENTS











 
Page



 



DEDICATION
5



 



A MAN’S DAUGHTER
 




There is an old woman who looks each night
9



 



VENUS IN ARDEN
 




Now Love, her mantle thrown,
11



 



COTSWOLD LOVE
 




Blue skies are over Cotswold
12



 



THE MIDLANDS
 




Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill
13



 



MAY GARDEN
 




A shower of green gems on my apple tree
15



 



PLOUGH
 




The snows are come in early state,
16



 



POLITICS
 




You say a thousand things,
17



 



BIRMINGHAM—1916
 




Once Athens worked and went to see the play,
19



 



INSCRIPTION FOR A WAR MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN
 




They nothing feared whose names I celebrate.
20



 



TREASON
 




What time I write my roundelays,
21



 



MY ESTATE
 




I have four loves, four loves are mine,
22



 



WITH DAFFODILS
 




I send you daffodils, my dear,
23



 



FOR A GUEST ROOM
 




All words are said,
24



 



ON READING THE MS. OF DOROTHY WORDSWORTH’S JOURNALS
 




To-day I read the poet’s sister’s book,
25



 



THE OLD WARRIOR
 




Sorrow has come to me,
26



 



THE GUEST
 




Sometimes I feel that death is very near,
27



 



REVERIE
 




Here in the unfrequented noon,
28



 



PENANCES
 




These are my happy penances. To make
36



 



COLOPHON
37






9

 A MAN’S DAUGHTER










There is an old woman who looks each night


Out of the wood.


She has one tooth, that isn’t too white.


She isn’t too good.






She came from the north looking for me,


About my jewel.


Her son, she says, is tall as can be;


But, men say, cruel.






My girl went northward, holiday making,


And a queer man spoke


At the woodside once when night was breaking,


And her heart broke.






For ever since she has pined and pined,


A sorry maid;


Her fingers are slack as the wool they wind,


Or her girdle-braid.






So now shall I send her north to wed,


Who here may know


Only the little house of the dead


To ease her woe?






Or keep her for fear of that old woman,


As a bird quick-eyed,


And her tall son who is hardly human,


At the woodside?






10She is my babe and my daughter dear,


How well, how well.


Her grief to me is a fourfold fear,


Tongue cannot tell.






And yet I know that far in that wood


Are crumbling bones,


And a mumble mumble of nothing that’s good,


In heathen tones.






And I know that frail ghosts flutter and sigh


In brambles there,


And never a bird or beast to cry—


Beware, beware,—






While threading the silent thickets go


Mother and son,


Where scrupulous berries never grow,


And airs are none.






And her deep eyes peer at eventide


Out of the wood,


And her tall son waits by the dark woodside,


For maidenhood.






And the little eyes peer, and peer, and peer;


And a word is said.


And some house knows, for many a year,


But years of dread.









11

 VENUS IN ARDEN










Now love, her mantle thrown,


Goes naked by,


Threading the woods alone,


Her royal eye


Happy because the primroses again


Break on the winter continence of men.






I saw her pass to-day


In Warwickshire,


With the old imperial way,


The old desire,


Fresh as among those other flowers they went,


More beautiful for Adon’s discontent.






Those other years she made


Her festival


When the blue eggs were laid


And lambs were tall,


By the Athenian rivers while the reeds


Made love melodious for the Ganymedes.






And now through Cantlow brakes,


By Wilmcote hill,


To Avon-side, she makes


Her garlands still,


And I who watch her flashing limbs am one


With youth whose days three thousand years are done.









12

 COTSWOLD LOVE










Blue skies are over Cotswold


And April snows go by,


The lasses turn their ribbons


For April’s in the sky,


And April is the season


When Sabbath girls are dressed,


From Rodboro’ to Campden,


In all their silken best.






An ankle is a marvel


When first the buds are brown,


And not a lass but knows it


From Stow to Gloucester town.


And not a girl goes walking


Along the Cotswold lanes


But knows men’s eyes in April


Are quicker than their brains.






It’s little that it matters,


So long as you’re alive,


If you’re eighteen in April,


Or rising sixty-five,


When April comes to Amberley


With skies of April blue,


And Cotswold girls are briding


With slyly tilted shoe.









13

 THE MIDLANDS










Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill


Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky


Deep as the bedded violets that fill


March woods with dusky passion. As I lie


Abed between cool walls I watch the host


Of the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain,


And drowsily the habit of these most


Beloved of English lands moves in my brain,


While silence holds dominion of the dark,


Save when the foxes from the spinneys bark.






I see the valleys in their morning mist


Wreathed under limpid hills in moving light,


Happy with many a yeoman melodist:


I see the little roads of twinkling white


Busy with fieldward teams and market gear


Of rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tell


The many-minded changes of the year,


Who know why crops and kine fare ill or well;


I see the sun persuade the mist away,


Till town and stead are shining to the day.






I see the wagons move along the rows


Of ripe and summer-breathing clover-flower,


I see the lissom husbandman who knows


Deep in his heart the beauty of his power,


As, lithely pitched, the full-heaped fork bids on


The harvest home. I hear the rickyard fill


14With gossip as in generations gone,


While wagon follows wagon from the hill.


I think how, when our seasons all are sealed,


Shall come the unchanging harvest from the field.






I see the barns and comely manors planned


By men who somehow moved in comely thought,


Who, with a simple shippon to their hand,


As men upon some godlike business wrought;


I see the little cottages that keep


Their beauty still where since Plantaganet


Have come the shepherds happily to sleep,


Finding the loaves and cups of cider set;


I see the twisted shepherds, brown and old,


Driving at dusk their glimmering sheep to fold.






And now the valleys that upon the sun


Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again,


And the last light upon the wolds is done,


And silence falls on flocks and fields and men;


And black upon the night I watch my hill,


And the stars shine, and there an owly wing


Brushes the night, and all again is still,


And, from this land of worship that I sing,


I turn to sleep, content that from my sires


I draw the blood of England’s midmost shires.









15

 MAY GARDEN










A shower of green gems on my apple tree


This first morning of May


Has fallen out of the night, to be


Herald of holiday—


Bright gems of green that, fallen there,


Seem fixed and glowing on the air.






Until a flutter of blackbird wings


Shakes and makes the boughs alive,


And the gems are now no frozen things,


But apple-green buds to thrive


On sap of my May garden, how well


The green September globes will tell.






Also my pear tree has its buds,


But they are silver yellow,


Like autumn meadows when the floods


Are silver under willow,


And here shall long and shapely pears


Be gathered while the autumn wears.






And there are sixty daffodils


Beneath my wall....


And jealousy it is that kills


This world when all


The spring’s behaviour here is spent


To make the world magnificent.









16

 PLOUGH










The snows are come in early state,


And love shall now go desolate


If we should keep too close a gate.






Over the woods a splendour falls


Of death, and grey are the Gloucester walls,


And grey the skies for burials.






But secret in the falling snow


I see the patient ploughman go,


And watch the quiet furrows grow.









17

 POLITICS










You say a thousand things,


Persuasively,


And with strange passion hotly I agree,


And praise your zest,


And then


A blackbird sings


On April lilac, or fieldfaring men,


Ghostlike, with loaded wain,


Come down the twilit lane


To rest,


And what is all your argument to me?






Oh yes—I know, I know,


It must be so—


You must devise


Your myriad policies,


For we are little wise,


And must be led and marshalled, lest we keep


Too fast a sleep


Far from the central world’s realities.


Yes, we must heed—


For surely you reveal


Life’s very heart; surely with flaming zeal


You search our folly and our secret need;


And surely it is wrong


To count my blackbird’s song,


My cones of lilac, and my wagon team,


More than a world of dream.


18But still


A voice calls from the hill—


I must away—


I cannot hear your argument to-day.









19

 BIRMINGHAM—1916










Once Athens worked and went to see the play,


And Thomas Atkins kissed the girls of Rome,


In council in Victoria Square to-day


Are grey-beard Nazarenes, with shop and home


And counting-house and all the friendly cares


That Joseph knew; in Bull Ring markets meet


Gossips as once at Babylonian fairs,


And Helen walks in Corporation Street.






Now Troy is Homer; and of Nazareth


Grave histories are of one love that was strong;


Athens is beauty; Rome an immortal death;


And Babylon immortal in a song....


Perplexed as ours these cities were of old;


And shall our name greatly as these be told?









20

 INSCRIPTION FOR A WAR MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN










They nothing feared whose names I celebrate.


Greater than death they died; and their estate


Is here on Cotswold comradely to live


Upon your lips in every draught I give.









21

 TREASON










What time I write my roundelays,


I am as proud as princes gone,


Who built their empires in old days,


As Tamburlaine or Solomon;


And wisely though companions then


Say well it is and well I sing,


Assured above the praise of men


I am a solitary king.






But when I leave that straiter mood,


That lonely hour, and put aside


The continence of solitude,


I fall in treason to my pride,


And if a witling’s word be spent


Upon my song in jealousy,


In anger and in argument


I am as derelict as he.









22

 MY ESTATE










I have four loves, four loves are mine,


My wife who makes all beauty be,


Tom Squire and Master Candleshine,


And then my grey dog Timothy.






My wife makes bramble-berry pies,


And she is bright as bramble dew,


She knows the way the weather flies,


And tells me every thing to do.






Tom Squire he is my neighbour man,


His apples fall upon my grass,


And in the morning, when we can,


We say good-morning as we pass.






And Master Candleshine the True,


Considering some fault of mine,


Says—“Had it been for me to do,


It had been hard for Candleshine.”






When I have thought all things that be,


And drop the latch and climb the stair,


And want an eye for company,


My grey dog Timothy is there.






My loves are one and two and three


And four they are, good loves of mine,


Tom Squire, my grey dog Timothy,


My wife and Master Candleshine.









23

 WITH DAFFODILS










I send you daffodils, my dear,


For these are emperors of spring,


And in my heart you keep so clear


So delicate an empery,


That none but emperors could be


Ambassadors endowed to bring


My messages of honesty.






My mind makes faring to and fro,


Deft or bewildered, dark or kind,


That not the eye of God may know


Which motion is of true estate


And which a twisted runagate


Of all the farings of my mind,


And which has honesty for mate.






Only my hope for you is clean


Of scandal’s use, and though, may be,


Far rangers have my passions been,—


Since thus the word of Eden went,—


Yet of the springs of my content,


My very wells of honesty,


Are you the only firmament.









24

 FOR A GUEST ROOM










All words are said,


And may it fall


That, crowning these,


You here shall find


A friendly bed,


A sheltering wall,


Your body’s ease,


A quiet mind.






May you forget


In happy sleep


The world that still


You hold as friend,


And may it yet


Be ours to keep


Your friendly will


To the world’s end.






For he is blest


Who, fixed to shun


All evil, when


The worst is known,


Counts, east and west,


When life is done,


His debts to men


In love alone.









25

ON READING THE MS. OF DOROTHY 
 WORDSWORTH’S JOURNALS










To-day I read the poet’s sister’s book,


She who so comforted those Grasmere days


When song was at the flood, and thence I took


A larger note of fortitude and praise.






And in her ancient fastness beauty stirred,


And happy faith was in my heart again,


Because the virtue of a simple word


Was durable above the lives of men.






For reading there that quiet record made


Of skies and hills, domestic hours, and free


Traffic of friends, and song, and duty paid,


I touched the wings of immortality.









26

 THE OLD WARRIOR










Sorrow has come to me,


Making the world to be


Of sunken cheek;


Faded my fields, and of


Names that were most to love,


I dare not speak.






Would that my soul were blind,


Since duty brings to mind


All that is done,


Saying, ‘How gladly you


Walked with your chosen few


Under my sun.’






I am an alien now;


Tell me, good stranger, how


Best may be borne


His grief who comes at night


To his own window-light


Friendless, forlorn.






No. I will pass. Again


Of my delight in men


Nothing shall tell.


Now is my travel where


My lost companions fare;


Onward. Farewell.









27

 THE GUEST










Sometimes I feel that death is very near,


And, with half-lifted hand,


Looks in my eyes, and tells me not to fear,


But walk his friendly land,


Comrade with him, and wise


As peace is wise.






Then, greatly though my heart with pity moves


For dear imperilled loves,


I somehow know


That death is friendly so,


A comfortable spirit; one who takes


Long thought for all our sakes.






I wonder; will he come that friendly way,


That guest, or roughly in the appointed day?


And will, when the last drops of life are spilt,


My soul be torn from me,


Or, like a ship truly and trimly built,


Slip quietly to sea?









28

 REVERIE










Here in the unfrequented noon,


In the green hermitage of June,


While overhead a rustling wing


Minds me of birds that do not sing


Until the cooler eve rewakes


The service of melodious brakes,


And thoughts are lonely rangers, here,


In shelter of the primrose year,


I curiously meditate


Our brief and variable state.






I think how many are alive


Who better in the grave would thrive,


If some so long a sleep might give


Better instruction how to live;


I think what splendours had been said


By darlings now untimely dead


Had death been wise in choice of these,


And made exchange of obsequies.






I think what loss to government


It is that good men are content,


Well knowing that an evil will


Is folly-stricken too, and still


Itself considers only wise


For all rebukes and surgeries,


That evil men should raise their pride


To place and fortune undefied.


29I think how daily we beguile


Our brains, that yet a little while


And all our congregated schemes


And our perplexity of dreams,


Shall come to whole and perfect state.


I think, however long the date


Of life may be, at last the sun


Shall pass upon campaigns undone.






I look upon the world and see


A world colonial to me,


Whereof I am the architect,


And principal and intellect,


A world whose shape and savour spring


Out of my lone imagining,


A world whose nature is subdued


For ever to my instant mood,


And only beautiful can be


Because of beauty is in me.


And then I know that every mind


Among the millions of my kind


Makes earth his own particular


And privately created star,


That earth has thus no single state,


Being every man articulate.


Till thought has no horizon then


I try to think how many men


There are to make an earth apart


In symbol of the urgent heart,


For there are forty in my street,


30And seven hundred more in Greet,


And families at Luton Hoo,


And there are men in China, too.






And what immensity is this


That is but a parenthesis


Set in a little human thought,


Before the body comes to naught.


There at the bottom of the copse


I see a field of turnip tops,


I see the cropping cattle pass


There in another field, of grass,


And fields and fields, with seven towns,


A river, and a flight of downs,


Steeples for all religious men,


Ten thousand trees, and orchards ten,


A mighty span that curves away


Into blue beauty, and I lay


All this as quartered on a sphere


Hung huge in space, a thing of fear


Vast as the circle of the sky


Completed to the astonished eye;


And then I think that all I see,


Whereof I frame immensity


Globed for amazement, is no more


Than a shire’s corner, and that four


Great shires being ten times multiplied


Are small on the Atlantic tide


As an emerald on a silver bowl ...


And the Atlantic to the whole


31Sweep of this tributary star


That is our earth is but ... and far


Through dreadful space the outmeasured mind


Seeks to conceive the unconfined.






I think of Time. How, when his wing


Composes all our quarrelling


In some green corner where May leaves


Are loud with blackbirds on all eves,


And all the dust that was our bones


Is underneath memorial stones,


Then shall old jealousies, while we


Lie side by side most quietly,


Be but oblivion’s fools, and still


When curious pilgrims ask—‘What skill


Had these that from oblivion saves?’—


My song shall sing above our graves.






I think how men of gentle mind,


And friendly will, and honest kind,


Deny their nature and appear


Fellows of jealousy and fear;


Having single faith, and natural wit


To measure truth and cherish it,


Yet, strangely, when they build in thought,


Twisting the honesty that wrought


In the straight motion of the heart,


Into its feigning counterpart


That is the brain’s betrayal of


The simple purposes of love;


32And what yet sorrier decline


Is theirs when, eager to confine


No more within the silent brain


Its habit, thought seeks birth again


In speech, as honesty has done


In thought; then even what had won


From heart to brain fades and is lost


In this pretended pentecost,


This their forlorn captivity


To speech, who have not learnt to be


Lords of the word, nor kept among


The sterner climates of the tongue ...


So truth is in their hearts, and then


Falls to confusion in the brain,


And, fading through this mid-eclipse,


It perishes upon the lips.






I think how year by year I still


Find working in my dauntless will


Sudden timidities that are


Merely the echo of some far


Forgotten tyrannies that came


To youth’s bewilderment and shame;


That yet a magisterial gown,


Being worn by one of no renown


And half a generation less


In years than I, can dispossess


Something my circumspecter mood


Of excellence and quietude,


And if a Bishop speaks to me


33I tremble with propriety.






I think how strange it is that he


Who goes most comradely with me


In beauty’s worship, takes delight


In shows that to my eager sight


Are shadows and unmanifest,


While beauty’s favour and behest


To me in motion are revealed


That is against his vision sealed;


Yet is our hearts’ necessity


Not twofold, but a common plea


That chaos come to continence,


Whereto the arch-intelligence


Richly in divers voices makes


Its answer for our several sakes.






I see the disinherited


And long procession of the dead,


Who have in generations gone


Held fugitive dominion


Of this same primrose pasturage


That is my momentary wage.


I see two lovers move along


These shadowed silences of song,


With spring in blossom at their feet


More incommunicably sweet


To their hearts’ more magnificence,


Than to the common courts of sense,


Till joy his tardy closure tells


34With coming of the curfew bells.


I see the knights of spur and sword


Crossing the little woodland ford,


Riding in ghostly cavalcade


On some unchronicled crusade.


I see the silent hunter go


In cloth of yeoman green, with bow


Strung, and a quiver of grey wings.


I see the little herd who brings


His cattle homeward, while his sire


Makes bivouac in Warwickshire


This night, the liege and loyal man


Of Cavalier or Puritan.


And as they pass, the nameless dead,


Unsung, uncelebrate, and sped


Upon an unremembered hour


As any twelvemonth fallen flower,


I think how strangely yet they live


For all their days were fugitive.






I think how soon we too shall be


A story with our ancestry.






I think what miracle has been


That you whose love among this green


Delightful solitude is still


The stay and substance of my will,


The dear custodian of my song,


My thrifty counsellor and strong,


Should take the time of all time’s tide


35That was my season, to abide


On earth also; that we should be


Charted across eternity


To one elect and happy day


Of yellow primroses in May.






The clock is calling five o’clock,


And Nonesopretty brings her flock


To fold, and Tom comes back from town


With hose and ribbons worth a crown,


And duly at The Old King’s Head


They gather now to daily bread,


And I no more may meditate


Our brief and variable state.









36

 PENANCES










These are my happy penances. To make


Beauty without a Covenant; to take


Measure of time only because I know


That in death’s market-place I still shall owe


Service to beauty that shall not be done;


To know that beauty’s doctrine is begun


And makes a close in sacrifice; to find


In beauty’s courts the unappeasable mind.












HERE ENDS TIDES A BOOK OF POEMS


by John Drinkwater the Typography and Binding


arranged by Cyril William Beaumont Printed


on his Press in London and Published by


him at 75 Charing Cross Road in the


City of Westminster Completed


on the first day of September


MDCCCCXVII







colophon



SIMPLEX MUNDITIIS
THE BEAUMONT PRESS










The Binding has been


executed by F. Sangorski and G. Sutcliffe







back cover











 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE




The author’s spelling and punctuation
has been maintained.


Repeating titles in the front of the book have been reduced.