And yet thy radiant leash he feels. Since the hunt o' the world begun, Lashed with terror, leashed with longing, The mighty course is ever run;
Pricked with terror, leashed with longing, Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun.
Since the hunt o' the world began,
With love that trembleth, fear that loveth, Thou join'st the woman to the man; And Life with Death
In obscure nuptials moveth, Commingling alien, yet affined, breath.
Thou art the incarnated Light Whose Sire is aboriginal, and beyond Death and resurgence of our day and night; From him is thy vicegerent wand With double potence of the black and white. Giver of Love, and Beauty, and Desire, The terror, and the loveliness, and purging, The deathfulness and lifefulness of fire! Samson's riddling meanings merging In thy twofold sceptre meet: Out of thy minatory might, Burning Lion, burning Lion, Comes the honey of all sweet,
And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat.
And though, by thine alternate breath, Every kiss thou dost inspire
Back from the windy vaultages of death; Yet thy clear warranty above
Augurs the wings of death too must Occult reverberations stir of love Crescent and life incredible; That even the kisses of the just Go down not unresurgent to the dust. Yea, not a kiss which I have given, But shall triumph upon my lips in heaven, Or cling a shameful fungus there in hell.
Know'st thou me not, O Sun? Yea, well Thou know'st the ancient miracle, The children know'st of Zeus and May; And still thou teachest them, O splendent Brother,
To incarnate, the antique way,
The truth which is their heritage from their Sire
In sweet disguise of flesh from their sweet Mother.
My fingers thou hast taught to con Thy flame-chorded psalterion,
Till I can translate into mortal wire- Till I can translate passing well- The heavenly harping harmony, Melodious, sealed, inaudible,
Which makes the dulcet psalter of the world's desire.
Thou whisperest in the Moon's white ear, And she does whisper into mine,
By night together, I and she With her virgin voice divine, The things I cannot half so sweetly tell As she can sweetly speak, I sweetly hear.
By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord,
Yet she for Earth, and both in thee. Light out of light!
Resplendent and prevailing Word Of the Unheard!
Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee Did the wise heathen bend an idle knee; And in an age of faith grown frore If I too shall adore,
Be it accounted unto me A bright sciential idolatry!
God has given thee visible thunders To utter thine apocalypse of wonder And what want I of prophecy,
That at the sounding from thy station Of thy flagrant trumpet, see
The seals that melt, the open revelation? Or who a God-persuading angel needs, That only heeds
The rhetoric of thy burning deeds? Which but to sing, if it may be,
In worship-warranting moiety So I would win
In such a song as hath within
A smouldering core of mystery,
Brimmed with nimbler meanings up
Than hasty Gideons in their hands may
Lo, my suit pleads
That thou, Isaian coal of fire,
Touch from yon altar my poor mouth's
And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds.
Thou round'st the chrysolite of the grape, Bind'st thy gold lightnings in his veins; Thou storest the white garners of the rains. Destroyer and preserver, thou Who medicinest sickness, and to health Art the unthanked marrow of its wealth; To those apparent sovereignties we bow And bright appurtenances of thy brow! Thy proper blood dost thou not give, That Earth, the gusty Mænad, drink and dance?
Art thou not life of them that live? Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwell
Within our body as a tabernacle! Thou bittest with thine ordinance The jaws of Time, and thou dost mete The unsustainable treading of his feet. Thou to thy spousal universe
Art Husband, she thy Wife and Church; Who in most dusk and vidual curch,
Our darkened search,
And sinful vigil desolate.
Yea, biune in imploring dumb,
Essential Heavens and corporal Earth await;
The Spirit and the Bride say: Come! Lo, of thy Magians I the least
Haste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs,
To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced Regions and odorous of Song's traded East. Thou, for the life of all that live The victim daily born and sacrificed;
To whom the pinion of this longing verse Beats but with fire which first thyself did give,
To thee, O Sun- or is 't perchance, to Christ?
Increase most heavy tyrannies;
And vengeance unto heaven cries For multiplied injustice of dove-eyes. Daisies, that little children pull, As ye are weak, be merciful!
O hide your eyes! they are to me Beautiful insupportably.
Or be but conscious ye are fair, And I your loveliness could bear; But, being fair so without art,
Ye vex the silted memories of my heart!
As a pale ghost yearning strays With sundered gaze,
'Mid corporal presences that are To it impalpable such a bar
Sets you more distant than the morning
Such wonder is on you and amaze, I look and marvel if I be Indeed the phantom, or are ye? The light is on your innocence Which fell from me.
The fields ye still inhabit whence My world-acquainted treading strays, The country where I did commence; And though ye shine to me so near, So close to gross and visible sense, Between us lies impassable year on year. To other time and far-off place Belongs your beauty: silent thus, Though to others naught you tell, To me your ranks are rumorous Of an ancient miracle.
Vain does my touch your petals graze,
I touch you not; and, though ye blossom here,
Your roots are fast in alienated days.
Ye there are anchored, while Time's stream Has swept me past them: your white ways And infantile delights do seem
To look in on me like a face, Dead and sweet, come back through dream, With tears, because for old embrace It has no arms. These hands did toy, Children, with you when I was child, And in each other's eyes we smiled: Not yours, not yours the grievous-fair Apparelling
With which you wet mine eyes; you wear, Ah me, the garment of the grace
I wove you when I was a boy;
O mine, and not the year's, your stolen Spring!
And since ye wear it,
Hide your sweet selves! I cannot bear it. For, when ye break the cloven earth
With your young laughter and endearment, No blossomy carillon 'tis of mirth To me; i see my slaughtered joy Bursting its cerement.
WHAT heart could have thought you?— Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you, From argentine vapour?- "God was my shaper. Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me, From curled silver vapour,
To lust of His mind:
Thou could'st not have thought me! So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind, And His graver of frost."
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
'IN NO STRANGE LAND' [1913.]
O WORLD invisible, we view thee, O World intangible, we touch thee, O World unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Does the fish soar to find the ocean, The eagle plunge to find the air- That we ask of the stars in motion If they have rumour of thee there? Not where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars!- The drift of pinions, would we hearken, Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
SELECTIONS FROM A SHROPSHIRE
WAKE: the silver dusk returning Up the beach of darkness brims, And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims. Wake the vaulted shadow shatters, Trampled to the floor it spanned, And the tent of night in tatters
Straws the sky-pavilioned land. Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying:
Hear the drums of morning play; Hark, the empty highways crying "Who'll beyond the hills away?" Towns and countries woo together, Forelands beacon, belfries call; Never lad that trod on leather
Lived to feast his heart with all.
Up, lads: thews that lie and cumber Sunlit pallets never thrive; Morns abed and daylight slumber Were not meant for man alive.
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover: Breath's a ware that will not keep Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep.
On moonlit heath and lonesome bank The sheep beside me graze; And yon the gallows used to clank Fast by the four cross ways.
A careless shepherd once would keep The flocks by moonlight there," And high amongst the glimmering sheep The dead man stood on air.
They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail: The whistles blow forlorn, And trains all night groan on the rail To men that die at morn.
There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail tonight, Or wakes, as may betide,
A better lad, if things went right, Than most that sleep outside.
Hanging in chains was called keeping sheep by moonlight.
And naked to the hangman's noose The morning clocks will ring A neck God made for other use Than strangling in a string.
And sharp the link of life will snap, And dead on air will stand
Heels that held up as straight a chap As treads upon the land.
So here I'll watch the night and wait To see the morning shine, When he will hear the stroke of eight And not the stroke of nine;
And wish my friend as sound a sleep As lads' I did not know, That shepherded the moonlit sheep A hundred years ago.
When I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file Warm and breathing through the street Where I lodge a little while,
If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong, Let me mind the house of dust Where my sojourn shall be long.
In the nation that is not
Nothing stands that stood before; There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;
Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride
When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free." But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me. When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, "The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue.' And I am two-and-twenty, And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG
The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl's
BREDON* HILL
IN summertime on Bredon
The bells they sound so clear;
Round both the shires they ring them In steeples far and near, A happy noise to hear.
Here of a Sunday morning My love and I would lie, And see the coloured counties, And hear the larks so high About us in the sky.
The bells would ring to call her In valleys miles away: "Come all to church, good people; Good people, come and pray." But here my love would stay.
And I would turn and answer Among the springing thyme,
"Oh, peal upon our wedding,
And we will hear the chime,
And come to church in time." Pronounced Breedon,
But when the snows at Christmas On Bredon top were strown, My love rose up so early
And stole out unbeknown And went to church alone. They tolled the one bell only, Groom there was none to see, The mourners followed after, And so to church went she, And would not wait for me. The bells they sound on Bredon, And still the steeples hum. "Come all to church, good people,”- Oh, noisy bells, be dumb; I hear you, I will come.
Say, lad, have you things to do? Quick then, while your day's at prime. Quick, and if 'tis work for two, Here am I, man: now's your time.
Send me now, and I shall go; Call me, I shall hear you call; Use me ere they lay me low Where a man's no use at all; Ere the wholesome flesh decay,
And the willing nerve be numb, And the lips lack breath to say, "No, my lad, I cannot come."
This time of year a twelvemonth past, When Fred and I would meet, We needs must jangle, till at last We fought and I was beat.
So then the summer fields about, Till rainy days began,
Rose Harland on her Sundays out Walked with the better man.
The better man she walks with still,
Though now 'tis not with Fred:
A lad that lives and has his will Is worth a dozen dead.
Fred keeps the house all kinds of weather,
And clay's the house he keeps; When Rose and I walk out together Stock-still lies Fred and sleeps.
Along the field as we came by A year ago, my love and I, The aspen over stile and stone Was talking to itself alone.
"Oh who are these that kiss and pass? A country lover and his lass; Two lovers looking to be wed; And time shall put them both to bed, But she shall lie with earth above, And he beside another love."
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