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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

Echoeth

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

sup;

Lo, my suit pleads

That thou, Isaian coal of fire,

Touch from yon altar my poor mouth's

desire,

And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds.

To thine own shape

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,

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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?

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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

star.

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.

TO A SNOW-FLAKE

[1897.]

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.

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A. E. HOUSMAN

[1859-]

SELECTIONS FROM A SHROPSHIRE

LAD

[1896.]

IV

REVEILLE

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.

IX

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.

XII

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

XIII

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.

593

XIX

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

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XXI

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.

XXIV

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."

XXV

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.

XXVI

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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