Part 26

A WILDING little stubble flower The sickle scorned which cut for wheat, Such was our hope in that dark hour When nought save uses held the street, And daily pleasures, daily needs, With barren vision, looked ahead. And still the same result of seeds Gave likeness ’twixt the live and dead.

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FROM labours through the night, outworn, Above the hills the front of morn We see, whose eyes to heights are raised, And the world’s wise may deem us crazed. While yet her lord lies under seas, She takes us as the wind the trees’ Delighted leafage; all in song We mount to her, to her belong.

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THIS love of nature, that allures to take Irregularity for harmony Of larger scope than our hard measures make, Cherish it as thy school for when on thee The ills of life descend.

IL Y A CENT ANS

THAT march of the funereal Past behold; How Glory sat on Bondage for its throne; How men, like dazzled insects, through the mould Still worked their way, and bled to keep their own.

We know them, as they strove and wrought and yearned; Their hopes, their fears; what page of Life they wist: At whiles their vision upon us was turned, Baffled by shapes limmed loosely on thick mist.

Beneath the fortress bulk of Power they bent Blunt heads, adoring or in shackled hate, All save the rebel hymned him; and it meant A world submitting to incarnate Fate.

From this he drew fresh appetite for sway, And of it fell: whereat was chorus raised, How surely shall a mad ambition pay Dues to Humanity, erewhile amazed.

’Twas dreamed by some the deluge would ensue, So trembling was the tension long constrained; A spirit of faith was in the chosen few, That steps to the millennium had been gained.

But mainly the rich business of the hour, Their sight, made blind by urgency of blood, Embraced; and facts, the passing sweet or sour, To them were solid things that nought withstood.

Their facts are going headlong on the tides, Like commas on a line of History’s page; Nor that which once they took for Truth abides, Save in the form of youth enlarged from age.

Meantime give ear to woodland notes around, Look on our Earth full-breasted to our sun: So was it when their poets heard the sound, Beheld the scene: in them our days are one.

What figures will be shown the century hence? What lands intact? We do but know that Power From piety divorced, though seen immense, Shall sink on envy of the humblest flower.

Our cry for cradled Peace, while men are still The three-parts brute which smothers the divine, Heaven answers: Guard it with forethoughtful will, Or buy it; all your gains from War resign.

A land, not indefensibly alarmed, May see, unwarned by hint of friendly gods, Between a hermit crab at all points armed, And one without a shell, decisive odds.

YOUTH IN AGE

ONCE I was part of the music I heard On the boughs or sweet between earth and sky, For joy of the beating of wings on high My heart shot into the breast of the bird.

I hear it now and I see it fly, And a life in wrinkles again is stirred, My heart shoots into the breast of the bird, As it will for sheer love till the last long sigh.

EPITAPHS

TO A FRIEND LOST (TOM TAYLOR)

WHEN I remember, friend, whom lost I call, Because a man beloved is taken hence, The tender humour and the fire of sense In your good eyes; how full of heart for all, And chiefly for the weaker by the wall, You bore that lamp of sane benevolence; Then see I round you Death his shadows dense Divide, and at your feet his emblems fall. For surely are you one with the white host, Spirits, whose memory is our vital air, Through the great love of Earth they had: lo, these, Like beams that throw the path on tossing seas, Can bid us feel we keep them in the ghost, Partakers of a strife they joyed to share.

M. M.

WHO call her Mother and who calls her Wife Look on her grave and see not Death but Life.

THE LADY C. M.

TO them that knew her, there is vital flame In these the simple letters of her name. To them that knew her not, be it but said, So strong a spirit is not of the dead.

ON THE TOMBSTONE OF JAMES CHRISTOPHER WILSON (d. APRIL 11, 1884) IN HEADLEY CHURCHYARD, SURREY