Which might have had a more marked effect,

  And pleased the pride of a weaker man that yearned for wine or wife;

  But Fame and the Flagon, for Mr. Mandragon

  — obscured the Simple Life.

  Mr. Mandragon, the Millionaire, I am happy to say, is dead;

  He enjoyed a quiet funeral in a Crematorium shed.

  And he lies there fluffy and soft and grey and certainly quite refined;

  When he might have rotted to flowers and fruit with Adam and all mankind,

  Or been eaten by wolves athirst for blood,

  Or burnt on a good tall pyre of wood,

  In a towering flame, as a heathen should,

  Or even sat with us here at food,

  Merrily taking twopenny ale and pork with a pocket-knife;

  But this was luxury not for one that went for the Simple Life.

  The Song Against Songs

  The song of the sorrow of Melisande is a weary song and a dreary song,

  The glory of Mariana’s grange had got into great decay,

  The song of the Raven Never More has never been called a cheery song,

  And the brightest things in Baudelaire are anything else but gay.

  But who will write us a riding song,

  Or a hunting song or a drinking song,

  Fit for them that arose and rode

  When day and the wine were red?

  But bring me a quart of claret out,

  And I will write you a clinking song,

  A song of war and a song of wine

  And a song to wake the dead.

  The song of the fury of Fragolette is a florid song and a torrid song,

  The song of the sorrow of Tara is sung to a harp unstrung,

  The song of the cheerful Shropshire Lad I consider a perfectly horrid song,

  And the song of the happy Futurist is a song that can’t be sung.

  But who will write us a riding song

  Or a fighting song or a drinking song,

  Fit for the fathers of you and me,

  That knew how to think and thrive?

  But the song of Beauty and Art and Love

  Is simply an utterly stinking song,

  To double you up and drag you down

  And damn your soul alive.

  Me Heart

  I come from Castlepatrick, and me heart is on me sleeve,

  And any sword or pistol boy can hit it with me leave,

  It shines there for an epaulette, as golden as a flame,

  As naked as me ancestors, as noble as me name.

  For I come from Castlepatrick, and me heart is on me sleeve,

  But a lady stole it from me on St. Gallowglass’s Eve.

  The folk that live in Liverpool, their heart is in their boots;

  They go to hell like lambs, they do, because the hooter hoots.

  Where men may not be dancin’, though the wheels may dance all day;

  And men may not be smokin’; but only chimneys may.

  But I come from Castlepatrick, and me heart is on me sleeve,

  But a lady stole it from me on St. Poleander’s Eve.

  The folk that live in black Belfast, their heart is in their mouth,

  They see us making murders in the meadows of the South;

  They think a plough’s a rack, they do, and cattle-calls are creeds,

  And they think we’re burnin’ witches when we’re only burnin’ weeds;

  But I come from Castlepatrick, and me heart is on me sleeve;

  But a lady stole it from me on St. Barnabas’s Eve.

  The Song of the Oak

  The Druids waved their golden knives

  And danced around the Oak

  When they had sacrificed a man;

  But though the learned search and scan,

  No single modern person can

  Entirely see the joke.

  But though they cut the throats of men

  They cut not down the tree,

  And from the blood the saplings sprang

  Of oak-woods yet to be.

  But Ivywood, Lord Ivywood,

  He rots the tree as ivy would,

  He clings and crawls as ivy would

  About the sacred tree.

  King Charles he fled from Worcester fight

  And hid him in an Oak;

  In convent schools no man of tact

  Would trace and praise his every act,

  Or argue that he was in fact

  A strict and sainted bloke,

  But not by him the sacred woods

  Have lost their fancies free,

  And though he was extremely big

  He did not break the tree.

  But Ivywood, Lord Ivywood,

  He breaks the tree as ivy would,

  And eats the woods as ivy would

  Between us and the sea.

  Great Collingwood walked down the glade

  And flung the acorns free,

  That oaks might still be in the grove

  As oaken as the beams above,

  When the great Lover sailors love

  Was kissed by Death at sea.

  But though for him the oak-trees fell

  To build the oaken ships,

  The woodman worshipped what he smote

  And honoured even the chips.

  But Ivywood, Lord Ivywood,

  He hates the tree as ivy would,

  As the dragon of the ivy would

  That has us in his grips.

  The Road to Roundabout

  Some say that Guy of Warwick,

  The man that killed the Cow

  And brake the mighty Boar alive

  Beyond the Bridge at Slough;

  Went up against a Loathly Worm

  That wasted all the Downs,

  And so the roads they twist and squirm

  (If I may be allowed the term)

  From the writhing of the stricken Worm

  That died in seven towns.

  I see no scientific proof

  That this idea is sound,

  And I should say they wound about

  To find the town of Roundabout,

  The merry town of Roundabout,

  That makes the world go round.

  Some say that Robin Goodfellow,

  Whose lantern lights the meads

  (To steal a phrase Sir Walter Scott

  In heaven no longer needs),

  Such dance around the trysting-place

  The moonstruck lover leads;

  Which superstition I should scout

  There is more faith in honest doubt

  (As Tennyson has pointed out)

  Than in those nasty creeds.

  But peace and righteousness (St. John)

  In Roundabout can kiss,

  And since that’s all that’s found about

  The pleasant town of Roundabout,

  The roads they simply bound about

  To find out where it is.

  Some say that when Sir Lancelot

  Went forth to find the Grail,

  Grey Merlin wrinkled up the roads

  For hope that he should fail;

  All roads led back to Lyonesse

  And Camelot in the Vale,

  I cannot yield assent to this

  Extravagant hypothesis,

  The plain, shrewd Briton will dismiss

  Such rumours (=Daily Mail=).

  But in the streets of Roundabout

  Are no such factions found,

  Or theories to expound about,

  Or roll upon the ground about,

  In the happy town of Roundabout,

  That makes the world go round.

  The Song of the Strange Ascetic

  If I had been a Heathen,

  I’d have praised the purple vine,

  My slaves should dig the vineyards,

  And I would drink the wine;

  But Higgins is a Heathen,

  And his slaves grow lean and grey,

  That he may drink some tepid milk

  Exactly twice a day.

  If I had been a Heathen,

  I’d have crowned Neoera’s curls,

  And filled my life with love affairs,

  My house with dancing girls;

  But Higgins is a Heathen,

  And to lecture rooms is forced,

  Where his aunts, who are not married,

  Demand to be divorced.

  If I had been a Heathen,

  I’d have sent my armies forth,

  And dragged behind my chariots

  The Chieftains of the North.

  But Higgins is a Heathen,

  And he drives the dreary quill,

  To lend the poor that funny cash

  That makes them poorer still.

  If I had been a Heathen,

  I’d have piled my pyre on high,

  And in a great red whirlwind

  Gone roaring to the sky;

  But Higgins is a Heathen,

  And a richer man than I;

  And they put him in an oven,

  Just as if he were a pie.

  Now who that runs can read it,

  The riddle that I write,

  Of why this poor old sinner,

  Should sin without delight — ?

  But I, I cannot read it

  (Although I run and run),

  Of them that do not have the faith,

  And will not have the fun.

  The Song of Right and Wrong

  Feast on wine or fast on water,

  And your honour shall stand sure,

  God Almighty’s son and daughter

  He the valiant, she the pure;

  If an angel out of heaven

  Brings you other things to drink,

  Thank him for his kind attentions,

  Go and pour them down the sink.

  Tea is like the East he grows in,

  A great yellow Mandarin

  With urbanity of manner

  And unconsciousness of sin;

  All the women, like a harem,

  At his pig-tail troop along;

  And, like all the East he grows in,

  He is Poison when he’s strong.

  Tea, although an Oriental,

  Is a gentleman at least;

  Cocoa is a cad and coward,

  Cocoa is a vulgar beast,

  Cocoa is a dull, disloyal,

  Lying, crawling cad and clown,

  And may very well be grateful

  To the fool that takes him down.

  As for all the windy waters,

  They were rained like tempests down

  When good drink had been dishonoured

  By the tipplers of the town;

  When red wine had brought red ruin

  And the death-dance of our times,

  Heaven sent us Soda Water

  As a torment for our crimes.

  Who Goes Home?

  In the city set upon slime and loam

  They cry in their parliament “Who goes home?”

  And there comes no answer in arch or dome,

  For none in the city of graves goes home.

  Yet these shall perish and understand,

  For God has pity on this great land.

  Men that are men again; who goes home?

  Tocsin and trumpeter! Who goes home?

  For there’s blood on the field and blood on the foam

  And blood on the body when Man goes home.

  And a voice valedictory.... Who is for Victory?

  Who is for Liberty? Who goes home?

  THE BALLAD OF ST. BARBARA AND OTHER POEMS

  CONTENTS

  TO F. C. IN MEMORIAM PALESTINE, ‘19

  THE BALLAD OF ST. BARBARA

  ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

  THE SWORD OF SURPRISE

  A WEDDING IN WAR-TIME

  THE MYSTERY

  THE MYTH OF ARTHUR

  THE OLD SONG

  THE TRINKETS

  THE PHILANTHROPIST

  ON THE DOWNS

  THE RED SEA

  FOR A WAR MEMORIAL

  MEMORY

  THE ENGLISH GRAVES

  NIGHTMARE

  A SECOND CHILDHOOD

  MEDIÆVALISM

  POLAND

  THE HUNTING OF THE DRAGON

  SONNET

  FANTASIA

  A CHRISTMAS CAROL

  TO CAPTAIN FRYATT

  FOR FOUR GUILDS

  THE CONVERT

  SONGS OF EDUCATION

  TO F. C. IN MEMORIAM PALESTINE, ‘19

  Do you remember one immortal

  Lost moment out of time and space,

  What time we thought, who passed the portal

  Of that divine disastrous place

  Where Life was slain and Truth was slandered

  On that one holier hill than Rome,

  How far abroad our bodies wandered

  That evening when our souls came home?

  The mystic city many-gated,

  With monstrous columns, was your own:

  Herodian stones fell down and waited

  Two thousand years to be your throne.

  In the grey rocks the burning blossom

  Glowed terrible as the sacred blood:

  It was no stranger to your bosom

  Than bluebells of an English wood.

  Do you remember a road that follows

  The way of unforgotten feet,

  Where from the waste of rocks and hollows

  Climb up the crawling crooked street

  The stages of one towering drama

  Always ahead and out of sight ...

  Do you remember Aceldama

  And the jackal barking in the night?

  Life is not void or stuff for scorners:

  We have laughed loud and kept our love,

  We have heard singers in tavern corners

  And not forgotten the birds above:

  We have known smiters and sons of thunder

  And not unworthily walked with them,

  We have grown wiser and lost not wonder;

  And we have seen Jerusalem.

  THE BALLAD OF ST. BARBARA

  (St. Barbara is the patron saint of artillery and of those in

  danger of sudden death.)

  When the long grey lines came flooding upon Paris in the plain,

  We stood and drank of the last free air we never could taste again:

  They had led us back from the lost battle, to halt we knew not where

  And stilled us; and our gaping guns were dumb with our despair.

  The grey tribes flowed for ever from the infinite lifeless lands

  And a Norman to a Breton spoke, his chin upon his hands.

  “There was an end to Ilium; and an end came to Rome;

  And a man plays on a painted stage in the land that he calls home;

  Arch after arch of triumph, but floor beyond falling floor,

  That lead to a low door at last; and beyond there is no door.”

  And the Breton to the Norman spoke, like a small child spoke he,

  And his sea-blue eyes were empty as his home beside the sea:

  “There are more windows in one house than there are eyes to see,

  There are more doors in a man’s house, but God has hid the key:

  Ruin is a builder of windows; her legend witnesseth

  Barbara, the saint of gunners, and a stay in sudden death.”

  It seemed the wheel of the world stood still an instant in its turning,

  More than the kings of the earth that turned with the turning of Valmy mill:

  While trickled the idle tale and the sea-blue eyes were burning,

  Still as the heart of a whirlwind the heart of the world stood still.

  “Barbara the beautiful

  Had praise of lute and pen:

  Her hair was like a summer night

  Dark and desired of men.

  Her feet like birds from far away

  That linger and light in doubt;

  And her face was like a window

  Where a man’s first love looked out.

  Her sire was master of many slaves

  A hard man of his hands;

  They built a tower about her

  In the desolate golden lands,

  Sealed as the tyrants sealed their tombs,

  Planned with an ancient plan,

  And set two windows in the tower

  Like the two eyes of a man.”

  Our guns were set toward the foe; we had no word, for firing.

  Grey in the gateway of St. Gond the Guard of the tyrant shone;

  Dark with the fate of a falling star, retiring and retiring,

  The Breton line went backward and the Breton tale went on.

  “Her father had sailed across the sea

  From the harbour of Africa

  When all the slaves took up their tools

  For the bidding of Barbara.

  She smote the bare wall with her hand

  And bad them smite again;

  She poured them wealth of wine and meat

  To stay them in their pain.

  And cried through the lifted thunder

  Of thronging hammer and hod

  ‘Throw open the third window

  In the third name of God.’

  Then the hearts failed and the tools fell,

  And far towards the foam,

  Men saw a shadow on the sands

  And her father coming home.”

  Speak low and low, along the line the whispered word is flying

  Before the touch, before the time, we may not loose a breath:

  Their guns must mash us to the mire and there be no replying,

  Till the hand is raised to fling us for the final dice to death.

  “There were two windows in your tower,

  Barbara, Barbara,

  For all between the sun and moon

  In the lands of Africa.

  Hath a man three eyes, Barbara,

  A bird three wings,

  That you have riven roof and wall

  To look upon vain things?”

  Her voice was like a wandering thing

  That falters yet is free,

  Whose soul has drunk in a distant land

  Of the rivers of liberty.

  “There are more wings than the wind knows

  Or eyes than see the sun

  In the light of the lost window

  And the wind of the doors undone.

  For out of the first lattice

  Are the red lands that break

  And out of the second lattice

  Sea like a green snake,

  But out of the third lattice

  Under low eaves like wings

  Is a new corner of the sky