Wherefore, and when the dam was newly built,

  They raised a temple to the local God,

  And burnt all manner of unsavoury things

  Upon his altar, and created priests,

  And blew into a conch and banged a bell,

  And told the story of the Gauri flood

  With circumstance and much embroidery. . . .

  So he, the whiskified Objectionable,

  Unclean, abominable, out-at-heels,

  Became the Tutelary Deity

  Of all the Gauri valley villages,

  And may in time become a Solar Myth.

  *

  shroff — Money-lender.

  The Gift of the Sea

  The dead child lay in the shroud,

  And the widow watched beside;

  And her mother slept, and the Channel swept

  The gale in the teeth of the tide.

  But the mother laughed at all.

  “I have lost my man in the sea,

  And the child is dead. Be still,” she said,

  “What more can ye do to me?”

  The widow watched the dead,

  And the candle guttered low,

  And she tried to sing the Passing Song

  That bids the poor soul go.

  And “Mary take you now,” she sang,

  “That lay against my heart.”

  And “Mary smooth your crib to-night,”

  But she could not say “Depart.”

  Then came a cry from the sea,

  But the sea-rime blinded the glass,

  And “Heard ye nothing, mother?” she said,

  “‘Tis the child that waits to pass.”

  And the nodding mother sighed:

  “‘Tis a lambing ewe in the whin,

  For why should the christened soul cry out

  That never knew of sin?”

  “O feet I have held in my hand,

  O hands at my heart to catch,

  How should they know the road to go,

  And how should they lift the latch?”

  They laid a sheet to the door,

  With the little quilt atop,

  That it might not hurt from the cold or the dirt,

  But the crying would not stop.

  The widow lifted the latch

  And strained her eyes to see,

  And opened the door on the bitter shore

  To let the soul go free.

  There was neither glimmer nor ghost,

  There was neither spirit nor spark,

  And “Heard ye nothing, mother?” she said,

  “‘Tis crying for me in the dark.”

  And the nodding mother sighed:

  “‘Tis sorrow makes ye dull;

  Have ye yet to learn the cry of the tern,

  Or the wail of the wind-blown gull?”

  “The terns are blown inland,

  The grey gull follows the plough.

  ‘Twas never a bird, the voice I heard,

  O mother, I hear it now!”

  “Lie still, dear lamb, lie still;

  The child is passed from harm,

  ‘Tis the ache in your breast that broke your rest,

  And the feel of an empty arm.”

  She put her mother aside,

  “In Mary’s name let be!

  For the peace of my soul I must go,” she said,

  And she went to the calling sea.

  In the heel of the wind-bit pier,

  Where the twisted weed was piled,

  She came to the life she had missed by an hour,

  For she came to a little child.

  She laid it into her breast,

  And back to her mother she came,

  But it would not feed and it would not heed,

  Though she gave it her own child’s name.

  And the dead child dripped on her breast,

  And her own in the shroud lay stark;

  And “God forgive us, mother,” she said,

  “We let it die in the dark!”

  The Gipsy Trail

  The white moth to the closing bine,

  The bee to the opened clover,

  And the gipsy blood to the gipsy blood

  Ever the wide world over.

  Ever the wide world over, lass,

  Ever the trail held true,

  Over the world and under the world,

  And back at the last to you.

  Out of the dark of the gorgio camp,

  Out of the grime and the grey

  (Morning waits at the end of the world),

  Gipsy, come away!

  The wild boar to the sun-dried swamp,

  The red crane to her reed,

  And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,

  By the tie of a roving breed.

  The pied snake to the rifted rock,

  The buck to the stony plain,

  And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,

  And both to the road again.

  Both to the road again, again!

  Out on a clean sea-track —

  Follow the cross of the gipsy trail

  Over the world and back!

  Follow the Romany patteran

  North where the blue bergs sail,

  And the bows are grey with the frozen spray,

  And the masts are shod with mail.

  Follow the Romany patteran

  Sheer to the Austral Light,

  Where the besom of God is the wild South wind,

  Sweeping the sea-floors white.

  Follow the Romany patteran

  West to the sinking sun,

  Till the junk-sails lift through the houseless drift.

  And the east and west are one.

  Follow the Romany patteran

  East where the silence broods

  By a purple wave on an opal beach

  In the hush of the Mahim woods.

  “The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky,

  The deer to the wholesome wold,

  And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,

  As it was in the days of old.”

  The heart of a man to the heart of a maid —

  Light of my tents, be fleet.

  Morning waits at the end of the world,

  And the world is all at our feet!

  Gipsy Vans

  A Madonna of the Trenches

  From “Debits and Credits” (1919-1923)

  Unless you come of the gipsy stock

  That steals by night and day,

  Lock your heart with a double lock

  And throw the key away.

  Bury it under the blackest stone

  Beneath your father’s hearth,

  And keep your eyes on your lawful own

  And your feet to the proper path.

  Then you can stand at your door and mock

  When the gipsy vans come through...

  For it isn’t right that the Gorgio stock

  Should live as the Romany do.

  Unless you come of the gipsy blood

  That takes and never spares,

  Bide content with your given good

  And follow your own affairs.

  Plough and harrow and roll your land,

  And sow what ought to be sowed;

  But never let loose your heart from your hand,

  Nor flitter it down the road!

  Then you can thrive on your boughten food

  As the gipsy vans come through...

  For it isn’t nature the Gorgio blood

  Should love as the Romany do.

  Unless you carry the gipsy eyes

  That see but seldom weep,

  Keep your head from the naked skies

  Or the stars’ll trouble your sleep.

  Watch your moon through your window-pane

  And take what weather she brews;

  But don’t run out in the midnight rain

  Nor home in the morning dews.

  Then you can huddle and shut your eyes

  As the gipsy vans come through...

  For it isn’t fitting the Gorgio ryes

  Should walk as the Romany do.

  Unless you come of the gipsy race

  That counts all time the same,

  Be you careful of Time and Place

  And Judgment and Good Name:

  Lose your life for to live your life

  The way that you ought to do;

  And when you are finished, your God and your wife

  And the Gipsies’ll laugh at you!

  Then you can rot in your burying place

  As the gipsy vans come through...

  For it isn’t reason the Gorgio race

  Should die as the Romany do.

  The Glories

  1925

  IN FAITHS and Food and Books and Friends

  Give every soul her choice.

  For such as follow divers ends

  In divers lights rejoice.

  There is a glory of the Sun

  (‘Pity it passeth soon!)

  But those whose work is nearer done

  Look, rather, towards the Moon.

  There is a glory of the Moon

  When the hot hours have run;

  But such as have not touched their noon

  Give worship to the Sun.

  There is a glory of the Stars,

  Perfect on stilly ways;

  But such as follow present wars

  Pursue the Comet’s blaze.

  There is a glory in all things;

  But each must find his own,

  Sufficient for his reckonings,

  Which is to him alone.

  The Glory of the Garden

  Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,

  Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,

  With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;

  But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.

  For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,

  You will find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all ;

  The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dungpits and the tanks:

  The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.

  And there you’ll see the gardeners, the men and ‘prentice boys

  Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise;

  For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,

  The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.

  And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,

  And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows;

  But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,

  For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.

  Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made

  By singing: — ”Oh, how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade,

  While better men than we go out and start their working lives

  At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives

  There’s not a pair of legs so thin, there’s not a head so thick,

  There’s not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick.

  But it can find some needful job that’s crying to be done,

  For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

  Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,

  If it’s only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;

  And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,

  You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden.

  Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees

  That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees,

  So when your work is finished, you can wash your hand and pray

  For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!

  And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!

  The Gods of the Copybook Headings

  1919

  As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,

  I Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.

  Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,

  And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

  We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn

  That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:

  But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,

  So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

  We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,

  Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place.

  But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come

  That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

  With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch

  They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch

  They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.

  So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

  When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.

  They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.

  But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,

  And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

  On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life

  (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)

  Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,

  And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

  In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,

  By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;

  But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,

  And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

  Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,

  And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true

  That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four —

  And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

  * * * * *

  As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man —

  There are only four things certain since Social Progress began —

  That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,

  And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire —

  And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

  When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins

  As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn

  The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

  The Grave of the Hundred Head

  There’s a widow in sleepy Chester

  Who weeps for her only son;

  There’s a grave on the Pabeng River,

  A grave that the Burmans shun;

  And there’s Subadar Prag Tewarri

  Who tells how the work was done.

  A Snider squibbed in the jungle,

  Somebody laughed and fled,

  And the men of the First Shikaris

  Picked up their Subaltern dead,

  With a big blue mark in his forehead

  And the back blown out of his head.

  Subadar Prag Tewarri,

  Jemadar Hira Lal,

  Took command of the party,

  Twenty rifles in all,

  Marched them down to the river

  As the day was beginning to fall.

  They buried the boy by the river,

  A blanket over his face —

  They wept for their dead Lieutenant,

  The men of an alien race —

  They made a samadh in his honor,

  A mark for his resting-place.

  For they swore by the Holy Water,

  They swore by the salt they ate,

  That the soul of Lieutenant Eshmitt Sahib

  Should go to his God in state,

  With fifty file of Burmans

  To open him Heaven’s gate.

  The men of the First Shikaris

  Marched till the break of day,

  Till they came to the rebel village,

  The village of Pabengmay —

  A jingal covered the clearing,

  Calthrops hampered the way.

  Subadar Prag Tewarri,

  Bidding them load with ball,

  Halted a dozen rifles

  Under the village wall;

  Sent out a flanking-party

  With Jemadar Hira Lal.

  The men of the First Shikaris

  Shouted and smote and slew,

  Turning the grinning jingal

  On to the howling crew.

  The Jemadar’s flanking-party

  Butchered the folk who flew.

  Long was the morn of slaughter,

  Long was the list of slain,

  Five score heads were taken,

  Five score heads and twain;

  And the men of the First Shickaris

  Went back to their grave again,

  Each man bearing a basket

  Red as his palms that day,

  Red as the blazing village —

  The village of Pabengmay,