October and Other Poems with Occasional Verses on the War

THE CHIVALRY OF THE SEA

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES FISHER, LATE STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD, LOST IN THE “INVINCIBLE.”

 
Over the warring waters, beneath the wandering skies,
The heart of Britain roameth, the Chivalry of the sea,
Where Spring never bringeth a flower, nor bird singeth in a tree;
Far, afar, O beloved, beyond the sight of our eyes,
Over the warring waters, beneath the stormy skies.
 
 
Staunch and valiant-hearted, to whom our toil were play,
Ye man with armour’d patience the bulwarks night and day,
Or on your iron coursers plough shuddering through the Bay,
Or neath the deluge drive the skirmishing sharks of war:
Venturous boys who leapt on the pinnace and row’d from shore,
A mother’s tear in the eye, a swift farewell to say,
And a great glory at heart that none can take away.
 
 
Seldom is your home-coming; for aye your pennon flies
In unrecorded exploits on the tumultuous wave;
Till, in the storm of battle, fast-thundering upon the foe,
Ye add your kindred names to the heroes of long-ago,
And mid the blasting wrack, in the glad sudden death of the brave,
Ye are gone to return no more.—Idly our tears arise;
Too proud for praise as ye lie in your unvisited grave,
The wide-warring water, under the starry skies.
 

FOR “PAGES INÉDITES,” Etc

April, 1916

 
By our dear sons’ graves, fair France, thou’rt now to us, endear’d;
Since no more as of old stand th’ English against thee in fight,
But rallying to defend thee they die guarding thy beauty
From blind envious Hate and Perfidy leagued with Might.
 

GHELUVELT

EPITAPH ON THE WORCESTERS. OCTOBER 31, 1914

 
Askest thou of these graves? They’ll tell thee,
O stranger, in England
How we Worcesters lie where we redeem’d the battle.
 

THE WEST FRONT

AN ENGLISH MOTHER, ON LOOKING INTO MASEFIELD’S “OLD FRONT LINE.”

 
No country know I so well
as this landscape of hell.
Why bring you to my pain
these shadow’d effigys
Of barb’d wire, riven trees,
the corpse-strewn blasted plain?
 
 
And the names—Hebuterne
Bethune and La Bassée—
I have nothing to learn—
Contalmaison, Boisselle,
And one where night and day
my heart would pray and dwell;
 
 
A desert sanctuary,
where in holy vigil
Year-long I have held my faith
against th’ imaginings
Of horror and agony
in an ordeal above
 
 
The tears of suffering
and took aid of angels:
This was the temple of God:
no mortuary of kings
Ever gathered the spoils
of such chivalry and love:
 
 
No pilgrim shrine soe’er
hath assembled such prayer—
With rich incense-wafted
ritual and requiem
Not beauteous batter’d Rheims
nor lorn Jerusalem.
 

TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

April, 1917

 
Brothers in blood! They who this wrong began
To wreck our commonwealth, will rue the day
When first they challenged freemen to the fray,
And with the Briton dared the American.
Now are we pledged to win the Rights of man;
Labour and justice now shall have their way,
And in a League of Peace—God grant we may—
Transform the earth, not patch up the old plan.
 
 
Sure is our hope since he, who led your nation,
Spake for mankind; and ye arose in awe
Of that high call to work the world’s salvation;
Clearing your minds of all estranging blindness
In the vision of Beauty, and the Spirit’s law,
Freedom and Honour and sweet Loving-kindness.
 

TRAFALGAR SQUARE

September, 1917

 
Fool that I was: my heart was sore,
Yea sick for the myriad wounded men,
The maim’d in the war: I had grief for each one:
And I came in the gay September sun
To the open smile of Trafalgar Square;
Where many a lad with a limb fordone
Loll’d by the lion-guarded column
That holdeth Nelson statued thereon
Upright in the air.
 
 
The Parliament towers and the Abbey towers,
The white Horseguards and grey Whitehall,
He looketh on all,
Past Somerset House and the river’s bend
To the pillar’d dome of St. Paul,
That slumbers confessing God’s solemn blessing
On England’s glory, to keep it ours—
While children true her prowess renew
And throng from the ends of the earth to defend
Freedom and honour—till Earth shall end.
 
 
The gentle unjealous Shakespeare, I trow,
In his country tomb of peaceful fame,
Must feel exiled from life and glow
If he think of this man with his warrior claim,
Who looketh o’er London as if ’twere his own,
As he standeth in stone, aloft and alone,
Sailing the sky with one arm and one eye.
 

CHRISTMAS EVE, 1917

 
Many happy returns, sweet Babe, of the day!
Didst not thou sow good seed in the world, thy field?
Cam’st thou to save the poor? Thy poor yet pine.
Thousands to-day suffer death-pangs like thine;
Our jewels of life are spilt on the ground as dross;
Ten thousand mothers stand beneath the cross.
Peace to men of goodwill was the angels’ song:
Now there is fiercer war, worse filth and wrong.
If thou didst sow good seed, is this the yield?
Shall not thy folk be quell’d in dead dismay?
 
 
Nay, with a larger hope we are fed and heal’d
Than e’er was reveal’d to the saints who died so strong;
For while men slept the seed had quicken’d unseen.
England is as a field whereon the corn is green.
 
 
Of trial and dark tribulation this vision is born—
Britain as a field green with the springing corn.
While we slumber’d the seed was growing unseen.
Happy returns of the day, dear Babe, we say.
 
 
England has buried her sins with her fathers’ bones.
Thou shalt be throned on the ruin of kingly thrones.
The wish of thine heart is rooted in carnal mind;
For good seed didst thou sow in the world thy field:
It shall ripen in gold and harvest an hundredfold.
Peace shall come as a flood upon all mankind;
Love shall comfort and succour the poor that are pined.
 
 
Wherever our gentle children are wander’d and sped,
Simple apostles thine of the world to come,
They carried the living seed of the living Bread.
The angel-song and the gospel of Christendom,
That while the nation slept was springing unseen.
 
 
So tho’ we be sorely stricken we feel no dread:
Our thousand sons suffer death-pangs like thine:
It shall ripen in gold and harvest an hundredfold:
Peace and Love shall hallow our care and teen,
Shall bind in fellowship all the folk of the earth
To kneel at thy cradle, Babe, and bless thy birth.
 
 
Ring we the bells up and down in country and town,
And keep the old feast unholpen of preacher or priest,
Wishing thee happy returns, and thy Mother May,
Ever happier and happier returns, dear Christ, of thy day!