Poems of the Past and the Present

V.R. 1819–1901
A REVERIE

 
Moments the mightiest pass uncalendared,
      And when the Absolute
   In backward Time outgave the deedful word
      Whereby all life is stirred:
“Let one be born and throned whose mould shall constitute
The norm of every royal-reckoned attribute,”
      No mortal knew or heard.
   But in due days the purposed Life outshone —
      Serene, sagacious, free;
   – Her waxing seasons bloomed with deeds well done,
      And the world’s heart was won.
Yet may the deed of hers most bright in eyes to be
Lie hid from ours – as in the All-One’s thought lay she —
      Till ripening years have run.
 

Sunday Night,

27th January 1901.

WAR POEMS

EMBARCATION
(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

 
Here, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands,
And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in,
And Henry’s army leapt afloat to win
Convincing triumphs over neighbour lands,
 
 
Vaster battalions press for further strands,
To argue in the self-same bloody mode
Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code,
Still fails to mend. – Now deckward tramp the bands,
Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;
And as each host draws out upon the sea
Beyond which lies the tragical To-be,
None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,
 
 
Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile,
As if they knew not that they weep the while.
 

DEPARTURE
(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

 
While the far farewell music thins and fails,
And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine —
All smalling slowly to the gray sea line —
And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,
 
 
Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails,
Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men
To seeming words that ask and ask again:
“How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels
Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,
That are as puppets in a playing hand? —
When shall the saner softer polities
Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land,
And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand
Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?”
 

THE COLONEL’S SOLILOQUY
(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

 
“The quay recedes.   Hurrah!  Ahead we go!.
It’s true I’ve been accustomed now to home,
And joints get rusty, and one’s limbs may grow
   More fit to rest than roam.
 
 
“But I can stand as yet fair stress and strain;
There’s not a little steel beneath the rust;
My years mount somewhat, but here’s to’t again!
   And if I fall, I must.
 
 
“God knows that for myself I’ve scanty care;
Past scrimmages have proved as much to all;
In Eastern lands and South I’ve had my share
   Both of the blade and ball.
 
 
“And where those villains ripped me in the flitch
With their old iron in my early time,
I’m apt at change of wind to feel a twitch,
   Or at a change of clime.
 
 
“And what my mirror shows me in the morning
Has more of blotch and wrinkle than of bloom;
My eyes, too, heretofore all glasses scorning,
   Have just a touch of rheum.
 
 
“Now sounds ‘The Girl I’ve left behind me,’ – Ah,
The years, the ardours, wakened by that tune!
Time was when, with the crowd’s farewell ‘Hurrah!’
   ’Twould lift me to the moon.
 
 
“But now it’s late to leave behind me one
Who if, poor soul, her man goes underground,
Will not recover as she might have done
   In days when hopes abound.
 
 
“She’s waving from the wharfside, palely grieving,
As down we draw.. Her tears make little show,
Yet now she suffers more than at my leaving
   Some twenty years ago.
 
 
“I pray those left at home will care for her!
I shall come back; I have before; though when
The Girl you leave behind you is a grandmother,
   Things may not be as then.”
 

THE GOING OF THE BATTERY
WIVES’ LAMENT

(November 2, 1899)

I

 
O it was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough —
Light in their loving as soldiers can be —
First to risk choosing them, leave alone losing them
Now, in far battle, beyond the South Sea!.
 

II

 
– Rain came down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly
Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire,
They stepping steadily – only too readily! —
Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.
 

III

 
Great guns were gleaming there, living things seeming there,
Cloaked in their tar-cloths, upmouthed to the night;
Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe,
Throats blank of sound, but prophetic to sight.
 

IV

 
Gas-glimmers drearily, blearily, eerily
Lit our pale faces outstretched for one kiss,
While we stood prest to them, with a last quest to them
Not to court perils that honour could miss.
 

V

 
Sharp were those sighs of ours, blinded these eyes of ours,
When at last moved away under the arch
All we loved.   Aid for them each woman prayed for them,
Treading back slowly the track of their march.
 

VI

 
Someone said: “Nevermore will they come: evermore
Are they now lost to us.”  O it was wrong!
Though may be hard their ways, some Hand will guard their ways,
Bear them through safely, in brief time or long.
 

VII

 
– Yet, voices haunting us, daunting us, taunting us,
Hint in the night-time when life beats are low
Other and graver things.. Hold we to braver things,
Wait we, in trust, what Time’s fulness shall show.
 

AT THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON
(Affixing the Lists of Killed and Wounded: December, 1899)

I

 
Last year I called this world of gain-givings
The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly
If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly,
So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs
   The tragedy of things.
 

II

 
Yet at that censured time no heart was rent
Or feature blanched of parent, wife, or daughter
By hourly blazoned sheets of listed slaughter;
Death waited Nature’s wont; Peace smiled unshent
   From Ind to Occident.
 

A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY

 
South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies – your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans
Nightly to clear Canopus: “I would know
By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law
Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?
And what of logic or of truth appears
In tacking ‘Anno Domini’ to the years?
Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied,
But tarries yet the Cause for which He died.”
 

Christmas-eve, 1899.

THE DEAD DRUMMER

I

 
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
   Uncoffined – just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
   That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
   Each night above his mound.
 

II

 
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew —
   Fresh from his Wessex home —
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
   The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
   Strange stars amid the gloam.
 

III

 
Yet portion of that unknown plain
   Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
   Grow up a Southern tree.
And strange-eyed constellations reign
   His stars eternally.
 

A WIFE IN LONDON
(December, 1899)

I

THE TRAGEDY

 
She sits in the tawny vapour
      That the City lanes have uprolled,
      Behind whose webby fold on fold
Like a waning taper
   The street-lamp glimmers cold.
 
 
A messenger’s knock cracks smartly,
      Flashed news is in her hand
      Of meaning it dazes to understand
Though shaped so shortly:
   He – has fallen – in the far South Land.
 

II

THE IRONY

 
’Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
      The postman nears and goes:
      A letter is brought whose lines disclose
By the firelight flicker
   His hand, whom the worm now knows:
 
 
Fresh – firm – penned in highest feather —
      Page-full of his hoped return,
      And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn
In the summer weather,
   And of new love that they would learn.
 

THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN

I

 
   The thick lids of Night closed upon me
      Alone at the Bill
      Of the Isle by the Race ¹—
   Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face —
And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me
      To brood and be still.
 

II

 
   No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,
      Or promontory sides,
      Or the ooze by the strand,
   Or the bent-bearded slope of the land,
Whose base took its rest amid everlong motion
      Of criss-crossing tides.
 

III

 
   Soon from out of the Southward seemed nearing
      A whirr, as of wings
      Waved by mighty-vanned flies,
   Or by night-moths of measureless size,
And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond hearing
      Of corporal things.
 

IV

 
   And they bore to the bluff, and alighted —
      A dim-discerned train
      Of sprites without mould,
   Frameless souls none might touch or might hold —
On the ledge by the turreted lantern, farsighted
      By men of the main.
 

V

 
   And I heard them say “Home!” and I knew them
      For souls of the felled
      On the earth’s nether bord
   Under Capricorn, whither they’d warred,
And I neared in my awe, and gave heedfulness to them
      With breathings inheld.
 

VI

 
   Then, it seemed, there approached from the northward
      A senior soul-flame
      Of the like filmy hue:
   And he met them and spake: “Is it you,
O my men?”  Said they, “Aye!  We bear homeward and hearthward
      To list to our fame!”
 

VII

 
   “I’ve flown there before you,” he said then:
      “Your households are well;
      But – your kin linger less
   On your glory arid war-mightiness
Than on dearer things.” – “Dearer?” cried these from the dead then,
      “Of what do they tell?”
 

VIII

 
   “Some mothers muse sadly, and murmur
      Your doings as boys —
      Recall the quaint ways
   Of your babyhood’s innocent days.
Some pray that, ere dying, your faith had grown firmer,
      And higher your joys.
 

IX

 
   “A father broods: ‘Would I had set him
      To some humble trade,
      And so slacked his high fire,
   And his passionate martial desire;
Had told him no stories to woo him and whet him
      To this due crusade!”
 

X

 
   “And, General, how hold out our sweethearts,
      Sworn loyal as doves?”
      – “Many mourn; many think
   It is not unattractive to prink
Them in sables for heroes.   Some fickle and fleet hearts
      Have found them new loves.”
 

XI

 
   “And our wives?” quoth another resignedly,
      “Dwell they on our deeds?”
      – “Deeds of home; that live yet
   Fresh as new – deeds of fondness or fret;
Ancient words that were kindly expressed or unkindly,
      These, these have their heeds.”
 

XII

 
   – “Alas! then it seems that our glory
      Weighs less in their thought
      Than our old homely acts,
   And the long-ago commonplace facts
Of our lives – held by us as scarce part of our story,
      And rated as nought!”
 

XIII

 
   Then bitterly some: “Was it wise now
      To raise the tomb-door
      For such knowledge?  Away!”
   But the rest: “Fame we prized till to-day;
Yet that hearts keep us green for old kindness we prize now
      A thousand times more!”
 

XIV

 
   Thus speaking, the trooped apparitions
      Began to disband
      And resolve them in two:
   Those whose record was lovely and true
Bore to northward for home: those of bitter traditions
      Again left the land,
 

XV

 
   And, towering to seaward in legions,
      They paused at a spot
      Overbending the Race —
   That engulphing, ghast, sinister place —
Whither headlong they plunged, to the fathomless regions
      Of myriads forgot.
 

XVI

 
   And the spirits of those who were homing
      Passed on, rushingly,
      Like the Pentecost Wind;
   And the whirr of their wayfaring thinned
And surceased on the sky, and but left in the gloaming
      Sea-mutterings and me.
 

December 1899.

SONG OF THE SOLDIERS’ WIVES

I

 
At last!  In sight of home again,
      Of home again;
No more to range and roam again
   As at that bygone time?
No more to go away from us
      And stay from us? —
Dawn, hold not long the day from us,
   But quicken it to prime!
 

II

 
Now all the town shall ring to them,
      Shall ring to them,
And we who love them cling to them
   And clasp them joyfully;
And cry, “O much we’ll do for you
      Anew for you,
Dear Loves! – aye, draw and hew for you,
   Come back from oversea.”
 

III

 
Some told us we should meet no more,
      Should meet no more;
Should wait, and wish, but greet no more
   Your faces round our fires;
That, in a while, uncharily
      And drearily
Men gave their lives – even wearily,
   Like those whom living tires.
 

IV

 
And now you are nearing home again,
      Dears, home again;
No more, may be, to roam again
   As at that bygone time,
Which took you far away from us
      To stay from us;
Dawn, hold not long the day from us,
   But quicken it to prime!
 

THE SICK GOD

I

 
   In days when men had joy of war,
A God of Battles sped each mortal jar;
   The peoples pledged him heart and hand,
   From Israel’s land to isles afar.
 

II

 
   His crimson form, with clang and chime,
Flashed on each murk and murderous meeting-time,
   And kings invoked, for rape and raid,
   His fearsome aid in rune and rhyme.
 

III

 
   On bruise and blood-hole, scar and seam,
On blade and bolt, he flung his fulgid beam:
   His haloes rayed the very gore,
   And corpses wore his glory-gleam.
 

IV

 
   Often an early King or Queen,
And storied hero onward, knew his sheen;
   ’Twas glimpsed by Wolfe, by Ney anon,
   And Nelson on his blue demesne.
 

V

 
   But new light spread.  That god’s gold nimb
And blazon have waned dimmer and more dim;
   Even his flushed form begins to fade,
   Till but a shade is left of him.
 

VI

 
   That modern meditation broke
His spell, that penmen’s pleadings dealt a stroke,
   Say some; and some that crimes too dire
   Did much to mire his crimson cloak.
 

VII

 
   Yea, seeds of crescive sympathy
Were sown by those more excellent than he,
   Long known, though long contemned till then —
   The gods of men in amity.
 

VIII

 
   Souls have grown seers, and thought out-brings
The mournful many-sidedness of things
   With foes as friends, enfeebling ires
   And fury-fires by gaingivings!
 

IX

 
   He scarce impassions champions now;
They do and dare, but tensely – pale of brow;
   And would they fain uplift the arm
   Of that faint form they know not how.
 

X

 
   Yet wars arise, though zest grows cold;
Wherefore, at whiles, as ’twere in ancient mould
   He looms, bepatched with paint and lath;
   But never hath he seemed the old!
 

XI

 
   Let men rejoice, let men deplore.
The lurid Deity of heretofore
   Succumbs to one of saner nod;
   The Battle-god is god no more.