The Wild Knight and Other Poems

THE DESECRATERS

 
Witness all: that unrepenting,
  Feathers flying, music high,
I go down to death unshaken
  By your mean philosophy.
 
 
For your wages, take my body,
  That at least to you I leave;
Set the sulky plumes upon it,
  Bid the grinning mummers grieve.
 
 
Stand in silence: steep your raiment
  In the night that hath no star;
Don the mortal dress of devils,
  Blacker than their spirits are.
 
 
Since ye may not, of your mercy,
  Ere I lie on such a hearse,
Hurl me to the living jackals
  God hath built for sepulchres.
 

AN ALLIANCE

 
This is the weird of a world-old folk,
  That not till the last link breaks,
Not till the night is blackest,
  The blood of Hengist wakes.
When the sun is black in heaven,
  The moon as blood above,
And the earth is full of hatred,
  This people tells its love.
 
 
In change, eclipse, and peril,
  Under the whole world's scorn,
By blood and death and darkness
  The Saxon peace is sworn;
That all our fruit be gathered,
   And all our race take hands,
And the sea be a Saxon river
   That runs through Saxon lands.
 
 
Lo! not in vain we bore him;
   Behold it! not in vain,
Four centuries' dooms of torture
   Choked in the throat of Spain,
Ere priest or tyrant triumph —
  We know how well – we know —
Bone of that bone can whiten,
  Blood of that blood can flow.
 
 
Deep grows the hate of kindred,
  Its roots take hold on hell;
No peace or praise can heal it,
  But a stranger heals it well.
Seas shall be red as sunsets,
  And kings' bones float as foam,
And heaven be dark with vultures,
  The night our son comes home.
 

THE ANCIENT OF DAYS

 
A child sits in a sunny place,
  Too happy for a smile,
And plays through one long holiday
  With balls to roll and pile;
A painted wind-mill by his side
  Runs like a merry tune,
But the sails are the four great winds of heaven,
  And the balls are the sun and moon.
 
 
A staring doll's-house shows to him
  Green floors and starry rafter,
And many-coloured graven dolls
  Live for his lonely laughter.
The dolls have crowns and aureoles,
  Helmets and horns and wings.
For they are the saints and seraphim,
  The prophets and the kings.
 

THE LAST MASQUERADE

 
A wan new garment of young green
  Touched, as you turned your soft brown hair
  And in me surged the strangest prayer
Ever in lover's heart hath been.
 
 
That I who saw your youth's bright page,
  A rainbow change from robe to robe,
  Might see you on this earthly globe,
Crowned with the silver crown of age.
 
 
Your dear hair powdered in strange guise,
  Your dear face touched with colours pale:
  And gazing through the mask and veil
The mirth of your immortal eyes.
 

THE EARTH'S SHAME

 
Name not his deed: in shuddering and in haste
  We dragged him darkly o'er the windy fell:
That night there was a gibbet in the waste,
    And a new sin in hell.
 
 
Be his deed hid from commonwealths and kings,
  By all men born be one true tale forgot;
But three things, braver than all earthly things,
    Faced him and feared him not.
 
 
Above his head and sunken secret face
  Nested the sparrow's young and dropped not dead.
From the red blood and slime of that lost place
    Grew daisies white, not red.
 
 
And from high heaven looking upon him,
  Slowly upon the face of God did come
A smile the cherubim and seraphim
    Hid all their faces from.
 

VANITY

 
A wan sky greener than the lawn,
  A wan lawn paler than the sky.
She gave a flower into my hand,
  And all the hours of eve went by.
 
 
Who knows what round the corner waits
  To smite? If shipwreck, snare, or slur
Shall leave me with a head to lift,
  Worthy of him that spoke with her.
 
 
A wan sky greener than the lawn,
  A wan lawn paler than the sky.
She gave a flower into my hand,
  And all the days of life went by.
 
 
Live ill or well, this thing is mine,
From all I guard it, ill or well.
One tawdry, tattered, faded flower
To show the jealous kings in hell.
 

THE LAMP POST

 
Laugh your best, O blazoned forests,
  Me ye shall not shift or shame
With your beauty: here among you
  Man hath set his spear of flame.
 
 
Lamp to lamp we send the signal,
  For our lord goes forth to war;
Since a voice, ere stars were builded,
  Bade him colonise a star.
 
 
Laugh ye, cruel as the morning,
  Deck your heads with fruit and flower,
Though our souls be sick with pity,
  Yet our hands are hard with power.
 
 
We have read your evil stories,
  We have heard the tiny yell
Through the voiceless conflagration
  Of your green and shining hell.
 
 
And when men, with fires and shouting,
  Break your old tyrannic pales;
And where ruled a single spider
  Laugh and weep a million tales.
 
 
This shall be your best of boasting:
  That some poet, poor of spine.
Full and sated with our wisdom,
  Full and fiery with our wine,
 
 
Shall steal out and make a treaty
  With the grasses and the showers,
Rail against the grey town-mother,
  Fawn upon the scornful flowers;
 
 
Rest his head among the roses,
  Where a quiet song-bird sounds,
And no sword made sharp for traitors,
  Hack him into meat for hounds.
 

THE PESSIMIST

 
You that have snarled through the ages, take your answer and go —
I know your hoary question, the riddle that all men know.
You have weighed the stars in a balance, and grasped the skies in a span:
Take, if you must have answer, the word of a common man.
 
 
Deep in my life lies buried one love unhealed, unshriven,
One hunger still shall haunt me – yea, in the streets of heaven;
This is the burden, babbler, this is the curse shall cling,
This is the thing I bring you; this is the pleasant thing.
 
 
'Gainst you and all your sages, no joy of mine shall strive,
This one dead self shall shatter the men you call alive.
My grief I send to smite you, no pleasure, no belief,
Lord of the battered grievance, what do you know of grief?
 
 
I only know the praises to heaven that one man gave,
That he came on earth for an instant, to stand beside a grave,
The peace of a field of battle, where flowers are born of blood.
I only know one evil that makes the whole world good.
 
 
Beneath this single sorrow the globe of moon and sphere
Turns to a single jewel, so bright and brittle and dear
That I dread lest God should drop it, to be dashed into stars below.
 
 
You that have snarled through the ages, take your answer and go.
 

A FAIRY TALE

 
All things grew upwards, foul and fair:
The great trees fought and beat the air
With monstrous wings that would have flown;
But the old earth clung to her own,
Holding them back from heavenly wars,
Though every flower sprang at the stars.
 
 
But he broke free: while all things ceased,
Some hour increasing, he increased.
The town beneath him seemed a map,
Above the church he cocked his cap,
Above the cross his feather flew
Above the birds and still he grew.
 
 
The trees turned grass; the clouds were riven;
His feet were mountains lost in heaven;
Through strange new skies he rose alone,
The earth fell from him like a stone,
And his own limbs beneath him far
Seemed tapering down to touch a star.
 
 
He reared his head, shaggy and grim,
Staring among the cherubim;
The seven celestial floors he rent,
One crystal dome still o'er him bent:
Above his head, more clear than hope,
All heaven was a microscope.
 

A PORTRAIT

 
Fair faces crowd on Christmas night
  Like seven suns a-row,
But all beyond is the wolfish wind
  And the crafty feet of the snow.
 
 
But through the rout one figure goes
  With quick and quiet tread;
Her robe is plain, her form is frail —
  Wait if she turn her head.
 
 
I say no word of line or hue,
  But if that face you see,
Your soul shall know the smile of faith's
  Awful frivolity.
 
 
Know that in this grotesque old masque
  Too loud we cannot sing,
Or dance too wild, or speak too wide
  To praise a hidden thing.
 
 
That though the jest be old as night,
  Still shaketh sun and sphere
An everlasting laughter
  Too loud for us to hear.
 

FEMINA CONTRA MUNDUM

 
The sun was black with judgment, and the moon
        Blood: but between
I saw a man stand, saying, 'To me at least
        The grass is green.
 
 
'There was no star that I forgot to fear
        With love and wonder.
The birds have loved me'; but no answer came —
        Only the thunder.
 
 
Once more the man stood, saying, 'A cottage door,
        Wherethrough I gazed
That instant as I turned – yea, I am vile;
        Yet my eyes blazed.
 
 
'For I had weighed the mountains in a balance,
        And the skies in a scale,
I come to sell the stars – old lamps for new —
        Old stars for sale.'
 
 
Then a calm voice fell all the thunder through,
        A tone less rough:
'Thou hast begun to love one of my works
        Almost enough.'
 

TO A CERTAIN NATION

 
We will not let thee be, for thou art ours.
  We thank thee still, though thou forget these things,
For that hour's sake when thou didst wake all powers
  With a great cry that God was sick of kings.
 
 
Leave thee there grovelling at their rusted greaves,
  These hulking cowards on a painted stage,
Who, with imperial pomp and laurel leaves,
  Show their Marengo – one man in a cage.
 
 
These, for whom stands no type or title given
  In all the squalid tales of gore and pelf;
Though cowed by crashing thunders from all heaven.
  Cain never said, 'My brother slew himself.'
 
 
Tear you the truth out of your drivelling spy,
  The maniac whom you set to swing death's scythe.
Nay; torture not the torturer – let him lie:
  What need of racks to teach a worm to writhe?
 
 
Bear with us, O our sister, not in pride,
  Nor any scorn we see thee spoiled of knaves,
But only shame to hear, where Danton died,
  Thy foul dead kings all laughing in their graves.
 
 
Thou hast a right to rule thyself; to be
  The thing thou wilt; to grin, to fawn, to creep:
To crown these clumsy liars; ay, and we
  Who knew thee once, we have a right to weep.