Poems, 1908-1919

And your blood holds no festival —
Go out from us; we need you not.

But if you are immoderate men,
Zealots of joy, the salt and sting
And savour of life upon you – then
We call you to our counselling.

And we will hew the holy boughs
To make us level rows of oars,
And we will set our shining prows
For strange and unadventured shores.

Where the great tideways swiftliest run
We will be stronger than the strong
And sack the cities of the sun
And spend our booty in a song.

MOONRISE

Where are you going, you pretty riders? —
To the moon’s rising, the rising of death’s moon,
Where the waters move not, and birds are still and songless,
Soon, very soon.

Where are you faring to, you proud Hectors?
Through battle, out of battle, under the grass,
Dust behind your hoof-beats rises, and into dust,
Clouded, you pass.

I’m a pretty rider, I’m a proud Hector,
I as you a little am pretty and proud;
I with you am riding, riding to the moonrise,
So sing we loud —

“Out beyond the dust lies mystery of moonrise,
We go to chiller learning than is bred in the sun,
Hectors, and riders, and a simple singer,
Riding as one.”

DEER

Shy in their herding dwell the fallow deer.
They are spirits of wild sense. Nobody near
Comes upon their pastures. There a life they live,
Of sufficient beauty, phantom, fugitive,
Treading as in jungles free leopards do,
Printless as evelight, instant as dew.
The great kine are patient, and home-coming sheep
Know our bidding. The fallow deer keep
Delicate and far their counsels wild,
Never to be folded reconciled
To the spoiling hand as the poor flocks are:
Lightfoot, and swift, and unfamiliar,
These you may not hinder, unconfined
Beautiful flocks of the mind.

TO ONE I LOVE

As I walked along the passage, in the night, beyond the stairs,
In the dark,
I was afraid,
Suddenly,
As will happen you know, my dear, it will often happen.
I knew the walls at my side,
Knew the drawings hanging there, the order of their placing,
And the door where my bed lay beyond,
And the window on the landing —
There was even a little ray of moonlight through it —
All was known, familiar, my comfortable home;
And yet I was afraid,
Suddenly,
In the dark, like a child, of nothing,
Of vastness, of eternity, of the queer pains of thought,
Such as used to trouble me when I heard,
When I was little, the people talk
On Sundays of “As it was in the Beginning,
Is Now, and Ever Shall Be…”
I am thirty-six years old,
And folk are friendly to me,
And there are no ghosts that should have reason to haunt me,
And I have tempted no magical happenings
By forsaking the clear noons of thought
For the wizardries that the credulous take
To be golden roads to revelation.
I knew all was simplicity there,
Without conspiracy, without antagonism,
And yet I was afraid,
Suddenly,
A child, in the dark, forlorn…
And then, as suddenly,
I was aware of a profound, a miraculous understanding,
Knowledge that comes to a man
But once or twice, as a bird’s note
In the still depth of the night
Striking upon the silence …
I stood at the door, and there
Was mellow candle-light,
And companionship, and comfort,
And I knew