The Lord of Misrule, and Other Poems Part 10

Ocean-mother of England, thine is the throne of her fame.

Breaker of many fleets, O thine the victorious word, Thine the Sun and the Freedom, the G.o.d and the wind-swept sky, Thine the thunder and thine the lightning, thine the doom._

IN MEMORY OF A BRITISH AVIATOR

On those young brows that knew no fear We lay the Roman athlete's crown, The laurel of the charioteer, The imperial garland of renown, While those young eyes, beyond the sun, See Drake, see Raleigh, smile "Well done."

Their desert seas that knew no sh.o.r.e To-night with fleets like cities flare; But, frailer even than theirs of yore, His keel a new-found deep would dare: They watch, with thrice-experienced eyes What fleets shall follow through the skies.

They would not scoff, though man should set To feebler wings a mightier task.

They know what wonders wait us yet.

Not all things in an hour they ask; But in each n.o.ble failure see The inevitable victory.

A thousand years have borne us far From that dark isle the Saxon swayed, And star whispers to trembling star While s.p.a.ce and Time shrink back afraid,-- "Ten thousand thousand years remain For man to dare our deep again."

Thou, too, shalt hear across that deep Our thundering fleets of thought draw nigh, Round which the suns and systems sweep Like cloven foam from sky to sky, Till Death himself at last restore His captives to our eyes once more.

Feeble the wings, dauntless the soul!

Take thou the conqueror's laurel crown; Take--for thy chariot grazed the goal-- The imperial garland of renown; While those young eyes, beyond the sun, See Drake, see Raleigh, smile "Well done."

THE WAGGON

Crimson and black on the sky, a waggon of clover Slowly goes rumbling, over the white chalk road; And I lie in the golden gra.s.s there, wondering why So little a thing As the jingle and ring of the harness, The hot creak of leather, The peace of the plodding, Should suddenly, stabbingly, make it Strange that men die.

Only, perhaps, in the same blue summer weather, Hundreds of years ago, in this field where I lie, Caedmon, the Saxon, was caught by the self-same thing: The serf lying, black with the sun, on his beautiful wain-load, The jingle and clink of the harness, The hot creak of leather, The peace of the plodding; And wondered, O terribly wondered, That men must die.

THE SACRED OAK

(_A Song of Britain_)

I

Voice of the summer stars that, long ago, Sang thro' the old oak-forests of our isle, Enchanted voice, pure as her falling snow, Dark as her storms, bright as her sunniest smile, Taliessin, voice of Britain, the fierce flow Of fourteen hundred years has whelmed not thee!

Still art thou singing, lavrock of her morn, Singing to heaven in that first golden glow, Singing above her mountains and her sea!

Not older yet are grown Thy four winds in their moan For Urien. Still thy charlock blooms in the billowing corn.

II

Thy dew is bright upon this beechen spray!

Spring wakes thy harp! I hear--I see--again, Thy wild steeds foaming thro' the crimson fray, The raven on the white breast of thy slain, The tumult of thy chariots, far away, The weeping in the glens, the l.u.s.trous hair Dishevelled over the stricken eagle's fall, And in thy Druid groves, at fall of day One gift that Britain gave her valorous there, One gift of lordlier pride Than aught--save to have died-- One spray of the sacred oak, they coveted most of all.

III

I watch thy nested brambles growing green: O strange, across that misty waste of years, To glimpse the shadowy thrush that thou hast seen, To touch, across the ages, touch with tears The ferns that hide thee with their fairy screen, Or only hear them rustling in the dawn; And--as a dreamer waking--in thy words, For all the golden clouds that drowse between, To feel the veil of centuries withdrawn, To feel thy sun re-risen Unbuild our shadowy prison And hear on thy fresh boughs the carol of waking birds.

IV

O, happy voice, born in that far, clear time, Over thy single harp thy simple strain Attuned all life for Britain to the chime Of viking oars and the sea's dark refrain, And thine own beating heart, and the sublime Measure to which the moons and stars revolve Untroubled by the storms that, year by year, In ever-swelling symphonies still climb To embrace our growing world and to resolve Discords unknown to thee, In the infinite harmony Which still transcends our strife and leaves us darkling here.

V

For, now, one sings of heaven and one of h.e.l.l, One soars with hope, one plunges to despair!

This, trembling, doubts if aught be ill or well; And that cries, "Fair is foul and foul is fair;"

And this cries, "Forward, though I cannot tell Whither, and all too surely all things die;"

And that sighs, "Rest, then, sleep and take thine ease."

One sings his country and one rings its knell, One hymns mankind, one dwarfs them with the sky.

O, Britain, let thy soul Once more command the whole, Once more command the strings of the world-wide harmony.

VI

For hark! One sings, _The G.o.ds, the G.o.ds are dead!_ _Man triumphs!_ And hark--_Blind s.p.a.ce his funeral urn._ And hark, one whispers with reverted head To the old dead G.o.ds--_Bring back our heaven, return!_ And hark, one moans--_The ancient order is fled, We are children of blind chance and vacant dreams.

Heed not mine utterance--that was chance-born, too._ And hark, the answer of Science--_All they said, Your fathers, in that old time, lit by gleams Of what their hearts could feel, The rolling years reveal As fragments of one law, one covenant, simply true._

VII

_I find_, she cries, _in all this march of time And s.p.a.ce, no gulf, no break, nothing that mars Its unity. I watch the primal slime Lift Athens like a flower to greet the stars!

I flash my messages from clime to clime, I link the increasing world from depth to height!

Not yet ye see the wonder that draws nigh, When at some sudden contact, some sublime Touch, as of memory, all this boundless night Wherein ye grope entombed Shall, by that touch illumed, Like one electric City s.h.i.+ne from sky to sky._

VIII

_No longer then the memories that ye hold Dark in your brain shall slumber. Ye shall see That City whose gates are more than pearl or gold And all its towers firm as Eternity.

The stones of the earth have cried to it from of old!

Why will ye turn from Him who reigns above Because your highest words fall short?

Kneel--call On Him whose Name--I AM--doth still enfold Past, present, future, memory, hope and love.

No seed falls fruitless there._ Beyond your Father's care-- _The old covenant still holds fast_--no bird, no leaf can fall.