Bridges Robert October and Other Poems with Occasional Verses on the War
OUR LADY
I
Goddess azure-mantled and aureoled That standing barefoot upon the moon Or throned as a Queen of the earth Tranquilly smilest to hold The Child-god in thine arms, Whence thy glory? Art not she The country maiden of Galilee Simple in dowerless poverty Who from humble cradle to grave Hadst no thought of this wonder?
When to man dull of heart Dawn’d at length graciously Thy might of Motherhood The starry Truth beam’d on his home; Then with insight exalted he gave thee The trappings—Lady—wherewith his art Delighteth to picture his spirit to sense And that grace is immortal.
Fount of creative Love Mother of the Word eternal Atoning man with God: Who set thee apart as a garden enclosed From Nature’s all-producing wilds To rear the richest fruit o’ the Life Ever continuing out from Him Urgent since the beginning.
II
Behold! Man setteth thine image in the height of Heaven And hallowing his untemper’d love Crowneth and throneth thee ador’d (Tranquilly joyous to hold The man-child in thine arms) God-like apart from conflict to save thee To guard thy weak caressive beauty With incontaminate jewels of soul Courage, patience, and self-devotion: All this glory he gave thee.
Secret and slow is Nature Imperceptibly moving With surely determinate aim: To woman it fell to be early in prime Ready to labour, mould, and cherish The delicate head of all Production The wistful late-maturing boy Who made Knowing of Being.
Therefore art thou ador’d Mother of God in man Naturing nurse of power: They who adore not thee shall perish But thou shalt keep thy path of joy Envied of Angels because the All-father Call’d thee to mother his nascent Word And complete the creation.
THE CURFEW TOWER
Thro’ innocent eyes at the world awond’ring Nothing spake to me more superbly Than the round bastion of Windsor’s wall
That warding the Castle’s southern angle An old inheritor of Norman prowess Was call’d by the folk the Curfew Tow’r.
Above the masonry’s rugged courses A turreted clock of Caroline fashion Told time to the town in black and gold.
It charmed the hearts of Henry’s scholars As kingly a mentor of English story As Homer’s poem is of Ilion:
Nor e’er in the landscape look’d it fairer Than when we saw its white bulk halo’d In a lattice of slender scaffoldings.
Month by month on the airy platforms Workmen labour’d hacking and hoisting Till again the tower was stript to the sun:
The old tow’r? Nay a new tow’r stood there From footing to battlemented skyline And topt with a cap the slice of a cone
Archæologic and counterfeited The smoothest thing in all the high-street As Eton scholars to-day may see:
They—wherever else they find their wonder And feed their boyhood on Time’s enchantment— See never the Tow’r that spoke to me.
FLYCATCHERS
Sweet pretty fledgelings, perched on the rail arow, Expectantly happy, where ye can watch below Your parents a-hunting i’ the meadow grasses All the gay morning to feed you with flies;
Ye recall me a time sixty summers ago, When, a young chubby chap, I sat just so With others on a school-form rank’d in a row, Not less eager and hungry than you, I trow, With intelligences agape and eyes aglow, While an authoritative old wise-acre Stood over us and from a desk fed us with flies.
Dead flies—such as litter the library south-window, That buzzed at the panes until they fell stiff-baked on the sill, Or are roll’d up asleep i’ the blinds at sunrise, Or wafer’d flat in a shrunken folio.
A dry biped he was, nurtured likewise On skins and skeletons, stale from top to toe With all manner of rubbish and all manner of lies.
GHOSTS
Mazing around my mind like moths at a shaded candle, In my heart like lost bats in a cave fluttering, Mock ye the charm whereby I thought reverently to lay you, When to the wall I nail’d your reticent effigys?
Έτώσιον ἄχθος ἀρούρης
Who goes there? God knows. I’m nobody. How should I answer? Can’t jump over a gate nor run across the meadow. I’m but an old whitebeard of inane identity. Pass on! What’s left of me to-day will very soon be nothing.
HELL AND HATE
Two demons thrust their arms out over the world, Hell with a ruddy torch of fire, And Hate with gasping mouth, Striving to seize two children fair Who play’d on the upper curve of the Earth.
Their shapes were vast as the thoughts of man, But the Earth was small As the moon’s rim appeareth Scann’d through an optic glass.
The younger child stood erect on the Earth As a charioteer in a car Or a dancer with arm upraised; Her whole form—barely clad From feet to golden head— Leapt brightly against the uttermost azure, Whereon the stars were splashes of light Dazed in the gulfing beds of space.
The elder might have been stell’d to show The lady who led my boyish love; But her face was graver than e’er to me When I look’d in her eyes long ago, And the hair on her shoulders fal’n Nested its luminous brown I’ the downy spring of her wings: Her figure aneath was screen’d by the Earth, Whereoff—so small that was No footing for her could be— She appeared to be sailing free I’ the glide and poise of her flight.
Then knew I the Angel Faith, Who was guarding human Love.
Happy were both, of peaceful mien, Contented as mankind longeth to be, Not merry as children are; And show’d no fear of the Fiends’ pursuit, As ever those demons clutched in vain; And I, who had fear’d awhile to see Such gentleness in such jeopardy, Lost fear myself; for I saw the foes Were slipping aback and had no hold On the round Earth that sped its course.
The painted figures never could move, But the artist’s mind was there: The longer I look’d the more I knew They were falling, falling away below To the darkness out of sight.