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Drinkwater John
Poems, 1908-1919

EPILOGUE FOR A MASQUE

 
A little time they lived again, and lo!
Back to the quiet night the shadows go,
And the great folds of silence once again
Are over fools and kings and fighting-men.
 
 
A little while they went with stumbling feet,
With spears of hate, and love all flowery sweet,
With wondering hearts and bright adventurous wills,
And now their dust is on a thousand hills.
 
 
We dream of them, as men unborn shall dream
Of us, who strive a little with the stream
Before we too go out beyond the day,
And are as much a memory as they.
 
 
And Death, so coming, shall not seem a thing
Of any fear, nor terrible his wing.
We too shall be a tale on earth, and time
Shall shape our pilgrimage into a rhyme.
 

THE GUEST

 
Sometimes I feel that death is very near,
And, with half-lifted hand,
Looks in my eyes, and tells me not to fear,
But walk his friendly land,
Comrade with him, and wise
As peace is wise.
 
 
Then, greatly though my heart with pity moves
For dear imperilled loves,
I somehow know
That death is friendly so,
A comfortable spirit; one who takes
Long thought for all our sakes.
 
 
I wonder; will he come that friendly way,
That guest, or roughly in the appointed day?
And will, when the last drops of life are spilt,
My soul be torn from me,
Or, like a ship truly and trimly built,
Slip quietly to sea?
 

TREASON

 
What time I write my roundelays,
I am as proud as princes gone,
Who built their empires in old days,
As Tamburlaine or Solomon;
And wisely though companions then
Say well it is and well I sing,
Assured above the praise of men
I am a solitary king.
 
 
But when I leave that straiter mood,
That lonely hour, and put aside
The continence of solitude,
I fall in treason to my pride,
And if a witling’s word be spent
Upon my song in jealousy,
In anger and in argument
I am as derelict as he.
 

POLITICS

 
You say a thousand things,
Persuasively,
And with strange passion hotly I agree,
And praise your zest,
And then
A blackbird sings
On April lilac, or fieldfaring men,
Ghostlike, with loaded wain,
Come down the twilit lane
To rest,
And what is all your argument to me?
 
 
Oh, yes – I know, I know,
It must be so —
You must devise
Your myriad policies,
For we are little wise,
And must be led and marshalled, lest we keep
Too fast a sleep
Far from the central world’s realities.
Yes, we must heed —
For surely you reveal
Life’s very heart; surely with flaming zeal
You search our folly and our secret need;
And surely it is wrong
To count my blackbird’s song,
My cones of lilac, and my wagon team,
More than a world of dream.
 
 
But still
A voice calls from the hill —
I must away —
I cannot hear your argument to-day.
 

FOR A GUEST ROOM

 
All words are said,
And may it fall
That, crowning these,
You here shall find
A friendly bed,
A sheltering wall,
Your body’s ease,
A quiet mind.
 
 
May you forget
In happy sleep
The world that still
You hold as friend,
And may it yet
Be ours to keep
Your friendly will
To the world’s end.
 
 
For he is blest
Who, fixed to shun
All evil, when
The worst is known,
Counts, east and west,
When life is done,
His debts to men
In love alone.
 

DAY

 
Dawn is up at my window, and in the May-tree
The finches gossip, and tits, and beautiful sparrows
With feathers bright and brown as September hazels.
 
 
The sunlight is here, filtered through rosy curtains,
Docile and disembodied, a ghost of sunlight,
A gentle light to greet the dreamer returning.
 
 
Part the curtains. I give you salutation
Day, clear day; let us be friendly fellows.
Come… I hear the Liars about the city.
 

DREAMS

 
We have our dreams; not happiness.
Great cities are upon the hill
To lighten all our dream, and still
We have no cities to possess
But cities built of bitterness.
 
 
We see gay fellows top to toe,
And girls in rainbow beauty bright —
’Tis but of silly dreams I write,
For up and down the streets we know,
The scavengers and harlots go.
 
 
Give me a dozen men whose theme
Is honesty, and we will set
On high the banner of dreams … and yet
Thousands will pass us in a stream,
Nor care a penny what we dream.
 

RESPONSIBILITY

 
You ploughmen at the gate,
All that you are for me
Is of my mind create,
And in my brain to be
A figure newly won
From the world’s confusion.
 
 
And if you are of grace,
That’s honesty for me,
And if of evil face,
Recorded then shall be
Dishonour that I saw
Not beauty, but the flaw.
 

PROVOCATIONS

 
I am no merry monger when
I see the slatterns of the town:
I hate to think of docile men
Whose angers all are driven down;
For sluts make joy a thing obscene,
And in contempt is nothing clean.
 
 
I like to see the ladies walk
With heels to set their chins atilt:
I like to hear the clergy talk
Of other clergy’s people’s guilt;
For happy is the amorous eye,
And indignation clears the sky.
 

TRIAL

 
Beauty of old and beauty yet to be,
Stripped of occasion, have security;
This hour it is searches the judgment through,
When masks of beauty walk with beauty too.
 

CHARGE TO THE PLAYERS

THE TROJAN WOMEN, BIRMINGHAM REPERTORYTHEATRE, APRIL 1918

 
Shades, that our town-fellows have come
To hear rewake for Christendom
This cleansing of a Pagan wrong
In flowing tides of tragic song, —
You shadows that the living call
To walk again the Trojan wall, —
You lips and countenance renewed
Of an immortal fortitude, —
Know that, among the silent rows
Of these our daily town-fellows,
Watching the shades with these who bring
But mortal ears to this you sing,
There somewhere sits the Greek who made
This gift of song, himself a shade.
 

CHARACTER

 
If one should tell you that in such a spring
The hawthorn boughs into the blackbird’s nest
Poured poison, or that once at harvesting
The ears were stony, from so manifest
Slander of proven faith in tree and corn
You would turn unheeding, knowing him forsworn.
 
 
Yet now, when one whose life has never known
Corruption, as you know: whose days have been
As daily tidings in your heart of lone
And gentle courage, suffers the word unclean
Of envious tongues, doubting you dare not cry —
“I have been this man’s familiar, and you lie.”
 

REALITY

 
It is strange how we travel the wide world over,
And see great churches and foreign streets,
And armies afoot and kings of wonder,
And deeds a-doing to fill the sheets
That grave historians will pen
To ferment the brains of simple men.
 
 
And all the time the heart remembers
The quiet habit of one far place,
The drawings and books, the turn of a passage,
The glance of a dear familiar face,
And there is the true cosmopolis,
While the thronging world a phantom is.
 

EPILOGUE

 
Come tell us, you that travel far
With brave or shabby merchandise,
Have you saluted any star
That goes uncourtiered in the skies?
 
 
Do you remember leaf or wing
Or brook the willows leant along,
Or any small familiar thing
That passed you as you went along?
 
 
Or does the trade that is your lust
Drive you as yoke-beasts driven apace,
Making the world a road of dust
From market-place to market-place?
 
 
Your traffic in the grain, the wine,
In purple and in cloth of gold,
In treasure of the field and mine,
In fables of the poets told, —
 
 
But have you laughed the wine-cups dry
And on the loaves of plenty fed,
And walked, with all your banners high,
In gold and purple garmented?
 
 
And do you know the songs you sell
And cry them out along the way?
And is the profit that you tell
After your travel day by day
 
 
Sinew and sap of life, or husk —
Dead coffer-ware or kindled brain?
And do you gather in the dusk
To make your heroes live again?
 
 
If the grey dust is over all,
And stars and leaves and wings forgot,
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
That it was even so,
That it must be even so
With death.
I knew
That no harm could have touched me out of my fear,
Because I had no grudge against anything,
Because I had desired
In the darkness, when fear came,
Love only, and pity, and fellowship,
And it would have been a thing monstrous,
Something defying nature
And all the simple universal fitness
For any force there to have come evilly
Upon me, who had no evil in my heart,
But only trust, and tenderness
For every presence about me in the air,
For the very shadow about me,
Being a little child for no one’s envy.
And I knew that God
Must understand that we go
To death as little children,
Desiring love so simply, and love’s defence,
And that he would be a barren God, without humour,
To cheat so little, so wistful, a desire,
That he created
In us, in our childishness …
And I may never again be sure of this,
But there, for a moment,
In the candle-light,
Standing at the door,
I knew.
 

TO ALICE MEYNELL

 
I too have known my mutinies,
Played with improvident desires,
Gone indolently vain as these
Whose lips from undistinguished choirs
Mock at the music of our sires.
 
 
I too have erred in thought. In hours
When needy life forbade me bring
To song the brain’s unravished powers,
Then had it been a temperate thing
Loosely to pluck an easy string.
 
 
Yet thought has been, poor profligate,
Sin’s period. Through dear and long
Obedience I learn to hate
Unhappy lethargies that wrong
The larger loyalties of song.
 
 
And you upon your slender reed,
Most exquisitely tuned, have made
For every singing heart a creed.
And I have heard; and I have played
My lonely music unafraid,
 
 
Knowing that still a friendly few,
Turning aside from turbulence,
Cherish the difficult phrase, the due
Bridals of disembodied sense
With the new word’s magnificence.
 

PETITION

 
O Lord, I pray: that for each happiness
My housemate brings I may give back no less
Than all my fertile will;
 
 
That I may take from friends but as the stream
Creates again the hawthorn bloom adream
Above the river sill;
 
 
That I may see the spurge upon the wall
And hear the nesting birds give call to call,
Keeping my wonder new;
 
 
That I may have a body fit to mate
With the green fields, and stars, and streams in spate,
And clean as clover-dew;
 
 
That I may have the courage to confute
All fools with silence when they will dispute,
All fools who will deride;
 
 
That I may know all strict and sinewy art
As that in man which is the counterpart,
Lord, of Thy fiercest pride;
 
 
That somehow this beloved earth may wear
A later grace for all the love I bear,
For some song that I sing;
That, when I die, this word may stand for me —
He had a heart to praise, an eye to see,
And beauty was his king.
 

HARVESTING

 
Pale sheaves of oats, pocked by untimely rain,
Under October skies,
Teased and forlorn,
Ungathered lie where still the tardy wain
Comes not to seal
The seasons of the corn,
From prime to June, with running barns of grain.
 
 
Now time with me is at the middle year,
The register of youth
Is now to sing …
My thoughts are ripe, my moods are in full ear;
That they should fail
Of harvesting,
Uncarried on cold fields, is all my fear.