The Collected Poems of T. W. H. Crosland

How shall we praise thee, who art England's praise
And with the soul of her soul most accords,
So that she vaunteth to the end of days
England and Shakespeare high, fast-wedded words?
O Royal thou, that spake us a new earth
And new fair heavens, and a proud new sea,
Greener is April, boasting of thy birth,
More blossom'd May, because she swaddled thee!
Before thy wisdom humbly stand the wise,
Judged of thy goodness, Virtue hath no cause,
Whoever mounts, a feeble feather tries
By thy great pinion; and except thou pause,
The sweetest singer falters in his scale—
Eagle, and Lark, and Swan, and Nightingale!

For Remembrance

What wife had he, what sweetheart, what fair love?
So will the gossips ask themselves when Fame
Shall set her impudent lips upon my name
And make an auction for your cast-off glove.
They know you not. You are a brooding dove,
Whose spirit, fearful of the world's sharp flame,
Nestles unto the goodness whence it came,
And hath nor wish to range nor will to rove.

Yet, that through dusty Time you may not pass
Unpictured, unenshrined, or unadored,
I build this turret of eternal brass,
Wherein, so long as word may chime with word,
You are to sit before your jewelled glass
Beautiful as the Garden of the Lord.

For Algernon Charles Swinburne

The cherry whitens in the April air,
Young Spring has spilt her magic on the wold,
The woodlands ring with rapture as of old,
And England lies new-washen, green and fair;
Yet is she heavy with a secret care,
For Death the ever-sharp and over-bold
Hath taken our Tongue of Honey, our Throat of Gold;
And we have digged a pit, and left him there.

So must he sleep, though it be high broad noon,
Or Venus glister in the darkling firs:
The roses and the music are forgot;
Even the great round marigold of a moon,
That is for lovers and for harvesters,
And all the sighing seas, may move him not.

For Stephen Phillips

Now you are dead and past the bitter fret
And the long doubt and the disputed throne,
And the contempts which turn the heart to stone,—
Who that hath wit shall breathe you a regret?
Who that hath tears shall pay you pity's debt?
Unto your place of easing you are gone,
Having fetched for us Beauty from her own
Lodges of gold by silver orchards set.

O mortal man that looked in angels' eyes
And still of baseness took both rood and reed,
Griever who wed bright visions to great sounds,
Teller of sorrowful proud histories;
We put our silly fingers in your wounds
And it is well that they no longer bleed.

Ubi Bene

Along the English lanes a budding green,
Upon the English orchards pink and white,
And over them the rapture and delight
Of April sunshine! Fair and fresh and clean,
Washen as if in wells of hyaline
And very wondrous to the pilgrim sight;
A glad, new land of all things soft and bright—
Oh, surely, here an angel must have been

And left his blessing! . . . Dead, young son of ours,
Who didst so proudly taste the loving-cup,
Whose blood but now shone like a living rose
Dropped by the Lord upon the Flanders snows,
What country shall they give you to be yours
For this, the England you have given up?

The Baby in the Ward

We were all sore and broken and keen on sleep,
Tumours and hearts and dropsies, there we lay,
Weary of night and wearier of day,
With no more health in us than rotten sheep.
Then, tossed to us on some intangible deep,
Alicia came, and each man learnt to pray
That Providence would please find out a way
To still or abate the voice with which she would weep.

God's infinite mercy, how that child did cry,
In spite of bottle, bauble, peppermint, nurse!
The Tumour said he'd “tell the manager,”
The Dropsy mumbled forth his bitterest curse;
But still she wailed and wailed. And when we die
We shall be sainted for forgiving her.

Titanic

Upon the tinkling splintery battlements
Which swing and tumble south in ghostly white
Behemoth rushes blindly from the night,
Behemoth whom we have praised on instruments
Dulcet and shrill and impudent with vents:
Behemoth whose huge body was our delight
And miracle, wallows where there is no light,
Shattered and crumpled and torn with pitiful rents.

O towers of steel and masts that gored the moon,
On you we blazoned our pomp and lust and pelf,
And we have died like excellent proud kings
Who take death nobly if it come late or soon:
For our high souls are mirrors of Himself,
Though our great wonders are His littlest things.

Valour

Mounting his stairs of azure and of gold,
The English lark sings in the August weather
For joy which knoweth neither tie nor tether
And is not troubled if the world grows old;
While you, who were as blithesome and as bold,
And held your life lightly as any feather,
Sleep the high sleep that dead men sleep together,
Careless of what is done and what is told.

I know that all our England shone before you
When you went down. It made a radiance
Even of the front of Death. Oh, woman's son,
You died for England . . . valiant as she that bore you,
And sent you forth with a still countenance,
And broke her heart for England—and lives on!

Lovers

He goeth and he returns not. He is dead;
Their house of joy no further brightness shows,
Their loveliness is come unto its close,
Their last touch given, and their last kindness said;
For him no more the vision of her bent head,
For her no more the lily or the rose,
Nor any gladness in this place of woes;
The book is shut, the bitter lesson read.

Yet who shall beat them down? Though the Abhorr'd
Taketh the groom, and to the bride hath sent
The dagger of anguish with the ice-cold hilt,
Both of them triumph in a strange content—
And out of souls like these will heavens be built
And holy cities peopled for the Lord.

On the Death of Edward VII

All our proud banners mourn along the May,
One who is plumed and powerful breaks us down:
Marred are the orchards, shaken our strong town,
And blackness covers up our bright array.
The Sceptre and the Orb are put away;
The scarlet changed for the funereal gown;
And easy lies the head that wore a Crown,
And this which was a King is simple clay.

O mighty Death, the mightiest are thine,
Thou set'st his Widow weeping in her place,
And while thou pluck'st her heart with thy chill hand,
And givest her to drink a common wine,
The wondering sentry goeth at his pace,
And England cries, and cannot understand.

The Promise

You know my pains, you see me in the hell
Through which I toil, hurt and uncomforted,
You see on what base errands I am sped,
And what I reap where we sowed asphodel;
And my songs are of sorrow, and I tell,
Knowing no other, tales of grief and dread:
Though I be warm I am as good as dead,
And always we can hear my passing bell.

And yet, dear Spirit, you who have kind eyes
That meet disaster with a child's amaze,
You who have got a wild rose for your lips
And are all fashioned out of Paradise;
You shall stand safe beside the sapphire bays,
And I will show you all our golden ships.

Ulster

The savage leopardess, and she-wolves and bears
Cherish their offsprings in the solitude,
And red-eyed tigresses whose trade is blood,
And female panthers, and jackals in their lairs.
The lowliest, sullenest mother-creature wears
In her hot heart a jewel of motherhood,
And knoweth darkly that the only good
Is to defend and succour her rude heirs.

And thou whose Might is from the east unto the west,
Whose Front is of chilled iron and fine gold,
Who yet in glory and honour goest drest,
O great-thewed mother of us all, behold
How this thy sturdy child, who is foully sold,
Fights that he be not banished from thy breast!

Charing Cross

At five o'clock they ring a tinkly bell;
The April dawn glimmers along the beds,
There is a lifting up of weary heads
From weary pillows. Our old citadel
Hath still held out, and while the miracle
Of morning is unbared again, and spreads
All the young East with greens and blues and reds
Each of us wakes to his particular hell.

But even on this bitter shore of Styx
Where Life to dogged Death puts the last schism,
We kindle for the ending of the dark:
The Asthma feebly jokes the Aneurism,
The little bandaged boy in Number Six
Sings “Ye shall die” with a voice like a lark.

For H. M. C.

I wonder which hath triumphed, you or Death?
For he has torn you ultimately from your place,
And shattered all the woman in your face,
And put his last injunction on your breath,
And ferried you across to his dim staith
Where there is none who hath either hope or grace,
But only the unimaginable race
Of broken souls his wing encompasseth.

O pitiful and pitiful! And yet
Not all he asks is yielded up to him,
And we who fight have our shrewd joy therefor:
Upon your brow sitteth a shining, grim
Rapture of wars, and on your lips is set
To-night the still smile of the conqueror.

After

And when I die, you should be grieved, and go
Dumbly into the bitter fields alone,
For you have long since made your widow's moan,
And carried in your heart the widow's woe.
Outrageous Death hath neither feint nor blow
To hurt you further. Thus without a groan
I shall go down, and be as cold as stone,
And you will kiss me and I shall not know.

But haply then some mercy may befall,
And to your breast, this death in life being past,
Quiet may come and peace without alloy:
Seeing you lone and lovely and downcast
They will possess you with a secret joy
And keep you with an angel at your call.

Dawn

“This morning at dawn I attacked the enemy's second system of defence.” —Sir Douglas Haig

These are the fights of Love and Joy and Men
With Fate and Death and the illicit Beast,
For guerdons, of which Glory is the least
And Honour not the highest. The old reign
Of Night shall topple, the old Wrongs be slain:
Fitting it is that you go to the Feast
While angel suns kindle the young-eyed east
And bring the breath of Eden back again.

Oh soldiers' hour! . . . For now the English rose
Flames and is washed with the authentic dew
And through the mist her ancient crimson shows:
I see your shadows on the waking lawn
Like shadows of kings, and all the souls of you
Blazoned and bright and panoplied in the dawn.

Cor Cordium

He is gone hence. Weep no weak tears for him:
You gave us freely what you valued most;
It is not loss, for gifts are never lost
Unto the giver. Lo, the star-kept, dim
Limits where battle fades away, and grim
Death halts and hath no power! On that coast
His feet are set among the shining host
Who range with cherubim and seraphim.

A thousand suns are unregarded dust,
A million dawns break and are counted not,
And Beauty riseth up, and she departs
Eternally—eternally forgot;
But your fair stripling, dead beside his trust,
Is safely folded in the Heart of Hearts.

“Votes for Women”

Mark how their shining effigies are set
For ever on the firmament of Time,
Like lovely words caught in a lovely rhyme,
Or silver stars kept in a faery net.
Ivory and marble hold them for us yet,
And all our blossomy memories of them chime
With all the honest graces of the prime—
Helen, and Ruth, Elaine, and Juliet.

And You, in this disconsolate London square
Flaunting an ill-considered purple hat
And mud-stained, rumpled, bargain-counter coat,
You of the broken tooth and buttered hair,
And idiot eye and cheeks that bulge with fat,
Sprawl on the flagstones chalking for a vote!

For a Rich Man who is said to “Believe in Poetry”

Let us be filled with wild and fierce disdains,
Let us contemn, disparage, and cry down
These prancing stomachs who amass and own,
Inherit and squander, and have nets and chains
And panoplies of penalties and pains
Wherewith to extort the uttermost half-crown;
For whom indeed the world's hard fields are sown
And its scant harvests gathered on gorged wains.

Withal, we must believe good things of them,
And show a kindly bosom while they stand
Grinning out of their proud and cunning eyes;
Nay, even the chiefest shall not stir our phlegm,
For he hath still knowledge of Paradise,
And hides an angel's feather in his hand.

Leda

Out of my silver turrets I look down
Upon a garden wherein sleeps a rose
Who hath a ruby heart; beside her glows
Unblemished, in a drifted, vestal gown
Yon lily, and beyond them lies a town
Of tufted green and each sweet bloom that blows;
Midmost from whence a little fountain throws
His gentle sprays which seem but half his own.

And on the lake that skirts our dreary wood
There sails for ever a new-washen swan,
Who is as white as milk or angels are:
At dawn he glitters in the solitude,
At dusk he goeth glimmering and wan
To where one waits him, white like a young star.

The “Student”

A minx of seventeen, with rather fine
Brown eyes and freckles and a cheerful grin,
She saunters up the ward, and stricken sin
Nods and looks pleasant (why should one repine?).
She takes “her cases,” looks for every “sign,”
Hammers and sounds the portly and the thin,
Plies them with questions till their cheap heads spin
And keeps them busy saying “ninety-nine.”

It's my turn now! Oh, let me bare my chest
And spread a level sheet across my crib,
And be as wax for our meticulous Miss;
While she, poor dear, doing her anxious best,
Feels for the apex under the wrong rib
And wonders fiercely where my liver is.

Antarctic

What tale is this which stirs a world of knaves
Out of its grubbing to throw greasy pence
Forth to the hat, and choke with eloquence
In boastful prose and verse of doubtful staves?
Four men have died, gentlemen, heroes, braves;
Snows wrap them round eternally. From thence
They may no more return to life or sense
And a steel moon aches down on their chill graves.

“They died for England.” It is excellent
To die for England. Death is oft the prize
Of him who bears the burden and the load.
So with a glory let our lives be spent—
We may be noble in the Minories
And die for England in the Camden Road.

Shepherd's Bush

Preposterous stucco, naughty ropes of light,
The drunken drone of twenty-two brass bands,
A flip-flap, and some hokey-pokey stands;
Smith on your left, and Lipton on your right,
And Lyons, Lyons, Lyons; and that bright
Particular marvel, which, be sure, commands
Respect from fools of all and sundry brands—
The Press Lord Harmsworth prints from every night.

Here, noble London, dost thou prowl and yell,
Or cause to disappear with horrid zest
The meat and drink provided by the Jew;
Here flickereth they paltry, shadowful hell—
And like a silver feather in the West,
And fair as fair, the moon that Dido knew!

Death

For thou wert Master of their windy keeps,
In Tyre, in Ilium, and in Babylon,
Which smote the welkin many a year agone
With torches and with shouting. Whoso sleeps
On the large hills, or drowns in the old deeps,
His name shines in a book for thee to con;
And thy chill pomps and aching triumphs are won
Where the forlornest woman sits and weeps.

So that for thee we make embroideries,
And for thy foul pate twist a beamy crown,
Who art the lord of laughter and of lust,
Who readest all their lesson to the wise,
And to the fools, as they go up and down;
And it is this: A cry, a dream, and—dust.

The End

I know that our fair rose was slain last night:
She is become a ruinous, delicate wraith,
And now she gives her perfumes up to Death;
No longer may she shine in the sweet light,
Or drink the dewey darkness; for the might
That breaks the hearts of kings and staggereth
Bold men, hath borne her down. “Take me,” she saith,
“Unto the old, dead roses, red and white.”

So, dearest, when the ultimate foul dun
And crawling knave into our hand shall thrust
His figure of accompt and greedy fine
For our poor gladness underneath the sun,
I shall come laughing to your gentle dust,
Or you will come like balm to comfort mine.

For the Time

Give me the robe an angel late hath worn,
Give me the tongue of wonder and the pen
Of magic which doth fetch the souls of men
Out of deep hell; give me the stings of scorn,
The rage of blood, agony of the thorn,
Wisdom of hills and stars. Let me be ten
Times tried in furnaces, and tried again,
And searched in icy wells where proof is born.

And I will say to you a word of breath
More furious than the forty winds of night
And fiercer and more terrible than death;
And yet as holy as the words of light
That love or mercy or sainthood uttereth,
And sweeter than the prayers of women—Fight!

University of Virginia Library

SONNETS

April 23