University of Virginia Library

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DAY

BASIL SANDY MENZIES
Basil
A noble fog! Though I
Were comfortably dead,
Shrouded and buried deep
In my last bed,
Tucked in for my long sleep,
Where generations lie,
I scarce were more at ease
Than now I feel beneath
This heavy-laden silent atmosphere.

Menzies
A kraken of the skies! Its teeth
Are closing in my throat;
A lithe arm rummages
Each aching lung.

Sandy
We dote
On your disaster, Menzies. Here,
Like people of Pompeii.
Or like Saharan denizens,
Sitting for centuries
O'erwhelmed with sand or lava, we
Are quite at home in fogs like these.

Basil
And feel as if our tongues and pens
Had wagged and scrawled since Arthur's time.
And we had seen the best and worst
Of England's youth and England's prime;
As if this day might be the first
Day of Elizabeth—
Or any day: the dead, like God,
Breathing eternal breath,
Can be in any period.

Menzies
Alas, I cannot but remember
That this is London in November!

Basil
Be out of London; off!
Command your soul; away,
Where woods their wardrobes doff
To give the wind free play.
Brocaded oak-trees wait,
Reluctant to undress;
But the woods accept from Fate
Their lusty nakedness,
And with a many-armed caress
Welcome their stormy mate.

Sandy
Or where on rivers blacken
Close fleets of hurrying leaves.

Basil
Or where with tawny bracken
A lonely moorland heaves.

Sandy
Where ribbed and spiny hedges
Hold fast the empty ear.

Basil
Or where like summer's pledges
The ruddy hips appear.

Sandy
Where coal-black brambles shimmer.

Basil
Where in the naked copse,
Gems in a charnel, glimmer
The nightshade's coral drops.

Sandy
Or where in twilight shaws
The dusky-glowing thorn,
Hides in its hoard of haws
The crimson of the morn.

Basil
Where earth beholds the skies,
Or heaven looks on the sea,
Or where great mountains rise
Command your soul to be.

Menzies
I may not; all my brains
Are baked and dried; my veins
Shrunk and unflushed.

Basil
Drink wine.

Menzies
It steads not; moods like mine
Must run their courses out;
Nothing can put to rout
My gloom when I have swilled
Life's sadness to the lees;
Nepenthe may not ease,
Or nectar, heaven-distilled.

Sandy
Basil, tell us, pray,
Why you called the day
After the maiden queen?

Basil
Three centuries away
The child of Anne Boleyn
Came to the English throne
Upon this very day.

Menzies
Ah! what a splendid age!
Then England's hope was high;
The world was half unknown;
And heaven and hell were nigh.
On such a glorious stage
I could have played a part
With other souls devout:
But the world is now a mart,
And all the earth found out.
Hesperia is no more!
From Himalayan vales
Our fathers sought its shore,
And lit on isles and dales
Of Greece and Arcady;
But soon they set their sails
Sadly across the sea
And came to Ætna's base;
Yet by Sicilian ways
No dragon guarded tree
With golden apples grew.
Undauntedly they passed
The Tyrrhene waters blue,
And reached the Iberian strand—
Hesperia at last!
Not there the promised land.
Westward that vision old
Fled o'er the Atlantic main
To sink for ever, slain
By Californian gold.

Basil
This is the promised land;
God saw that it was good:
You fail to understand
That the world is but a mood,
And time ours to command.
This is the hour of doom,
Or this creation's morn
Or Calvary's day of gloom:
We die not; were not born.

Menzies
Ah, you anachronists!
You poets! It is you,
With mellow purple mists
That shade the dreary view
Of life, a naked precipice
Overhanging death's deep sea.

Sandy
Anachronists! I rest on this,
Whoe'er may count a schism:
Mere by-blows are the world and we,
And time within eternity
A sheer anachronism.

Basil
A bull! a thundering bull!

Menzies
But not a blundering one;
For Chance directs the sun,
And Fate is Fortune's fool.
The world was scarcely made
Ere Chance began its trade
And changed to frozen poles
And spaces tropic-bound
What Fate created good;
And soulless or with souls
Beasts grew each other's food:
With floods all flesh was drowned;
And foul diseases came;
Earth issued forth in flame,
And swallowed cities up;
Peoples and languages,
Kingdoms and hierarchies,
With wars and tortures rose:
Nay, our most bitter cup
For ever overflows
With Rich-and-poor alone:
Chance has always spurned
Our struggles to atone.
Lo, in the simplest thing
The good is overturned,
Fate set aside with scorn!
The air is clear and sweet;
But the fog is in the street:
In June the squares were green,
What dreary places now!
Ere we may greet the spring,
Must winter come again;
And man may not be born
Without a woman's pain.

Basil
But God has no machine
For punching perfect worlds from cakes of chaos.

Sandy
How!

Basil
He works but as He can;
God is an artist, not an artisan.
Darkly imagining,
With ice and fire and storm,
With floods and earthquake-shocks
He gave our sphere its form.
The meaning of His work
Grew as He wrought.
In creases of the mud, in cooling rocks
He saw ideas lurk—
Mountains and streams.
Of life the passionate thought
Haunted His dreams.
At last He tried to do
The thing He dreamt.
With plasm in throbbing motes,
With moss and ferns and giant beasts unkempt
He laboured long, until at length He seemed
To breathe out being. Flowers and forests grew
Like magic at His word: mountain and plain,
Jungle and sea and waste,
With miracles of strength and beauty teemed:
In every drop and every grain,
Each speck and stain,
Was some new being placed,
Minute or viewless. Then was He aghast,
And all His passion to create grew tame;
For life battened on life. He thought
To shatter all; but in a space
He loved His work again and sought
To crown it with a sovereign grace;
And soon the great idea came.
‘If I could give my work a mind;
If I could make it comprehend
How wondrously it is designed;
Enable it with head and heart
To mould itself to some accomplished end—
That were indeed transcendent art.’
Trembling with ecstasy He then made man,
To be the world's atonement and its prince.
And in the world God has done nothing since:
He keeps not tinkering at a finished plan;
He is an artist, not an artisan.

Menzies
I've heard it sung, I've heard it said,
I've read it oft in many books,
That truth's as long as it is broad.
I like your dilettante God:
When man His work has perfected,
Straight God will blot it out again,
Or change it to a sterile moon,
Upon whose past shall speculate
Star-gazers from some brand-new land-and-sea.
And why should mortal man complain
Although no memory shall be
Of all the millions of his race,
Who broke brave hearts still fronting Fate;
Although no rumour of Helen's looks,
Although no Cæsar's name of note,
No mellow world that Shakespeare wrote,
No echo of Wagner's spheral tune,
Shall sound in any nook of space?
God is an artist, and all art
Is useless, other artists say.

Sandy
If God is art and art is God,
I fear I don't believe in God.

Basil
That matters not since this is true—
Hear me before you go away,
And turn this over in your heart—
That God Himself believes in you.