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I. PART I

1

The Great Memory

Nobis cum pereant amorum
Et dulcedines et decor,
Tu nostrorum praeteritorum,
Anima mundi, sis memor.
On the mind's lonely hill-top lying
I saw man's life go by like a breath,
And Love that longs to be love undying,
Bowed with fear of the void of death.
“If Time be master,” I heard her weeping,
“How shall I save the loves I bore?
They are gone, they are gone beyond my keeping—
Anima mundi, sis memor!
“Soul of the World, thou seest them failing—
Childhood's loveliness, child's delight—
Lost as stars in the daylight paling,
Trodden to earth as flowers in fight.
Surely in these thou hast thy pleasure—
Yea! they are thine and born therefor:
Shall they not be with thy hid treasure?—
Anima mundi, sis memor!
2

“Only a moment we can fold them
Here in the home whose life they are:
Only a moment more behold them
As in a picture, small and far.
Oh, in the years when even this seeming
Lightens the eyes of Love no more,
Dream them still in thy timeless dreaming
Anima mundi, sis memor!”
3

March 5, 1921

Me at the dawn's first breath
Thee in the dusk of death
Thy love and my love tended:
We shall be mother and son
After all days are done
All darkness ended.
4

The Linnet's Nest

O what has wrought again the miracle of Spring?
This old garden of mine that was so beautiful
And died so utterly—what power of earth or sky
From dead sticks and dead mould has raised up Paradise?
The flow'rs we knew we welcome again in their turns—
Primrose, anemone, daffodil and tulip,
Blossom of cherry, blossom of pear and apple,
Iris and columbine, and now the white cistus.
In a round bush it grows, this cistus of delight,
A mound of delicate pure white crinkled petals,
In the heart of the garden, where the green paths cross,
Where the old stone dial throws its morning shadow.
Come nearer, and speak low; watch while I put aside
This thickly flow'ring spray, and stoop till you can see
There in the shadowy centre, a tiny nest,
And on it, facing us, a bright-eyed bird sitting.
She has five eggs, shaped and speckled most daintily;
But this she cannot know, nor how they are quick'ning
With that which soon will be on the wing, and singing
The ancestral linnet-song of thoughtless rapture.
5

No, this she cannot know, nor indeed anything
That we call knowledge, nor such love and hope as ours:
Yet she for her treasure will endure and tremble,
And so find peace that passeth our understanding.
You wonder at my wonder—the bird has instinct,
The law by dust ordained for that which dust creates?
What then is beauty? and love? my heart is restless
To know what love and beauty are worth in the end.
The bird I know will fly; nest, brood, cistus, garden
Will all be lost when winter takes the world again:
Yet in my mind their loveliness will still survive
Till I too in my turn obey the laws of dust.
Are we then all? Is there no Life in whom our nests,
Our trembling hopes and our unintelligent loves
May still, for the beauty they had, the faith they kept,
Live on as in a vast eternal memory?
Yet so for us would beauty still be meaningless,
Mortal and meaningless—our hearts are restless still
To be one with that spirit from whom all life springs,
And therein to behold all beauty for ever.
Perhaps the linnet too is more than dust: perhaps
She, though so small, of so quick-perishing beauty,
Is none the less a part of His immortal dream
And beneath her breast cherishes the divine life.
6

The Nightjar

We loved our Nightjar, but she would not stay with us.
We had found her lying as dead, but soft and warm,
Under the apple tree beside the old thatched wall.
Two days we kept her in a basket by the fire,
Fed her, and thought she well might live—till suddenly
In the very moment of most confiding hope
She raised herself all tense, quivered and drooped and died.
Tears sprang into my eyes—why not? the heart of man
Soon sets itself to love a living companion,
The more so if by chance it asks some care of him.
And this one had the kind of loveliness that goes
Far deeper than the optic nerve—full fathom five
To the soul's ocean cave, where Wonder and Reason
Tell their alternate dreams of how the world was made.
So wonderful she was—her wings the wings of night
But powdered here and there with tiny golden clouds
And wave-line markings like sea-ripples on the sand.
O how I wish I might never forget that bird—
Never!
But even now, like all beauty of earth,
She is fading from me into the dusk of Time.
7

After Church

“Who was that poor old dame, so white and weak,
So bowed and the world so dead to her?
Was it not kindness lost? and I heard you speak,
I wondered what you said to her.”
“Nothing—she is my Mother, my Mother who died
Years ago—three years ago.
Only on Sunday I see her—walk by her side—
No, no, you could not know.
“She does not hear me—she takes my arm to her door—
Infinite comfort, infinite pain—
She does not know me—just as it was before,
Just—till she dies again.”
8

The First Lesson

[_]

(JUDAEUS AD GENTES)

He that liveth for ever created all things,
He only is righteous and there is none but he
Who governeth the world with the palm of his hand.
All things obey his will, for he is King of all.
Yea, it is he that made us and not we ourselves,
We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
“Tell me then what is Man, and whereto serveth he?
Tell me what is his good, and what is his evil?
A man's days at the most are but a hundred years,
And as a drop of water is unto the sea,
Or as a single grit compared unto all sand
So are a thousand years to the eternal day.”
Therefore hath God poured forth his mercy upon us,
He saw our end and multiplied his compassion.
For the mercy of Man is unto his neighbour,
But the mercy of the Lord is upon us all,
Whom he reproveth and nurtureth and teacheth,
And bringeth us again, as a shepherd his flock.
Yea it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves,
We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
9

The Second Lesson

[_]

(SOPHOCLES)

O would that it might be my portion in this life
Still to keep reverence in all my words and deeds
By those high Laws that haunt the heav'n from which they came.
Skyborn they are, sprung of no man or mortal seed,
Nor fated to be buried by forgetful Time,
For great in these is God and his strength shall not fail.
10

The Nativity

Thou art ours, thou knowest, O God, that thou art ours,
Seeing that we found thee and gave thee heav'nly gifts—
The kingdom the pow'r and the glory of loving,
The life beyond the shadows of Time and of Death.
Only one gift we gave thee not—we could not give
That imagination of the thoughts of thy heart,
By which, through the portal of our one loveliness
Thou enterest our life, a little son of man.
11

The Star in the West

Listen with me tonight, listen O tenderly
To the wordless wailing of yonder newborn Child.
In vain his mother's arms enfold him and soothe him,
In vain her voice murmurs the song of tireless love.
Why does he weep? Why will he not be comforted?
Here on the threshold of his life, what does he dread?
Is it the dimness of the stable where he lies,
Or the gaunt ox and ass, shadows of toil to come?
Presently will he not uplift his wond'ring eyes
To see the face that is to be his earthly rest?
Will not the shining star above his low roof stayed
Lighten his childish dream with serene rays of peace?
Dare not to ask!—unless ye dare also to hear
The story of his cross, his first and second death—
That men have murdered Night, and made stars of their own,
And flung them down from heav'n, and Peace has died by fire.
12

A Perpetual Memory

GOOD FRIDAY, 1915

Broken and pierced, hung on the bitter wire,
By their most precious death the Sons of Man
Redeem for us the life of our desire—
O Christ how often since the world began!
13

For J. S. Haldane

Silent Moon and silent morning air,
Silver frost on green and silver lawn,
Shimmering mist in downland hollows bare,
Magical night dying in timeless dawn—
O Earth, Earth, Earth! what needs this loveliness
To quiet a graveyard of unnumbered clods?
Is thy bread truth, or we that break and bless?
Shall we not live at last, when we are Gods?
14

To a Priest

AD SACERDOTEM

Judges, redeemers, heroes, wizards, elves,
Our gods are but the shadows of ourselves
Thrown on the mist around us, vague and vast,
By a live light out of a dying past.
Your mind is heavenly, friend: tell me not then
What God has willed, what God has said to men:
Shew me your shadow: I too at that sight
Will turn and kneel with you, to adore the light.
15

Epitaph

Underneath this stone we laid
All of Lucy that could fade:
Fairest earth, our earth's delight,
Here we gave to endless night.
Yet we trust eternal sleep
Her sweet spirit cannot keep:
Though her dust to dust be gone
She that lived is living on.
We it is, if truth were known,
Lie and dream beneath a stone:
And we too shall one day stir
Out of sleep to live with her.
17

The Anniversary At Her Son's Grave

“To the memory of a boy—
His parents' fondest hope—
Not beyond measure to be mourned
For eternal peace is his.
“In character, in the bright beauty of the mind,
In friendship, he excelled:
Now from the loves of earth
He has gone to the love divine.”
Ah! Beloved, though for thy delight
Thou hast morn everlastingly,
Cease not to remember me
Who weep beneath the twilight.
18

Paradiso XXXIII, 58

As he who sees in dream, and when the dream is past
the passion stamped upon his being still remains
although the dream itself come no more to the mind;
Such am I now, for almost wholly gone from me
is that my vision, yet still falling drop by drop
within my heart remains the sweetness born of it.
19

The Veil

ου πολυ μοι το μεταξυ γενησεται: αλλ' επι λεπτα στερνα πεσων ψυχης κεισομαι εγγυτατω.

When first I saw her beauty bare
She seemed a very slender Venus,
But now I love to have her spare
And feel the veil so thin between us,
For when we breast to breast entwine
Her soul more nearly lies with mine.
20

Sulpicia's Confession

Light of mine eyes, if this be not the truth
Never may I be near thy heart again:
Of all the faults of all my foolish youth
Not one has brought me such remorseful pain
As that last night I let thee sleep alone,
And starved thy passion but to hide my own.
21

To Christopher

(FOR HIS WEDDING DAY)

Young lover, for us that knew
You as a boy
Your parents, and theirs too,
And all the joy
That in their line so long
Has descended,
Life to-day soars up as a song
That is still unended.
We are old, young love, our bones
Ache by the way,
Our feet are slow on the stones,
Our twilight's grey,
But you, you have given us again
Memory and trust:
We are older than Age, we are stronger than pain,
We are more than our dust.
22

A Letter to R. B. after a Visit

AUGUST, 1921 (WRITTEN IN HIS HOST'S “NEW NARRATIVE METHOD”)

My dear Bridges before I do anything else
I must thank you for my visit: it was all good—
From the kind welcome and renewal of friendship
Down to that excellent wine and Devonshire cream.
I believe I did say something of my feelings,
But words are useless: I might go on heaping them
Epithet on epithet all down my paper
Like the elephant piling teak in Kipling's poem
And still leave the real thing wholly unexpressed.
But I do wish I could give you some idea
Of how much I like your new narrative method
And admire the poems by which you shew it off,
Especially of course the polyglot parrot
Who demonstrates in a ludicrous but apt image
How you in verse whose service is perfect freedom
Can tell a plain prosy tale, or write a letter,
Or toss a song to the stars or the salt seawind,
Or toll the deep old Latin and Italian bells,
Or dance among French accents without breaking them
Or wake again the poignant memories of Greece.
But here is post time, and this must go.
Believe me
My dear Bridges (how glad I am to write the words)
If you are my “old friend,” as your kindness declared,
I am yours too, as always grateful and devoted.
H. N.
23

To a Friend across the Ferry

Here's a health, over here and over there,
Let us drink it—or think it—and be merry:—
Here's the bottom of the ditch to all who dare
Lay a hand upon the Freedom of the Ferry!
 

Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, April 17, 1920.

24

Cricket

Our countrymen of England who winter here at ease
And send abroad their cricketers to fight across the seas—
They long to win the rubber, but inwardly they know
The game's the game: howe'er the luck may go.
They know the English skipper may cry “a head! a head!”
And t'other like a Kangaroo may toss a tail instead,
But cricketers can smile away the force of Fortune's blow
For a man's a man: howe'er the luck may go.
To field upon a field of brick, to bowl beneath the blaze,
To bat and bat and bat and bat for days and days and days,
And then to lose—there's something wrong—but no! but no! but no!
The game's the game: howe'er the luck may go.
All men alive are cricketers, and stand to face the odds,
And some will trust in cunning tricks, and some in heathen gods:
But you my son were born and bred where what I say is so—
The game's the game: howe'er the luck may go.
25

Epitaph on a Public Man

Stranger if you desire to know
What End was his who lies below,
In far too many Chairs he sat
And died worn out by merely that.
26

Du Côté de Chez Renard

A FABLE

Once on a night when magic of the moon
Lay broad on Exmoor like a fairy noon,
Up from his earth in Horner's secret glades—
Silent in silence, shadow among shades—
To the lone farm on the lone hill-side sleeping,
Reynard the Fox came creeping, creeping, creeping.
At edge of wood he stopped and sniffed the air,
Covey and hen-roost both he knew were there,
But lingering a moment in two minds
He heard the steady crunch of browsing hinds,
And saw the great stag taking snatch by snatch
His half-scorned tribute from the turnip patch.
“Fox,” said His Grace, “though somewhat under size,
You have been long reputed not unwise.
Counsel me, then—To-day I heard report
That men are minded to forgo their sport.
'Tis said in that new-fangled world of theirs
Where the hinds now conduct the stags' affairs,
War is forbidden, hunting is to cease,
And all live things may multiply in peace.
27

What shall I say, then—shall I disapprove,
Or take the lead myself and head the move?
Hunting does little harm that I can find,
But it wastes time, and sometimes kills a hind.
As for myself, I never look to see
A pack of hounds within two miles of me,
But if it suits you little beasts of fur
To have them banned, why should I not concur?”
Reynard replied, “Your Grace is much too kind
To take account of rabbit or of hind.
The question of importance, I will show,
Is whether wild life shall survive or no.
Consider, then—if your exalted rank
Does not disable me from being frank—
What can the red deer or the fox be worth
To the strange tribe with whom we share the earth?
Wood, moorland, combe,—our heritage we hold
Upon a tenure oldest of the old,
Rendering and paying each his annual scot—
Speed in the chase or savour in the pot,
Receiving too, for our mere livelihood,
Whatever we can find in field or wood.
Men grudge us this provision, call it theft,
Say that we pick, and they have what is left.
But here another sacred law comes in—
To shoot a red deer or a fox is sin.
We are forgiven then, and keep our place,
Pleading our privilege as beasts of chase.
But can we hope, when all these laws are gone,
That our immunity will still go on?
28

Duck, chicken, partridge, turnip, hay and corn—
All these are paid for now by note of horn,
Paid for time out of mind:—but when they're not—
When we are no more chased—we shall be shot.”
Up went the ten tines of His Grace's head:
“I did not catch the sense of what you said.”
“Pardon, my lord, not mine was the offence,
In men's affairs there is but seldom sense.
These countrymen of ours, being so humane,
From such extremes may possibly refrain.
They will not kill, but offer in the Zoo
A cage for me, a model moor for you,
Where we may multiply, secure from guns,
And nourish freedom on a dole of buns.”
At that the deer their haughty heads all tossed,
And at a bound the moonlight field recrossed,
Flitting along the open moor as swift
As a light cloud before the wind may drift—
Till they were gone—whither I cannot say,
But still, I trust, to follow Nature's way.
Our old friend, Reynard, when the dawn was near,
Went home in the old style with Chanticleer.
29

The Old to the Young

Now, dear child, when childhood ends,
Comes the time to weed your friends:
Not of course that they'll be told
They're too dowdy dull or old
But we must admit the truth
Life is short and youth is youth.
Half must go in any case
Topsy turvy into space,
That the rest, the happier few,
Still may walk and talk with you.
Then may this old house be heard
Kindly, if it breathe a word:
If it beg, since here you were
As beloved as you were fair,
You'll revisit still at times
These old rooms and lawns and limes,
These old people, her and him,
Till their memories are dim,
Till you too are moving West
Far from any last year's nest.
30

To E. C.

Rivers when beheld afar
Often blue and golden are;
Nearer seen the shining flood
Turns to sluggish tides of mud.
Dearest, when to you I seem
Such a dull unlovely stream,
Read, and think that even I
Can at times reflect the sky.
31

Poet's Epitaph

What I was and yet shall be
You have seen and could not see.
Say then only “Here below
Lies a Worm without his Glow.”
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