Tides: A Book of Poems. Drinkwater John

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       John Drinkwater

      Tides: A Book of Poems

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066200916

Table of Contents

       A MAN’S DAUGHTER

       VENUS IN ARDEN

       COTSWOLD LOVE

       THE MIDLANDS

       MAY GARDEN

       PLOUGH

       POLITICS

       BIRMINGHAM—1916

       INSCRIPTION FOR A WAR MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN

       TREASON

       MY ESTATE

       WITH DAFFODILS

       FOR A GUEST ROOM

       ON READING THE MS. OF DOROTHY WORDSWORTH’S JOURNALS

       THE OLD WARRIOR

       THE GUEST

       REVERIE

       PENANCES

A MAN’S DAUGHTER

       Table of Contents

      There is an old woman who looks each night

      Out of the wood.

      She has one tooth, that isn’t too white.

      She isn’t too good.

      She came from the north looking for me,

      About my jewel.

      Her son, she says, is tall as can be;

      But, men say, cruel.

      My girl went northward, holiday making,

      And a queer man spoke

      At the woodside once when night was breaking,

      And her heart broke.

      For ever since she has pined and pined,

      A sorry maid;

      Her fingers are slack as the wool they wind,

      Or her girdle-braid.

      So now shall I send her north to wed,

      Who here may know

      Only the little house of the dead

      To ease her woe?

      Or keep her for fear of that old woman,

      As a bird quick-eyed,

      And her tall son who is hardly human,

      At the woodside?

      She is my babe and my daughter dear,

      How well, how well.

      Her grief to me is a fourfold fear,

      Tongue cannot tell.

      And yet I know that far in that wood

      Are crumbling bones,

      And a mumble mumble of nothing that’s good,

      In heathen tones.

      And I know that frail ghosts flutter and sigh

      In brambles there,

      And never a bird or beast to cry—

      Beware, beware—

      While threading the silent thickets go

      Mother and son,

      Where scrupulous berries never grow,

      And airs are none.

      And her deep eyes peer at eventide

      Out of the wood,

      And her tall son waits by the dark woodside,

      For maidenhood.

      And the little eyes peer, and peer, and peer;

      And a word is said.

      And some house knows, for many a year,

      But years of dread.

VENUS IN ARDEN

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      Now love, her mantle thrown,

      Goes naked by,

      Threading the woods alone,

      Her royal eye

      Happy because the primroses again

      Break on the winter continence of men.

      I saw her pass to-day

      In Warwickshire,

      With the old imperial way,

      The old desire,

      Fresh as among those other flowers they went,

      More beautiful for Adon’s discontent.

      Those other years she made

      Her festival

      When the blue eggs were laid

      And lambs were tall,

      By the Athenian rivers while the reeds

      Made love melodious for the Ganymedes.

      And now through Cantlow brakes,

      By Wilmcote hill,

      To Avon-side, she makes

      Her garlands still,

      And I who watch her flashing limbs am one

      With youth whose days three thousand years are done.

COTSWOLD LOVE