Marlborough and other poems. Charles Hamilton Sorley

Have sought, and found no men in all this world.

      ​Wind, that has blown here always ceaselessly,

       Bringing, if any man can understand,

       Might to the mighty, freedom to the free;

       Wind, that has caught us, cleansed us, made us grand,

       Wind that is we

       (We that were men)—make men in all this land,

       That so may live and wrestle and hate that when

       They fall at last exultant, as we fell,

       And come to God, God may say, "Do you come then

       Mildly enquiring, is it heaven or hell?

       Why! Ye were men!

       Back to your winds and rains. Be these your heaven and hell!"

      24 March 1913

      ​

      STONES

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      II

      STONES

      This field is almost white with stones

      That cumber all its thirsty crust.

       And underneath, I know, are bones,

      And all around is death and dust.

       And if you love a livelier hue—

      O, if you love the youth of year,

       When all is clean and green and new,

      Depart. There is no summer here.

       Albeit, to me there lingers yet

      In this forbidding stony dress

       The impotent and dim regret

      For some forgotten restlessness.

       Dumb, imperceptibly astir,

      These relics of an ancient race,

       These men, in whom the dead bones were

      Still fortifying their resting-place.

      ​Their field of life was white with stones;

      Good fruit to earth they never brought.

       O, in these bleached and buried bones

      Was neither love nor faith nor thought.

       But like the wind in this bleak place,

      Bitter and bleak and sharp they grew,

       And bitterly they ran their race,

      A brutal, bad, unkindly crew:

       Souls like the dry earth, hearts like stone,

      Brains like that barren bramble-tree:

       Stern, sterile, senseless, mute, unknown—

      But bold, O, bolder far than we!

      14 July 1913

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      III EAST KENNET CHURCH AT EVENING

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      I stood amongst the corn, and watched

      The evening coming down.

       The rising vale was like a queen,

      And the dim church her crown.

       Crown-like it stood against the hills.

      Its form was passing fair.

       I almost saw the tribes go up

      To offer incense there.

       And far below the long vale stretched.

      As a sleeper she did seem

       That after some brief restlessness

      Has now begun to dream.

       (All day the wakefulness of men,

      Their lives and labours brief,

       Have broken her long troubled sleep.

      Now, evening brings relief.)

      ​There was no motion there, nor sound.

      She did not seem to rise.

       Yet was she wrapping herself in

      Her grey of night-disguise.

       For now no church nor tree nor fold

      Was visible to me:

       Only that fading into one

      Which God must sometimes see.

       No coloured glory streaked the sky

      To mark the sinking sun.

       There was no redness in the west

      To tell that day was done.

       Only, the greyness of the eve

      Grew fuller than before.

       And, in its fulness, it made one

      Of what had once been more.

       There was much beauty in that sight

      That man must not long see.

       God dropped the kindly veil of night

      Between its end and me.

      24 July 1913

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      IV AUTUMN DAWN

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      And this is morning. Would you think

       That this was the morning, when the land

       Is full of heavy eyes that blink

       Half-opened, and the tall trees stand

       Too tired to shake away the drops

       Of passing night that cling around

       Their branches and weigh down their tops:

       And the grey sky leans on the ground?

       The thrush sings once or twice, but stops

       Affrighted by the silent sound.

       The sheep, scarce moving, munches, moans.

       The slow herd mumbles, thick with phlegm.

       The grey road-mender, hacking stones,

       Is now become as one of them.

       Old mother Earth has rubbed her eyes

       And stayed, so senseless, lying down.

       Old mother is too tired to rise

       And lay aside her grey nightgown,

       And come with singing and with strength

       In loud exuberance of day,

       Swift-darting. She is tired at length,

       Done up, past bearing, you would say.

       ​She'll come no more in lust of strife,

       In hedge's leap, and wild bird's cries,

       In winds that cut you like a knife,

       In days of laughter and swift skies,

       That palpably pulsate with life,

       With life that kills, with life that dies.

       But in a morning such as this