If there is to rise out of all this red ruin something like a republic of justice, it is essential that our views should be real views; that is, glimpses of lives and landscapes outside ourselves. It is essential that they should not be mere opium visions that begin and end in smoke–and so often […]

I have not read a rotten pageOf “Sex-Hate” or “The Social Test,”And here comes “Husks” and “Heritage”….O Moses, give us all a rest!“Ethics of Empire”!… I protestI will not even cut the strings,I’ll read “Jack Redskin on the Quest”And feed my brain with better things. Somebody wants a Wiser Age(He also wants me to invest);Somebody […]

They spoke of Progress spiring round,Of Light and Mrs. Humphry Ward–It is not true to say I frowned,Or ran about the room and roared;I might have simply sat and snored–I rose politely in the clubAnd said, “I feel a little bored;Will someone take me to a pub?” The new world’s wisest did surroundMe; and it […]

Heaven shall forgive you Bridge at dawn,The clothes you wear–or do not wear–And Ladies’ Leap-frog on the lawnAnd dyes and drugs, and petits verres.Your vicious things shall melt in air …… But for the Virtuous Things you do,The Righteous Work, the Public Care,It shall not be forgiven you. Because you could not even yawnWhen your […]

What will there be to rememberOf us in the days to be?Whose faith was a trodden emberAnd even our doubt not free;Parliaments built of paper,And the soft swords of goldThat twist like a waxen taperIn the weak aggressor’s hold;A hush around Hunger, slayingA city of serfs unfed;What shall we leave for a sayingTo praise us […]

White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,For the inmost sea of all the earth […]

Words, for alas my trade is words, a barren burst of rhyme,Rubbed by a hundred rhymesters, battered a thousand times,Take them, you, that smile on strings, those nobler sounds than mine,The words that never lie, or brag, or flatter, or malign. I give a hand to my lady, another to my friend,To whom you too […]

THE DEDICATION OF THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL For every tiny town or placeGod made the stars especially;Babies look up with owlish faceAnd see them tangled in a tree:You saw a moon from Sussex Downs,A Sussex moon, untravelled still,I saw a moon that was the town’s,The largest lamp on Campden Hill. Yea, Heaven is everywhere […]

THE DEDICATION OF THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay.Round us in antic order their crippled […]

There is a place where lute and lyre are broken.Where scrolls are torn and on a wild wind go,Where tablets stand wiped naked for a token,Where laurels wither and the daisies grow. Lo: I too join the brotherhood of silence,I am Love’s Trappist and you ask in vain,For man through Love’s gate, even as through […]

The star-crowned cliffs seem hinged upon the sky,The clouds are floating rags across them curled,They open to us like the gates of GodCloven in the last great wall of all the world. I looked, and saw the valley of my soulWhere naked crests fight to achieve the skies,Where no grain grows nor wine, no fruitful […]

I have come forth alive from the land of purple and poison and glamour,Where the charm is strong as the torture, being chosen to change the mind;Torture of wordless dance and wineless feast without clamour,Palace hidden in palace, garden with garden behind; Women veiled in the sun, or bare as brass in the shadows,And the […]

Low and brown barns thatched and repatched and tatteredWhere I had seven sons until to-day,A little hill of hay your spur has scattered….This is not Paris. You have lost the way. You, staring at your sword to find it brittle,Surprised at the surprise that was your plan,Who shaking and breaking barriers not a littleFind never […]

Of old with a divided heartI saw my people’s pride expand,Since a man’s soul is torn apartBy mother earth and fatherland. I knew, through many a tangled tale,Glory and truth not one but two:King, Constable, and AmirailTook me like trumpets: but I knew A blacker thing than blood’s own dyeWeighed down great Hawkins on the […]

When the first Christmas presents came, the straw where Christ was rolledSmelt sweeter than their frankincense, burnt brighter than their gold,And a wise man said, “We will not give; the thanks would be but cold.” “Nay,” said the next, “To all new gifts, to this gift or another,Bends the high gratitude of God; even as […]

There fared a mother driven forthOut of an inn to roam;In the place where she was homelessAll men are at home.The crazy stable close at hand,With shaking timber and shifting sand,Grew a stronger thing to abide and standThan the square stones of Rome. For men are homesick in their homes,And strangers under the sun,And they […]

Step softly, under snow or rain,To find the place where men can pray;The way is all so very plainThat we may lose the way. Oh, we have learnt to peer and poreOn tortured puzzles from our youth,We know all labyrinthine lore,We are the three wise mert of yore,And we know all things but the truth. […]

With leaves below and leaves above,And groping under tree and tree,I found the home of my true love,Who is a wandering home for me. Who, lost in ruined worlds aloof,Bore the dread dove wings like a roof;Who, past the last lost stars of spaceCarried the fire-light on her face. Who, passing as in idle hours,Tamed […]

Why should we reck of hours that rendWhile we two ride together?The heavens rent from end to endWould be but windy weather,The strong stars shaken down in spateWould be a shower of spring,And we should list the trump of fateAnd hear a linnet sing. We break the line with stroke and luck,The arrows run like […]

……………..COME AWAY–WITH THE FAIRIES, HAND IN HAND,FOR THE WORLD IS MORE FULL OF WEEPINGTHAN YOU CAN UNDERSTAND. W.B. Yeats. From the Wood of the Old Wives’ FablesThey glittered out of the grey,And with all the Armies of Elf-landI strove like a beast at bay; With only a right arm wearied,Only a red sword worn,And the […]