Thus noting them in meads and marts It did not seem to me That my dear country with its hearts, Minds, yearnings, worse and better parts Had ended with the sea.
[of his native country;]
I further and further went anon, As such I still surveyed, And further yet--yea, on and on, And all the men I looked upon Had heart-strings fellow-made.
[or where his duties to his fellow-creatures end;]
I traced the whole terrestrial round, Homing the other side;Then said I, "What is there to bound My denizenship? It seems I have found Its scope to be world-wide."[nor who are his enemies]
I asked me: "Whom have I to fight, And whom have I to dare, And whom to weaken, crush, and blight?
My country seems to have kept in sight On my way everywhere."1913.
ENGLAND TO GERMANY IN 1914
"O England, may God punish thee!"
- Is it that Teuton genius flowers Only to breathe malignity Upon its friend of earlier hours?
- We have eaten your bread, you have eaten ours, We have loved your burgs, your pines' green moan, Fair Rhine-stream, and its storied towers;Your shining souls of deathless dowers Have won us as they were our own:
We have nursed no dreams to shed your blood, We have matched your might not rancorously, Save a flushed few whose blatant mood You heard and marked as well as we To tongue not in their country's key;But yet you cry with face aflame, "O England, may God punish thee!"And foul in onward history, And present sight, your ancient name.
Autumn 1914.
ON THE BELGIAN EXPATRIATION
I dreamt that people from the Land of Chimes Arrived one autumn morning with their bells, To hoist them on the towers and citadels Of my own country, that the musical rhymes Rung by them into space at meted times Amid the market's daily stir and stress, And the night's empty star-lit silentness, Might solace souls of this and kindred climes.
Then I awoke; and lo, before me stood The visioned ones, but pale and full of fear;From Bruges they came, and Antwerp, and Ostend, No carillons in their train. Foes of mad mood Had shattered these to shards amid the gear Of ravaged roof, and smouldering gable-end.
October 18, 1914.
AN APPEAL TO AMERICA
ON BEHALF OF THE BELGIAN DESTITUTE
Seven millions stand Emaciate, in that ancient Delta-land:-We here, full-charged with our own maimed and dead, And coiled in throbbing conflicts slow and sore, Can poorly soothe these ails unmerited Of souls forlorn upon the facing shore! -Where naked, gaunt, in endless band on band Seven millions stand.
No man can say To your great country that, with scant delay, You must, perforce, ease them in their loud need:
We know that nearer first your duty lies;But--is it much to ask that you let plead Your lovingkindness with you--wooing-wise -Albeit that aught you owe, and must repay, No man can say?
December 1914.
THE PITY OF IT
I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar From rail-track and from highway, and I heard In field and farmstead many an ancient word Of local lineage like "Thu bist," "Er war,""Ich woll," "Er sholl," and by-talk similar, Nigh as they speak who in this month's moon gird At England's very loins, thereunto spurred By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are.
Then seemed a Heart crying: "Whosoever they be At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame Between kin folk kin tongued even as are we, "Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;May their familiars grow to shun their name, And their brood perish everlastingly."April 1915.
IN TIME OF WARS AND TUMULTS
"Would that I'd not drawn breath here!" some one said, "To stalk upon this stage of evil deeds, Where purposelessly month by month proceeds A play so sorely shaped and blood-bespread."Yet had his spark not quickened, but lain dead To the gross spectacles of this our day, And never put on the proffered cloak of clay, He had but known not things now manifested;Life would have swirled the same. Morns would have dawned On the uprooting by the night-gun's stroke Of what the yester noonshine brought to flower;Brown martial brows in dying throes have wanned Despite his absence; hearts no fewer been broke By Empery's insatiate lust of power.
1915.
IN TIME OF "THE BREAKING OF NATIONS" {1}
I
Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk.
II
Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass;Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass.
III
Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night Ere their story die.
1915.
CRY OF THE HOMELESS
AFTER THE PRUSSIAN INVASION OF BELGIUM
"Instigator of the ruin -
Whichsoever thou mayst be Of the masterful of Europe That contrived our misery -Hear the wormwood-worded greeting From each city, shore, and lea Of thy victims:
"Conqueror, all hail to thee!"
"Yea: 'All hail!' we grimly shout thee That wast author, fount, and head Of these wounds, whoever proven When our times are throughly read.
'May thy loved be slighted, blighted, And forsaken,' be it said By thy victims, 'And thy children beg their bread!'
"Nay: a richer malediction! -
Rather let this thing befall In time's hurling and unfurling On the night when comes thy call;That compassion dew thy pillow And bedrench thy senses all For thy victims, Till death dark thee with his pall."August 1915.
BEFORE MARCHING AND AFTER
(in Memoriam F. W. G.)
Orion swung southward aslant Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned, The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant With the heather that twitched in the wind;But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these, Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy or home sorrow, And wondered to what he would march on the morrow.
The crazed household-clock with its whirr Rang midnight within as he stood, He heard the low sighing of her Who had striven from his birth for his good;But he still only asked the spring starlight, the breeze, What great thing or small thing his history would borrow From that Game with Death he would play on the morrow.
