Poems by Sir John Collings Squire Volume II Part 5

My jewels are they bright, My marbles and my paint, Wherewith I glorified the Lord And many a martyred Saint?

And does my dome still float Above the Golden Horn?

And do my priests on Christmas Day Still sing that Christ was born?

EUROPE.

Though dust your house, Justinian, Still stands your lordliest shrine, But the dark men who walk therein, Know not of bread nor wine.

They fell long since upon your stones, And made your colours dim, Their priests who pray on Christmas Day They sing no Christmas hymn.

But a voice at evening goes From every climbing tower, Crying a word you never heard, A name of desert power.

CONSTANTINE PALAEOLOGUS.

For seven hundred years We gripped a weakening blade, Keeping the gateway of the West With none to give us aid.

Till at the last they broke What Constantine had built, And by the shattered wall the blood Of Constantine was spilt.

Do men remember still The manner of my death, How after all those failing years I at the last kept faith?

EUROPE.

They know it for a bygone thing True but indifferent, For many a fight has come to pa.s.s Since to the wall you went.

Westward and northward, Emperor, Poured on that b.l.o.o.d.y brood, Till those must turn to save themselves Who had known not grat.i.tude.

One fought them on the Middle Sea, One at Vienna's gate, And then the kings of Christendom Watched the red tide abate.

Till in the end Byzantium Heard a returning war; But still a Mehmet holds your tomb...

Keep silence ... ask no more.

ELEGY

I vaguely wondered what you were about, But never wrote when you had gone away; a.s.sumed you better, quenched the uneasy doubt You might need faces, or have things to say.

Did I think of you last evening? Dead you lay.

O bitter words of conscience I hold the simple message, And fierce with grief the awakened heart cries out: "It shall not be to-day;

It is still yesterday; there is time yet!"

Sorrow would strive backward to wrench the sun, But the sun moves. Our onward course is set, The wake streams out, the engine pulses run Droning, a lonelier voyage is begun.

It is all too late for turning, You are past all mortal signal, There will be time for nothing but regret And the memory of things done!

The quiet voice that always counselled best, The mind that so ironically played Yet for mere gentleness forbore the jest.

The proud and tender heart that sat in shade Nor once solicited another's aid, Yet was so grateful always For trifles lightly given, The silences, the melancholy guessed Sometimes, when your eyes strayed.

But always when you turned, you talked the more.

Through all our literature your way you took With modest ease; yet would you soonest pore, Smiling, with most affection in your look, On the ripe ancient and the curious nook.

Sage travellers, learned printers, Divines and buried poets, You knew them all, but never half your lore Was drawn from any book.

Stories and jests from field and town and port, And odd neglected sc.r.a.ps of history From everywhere, for you were of the sort, Cool and refined, who like rough company: Carter and barmaid, hawker and bargee, Wise pensioners and boxers With whom you drank, and listened To legends of old revelry and sport And customs of the sea.

I hear you: yet more clear than all one note, One sudden hail I still remember best, That came on sunny days from one afloat And drew me to the pane in certain quest Of a long brown face, bare arms and flimsy vest, In fragments through the branches, Above the green reflections: Paused by the willows in your varnished boat You, with your oars at rest.

Did that come back to you when you were dying?

I think it did: you had much leisure there, And, with the things we knew, came quietly flying Memories of things you had seen we knew not where.

You watched again with meditative stare Places where you had wandered, Golden and calm in distance: Voices from all your altering past came sighing On the soft Hamps.h.i.+re air.

For there you sat a hundred miles away, A rug upon your knees, your hands gone frail, And daily bade your farewell to the day, A music blent of trees and clouds asail And figures in some old neglected tale: And watched the sunset gathering, And heard the birdsong fading, And went within when the last sleepy lay Pa.s.sed to a farther vale.

Never complaining, and stepped up to bed More and more slow, a tall and sunburnt man Grown bony and bearded, knowing you would be dead Before the summer, glad your life began Even thus to end, after so short a span, And mused a s.p.a.ce serenely, Then fell to easy slumber, At peace, content. For never again your head Need make another plan.

Most generous, most gentle, most discreet, Who left us ignorant to spare us pain: We went our ways with too forgetful feet And missed the chance that would not come again, Leaving, with thoughts on pleasure bent, or gain, Fidelity unattested And services unrendered: The ears are closed, the heart has ceased to beat, And now all proof is vain.

Too late for other gifts, I give you this, Who took from you so much, so carelessly, On your far brows a first and phantom kiss, On your far grave a careful elegy.

For one who loved all life and poetry, Sorrow in music bleeding, And friends.h.i.+p's last confession.

But even as I speak that inner kiss Softly accuses me,

Saying: Those brows are senseless, deaf that tomb, This is the callous, cold resort of art.

"I give you this." What do I give? to whom?

Words to the air, and balm to my own heart, To its old luxurious and commanded smart.

An end to all this tuning, This cynical masquerading; What comfort now in that far final gloom Can any song impart?

O yet I see you dawning from some heaven, Who would not suffer self-reproach to live In one to whom your friends.h.i.+p once was given.

I catch a vision, faint and fugitive, Of a dark face with eyes contemplative, Deep eyes that smile in silence, And parted lips that whisper, "Say nothing more, old friend, of being forgiven, There is nothing to forgive."

WARS AND RUMOURS, 1920

Blood, hatred, appet.i.te and apathy, The sodden many and the struggling strong, Who care not now though for another wrong Another myriad innocents should die.

At candid savagery or oily lie We laugh, or, turning, join the noisy throng Which buries the dead with gluttony and song.

Suppose this very evening from on high Broke on the world that unexampled flame The choir-thronged sky, and Thou, descending, Lord; What agony of horror, fear, and shame, For those who knew and wearied of Thy word, I dare not even think, who am confest Idle, malignant, l.u.s.tful as the rest.

TO A MUSICIAN

Musician, with the bent and brooding face, White brow and thunderous eyes: you are not playing Merely the music that dead hand did trace.

Musician, with the lifted resolute face, And scornful smile about your closed mouth straying, And hand that moves with swift or fluttering grace, It is not that man's music you are playing.

The grave and merry tunes he made you are playing, Each march and dirge and dance he made endures, But changed and mastered, and these things you're saying, These joys and sorrows are not his but yours.