Poems of To-Day: an Anthology.
by Various.
PREFATORY NOTE
This book has been compiled in order that boys and girls, already perhaps familiar with the great cla.s.sics of the English speech, may also know something of the newer poetry of their own day. Most of the writers are living, and the rest are still vivid memories among us, while one of the youngest, almost as these words are written, has gone singing to lay down his life for his country"s cause. Although no definite chronological limit has been set, and Meredith at least began to write in the middle of the nineteenth century, the intention has been to represent mainly those poetic tendencies which have become dominant as the influence of the accepted Victorian masters has grown weaker, and from which the poetry of the future, however it may develope, must in turn take its start. It may be helpful briefly to indicate the sequence of themes. Man draws his being from the heroic Past and from the Earth his Mother; and in harmony with these he must shape his life to what high purposes he may. Therefore this gathering of poems falls into three groups. {viii} First there are poems of History, of the romantic tale of the world, of our own special tradition here in England, and of the inheritance of obligation which that tradition imposes upon us. Naturally, there are some poems directly inspired by the present war, but nothing, it is hoped, which may not, in happier days, bear translation into any European tongue.
Then there come poems of the Earth, of England again and the longing of the exile for home, of this and that familiar countryside, of woodland and meadow and garden, of the process of the seasons, of the "open road" and the "wind on the heath," of the city, its deprivations and its consolations. Finally there are poems of Life itself, of the moods in which it may be faced, of religion, of man"s excellent virtues, of friendship and childhood, of pa.s.sion, grief, and comfort. But there is no arbitrary isolation of one theme from another; they mingle and inter-penetrate throughout, to the music of Pan"s flute, and of Love"s viol, and the bugle-call of Endeavour, and the pa.s.sing-bell of Death.
May, 1915.
POEMS OF TO-DAY
1. ALL THAT"S PAST
Very old are the woods; And the buds that break Out of the briar"s boughs, When March winds wake, So old with their beauty are-- Oh, no man knows Through what wild centuries Roves back the rose.
Very old are the brooks; And the rills that rise Where snow sleeps cold beneath The azure skies Sing such a history Of come and gone, Their every drop is as wise As Solomon.
Very old are we men; Our dreams are tales Told in dim Eden By Eve"s nightingales;
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We wake and whisper awhile, But, the day gone by, Silence and sleep like fields Of amaranth lie.
_Walter de la Mare._
2. PRE-EXISTEHCE
I laid me down upon the sh.o.r.e And dreamed a little s.p.a.ce; I heard the great waves break and roar; The sun was on my face.
My idle hands and fingers brown Played with the pebbles grey; The waves came up, the waves went down, Most thundering and gay.
The pebbles, they were smooth and round And warm upon my hands, Like little people I had found Sitting among the sands.
The grains of sands so shining-small Soft through my fingers ran; The sun shone down upon it all, And so my dream began:
How all of this had been before; How ages far away I lay on some forgotten sh.o.r.e As here I lie to-day.
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The waves came shining up the sands, As here to-day they shine; And in my pre-pelasgian hands The sand was warm and fine.
I have forgotten whence I came, Or what my home might be, Or by what strange and savage name I called that thundering sea.
I only know the sun shone down As still it shines to-day, And in my fingers long and brown The little pebbles lay.
_Frances Cornford._
3. FRAGMENTS
Troy Town is covered up with weeds, The rabbits and the pismires brood On broken gold, and shards, and beads Where Priam"s ancient palace stood.
The floors of many a gallant house Are matted with the roots of gra.s.s; The glow-worm and the nimble mouse Among her ruins flit and pa.s.s.
And there, in orts of blackened bone, The widowed Trojan beauties lie, And Simois babbles over stone And waps and gurgles to the sky.
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Once there were merry days in Troy, Her chimneys smoked with cooking meals, The pa.s.sing chariots did annoy The sunning housewives at their wheels.
And many a lovely Trojan maid Set Trojan lads to lovely things; The game of life was n.o.bly played, They played the game like Queens and Kings.
So that, when Troy had greatly pa.s.sed In one red roaring fiery coal, The courts the Grecians overcast Became a city in the soul.
In some green island of the sea, Where now the shadowy coral grows In pride and pomp and empery The courts of old Atlantis rose.
In many a glittering house of gla.s.s The Atlanteans wandered there; The paleness of their faces was Like ivory, so pale they were.
And hushed they were, no noise of words In those bright cities ever rang; Only their thoughts, like golden birds, About their chambers thrilled and sang.
They knew all wisdom, for they knew The souls of those Egyptian Kings
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Who learned, in ancient Babilu, The beauty of immortal things.
They knew all beauty--when they thought The air chimed like a stricken lyre, The elemental birds were wrought, The golden birds became a fire.
And straight to busy camps and marts The singing flames were swiftly gone; The trembling leaves of human hearts Hid boughs for them to perch upon.
And men in desert places, men Abandoned, broken, sick with fears, Rose singing, swung their swords agen, And laughed and died among the spears.
The green and greedy seas have drowned That city"s glittering walls and towers, Her sunken minarets are crowned With red and russet water-flowers.
In towers and rooms and golden courts The shadowy coral lifts her sprays; The scrawl hath gorged her broken orts, The shark doth haunt her hidden ways,
But, at the falling of the tide, The golden birds still sing and gleam, The Atlanteans have not died, Immortal things still give us dream.