Poems of To-Day: an Anthology. Various

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Poems of To-Day: an Anthology - Various

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p>Poems of To-Day: an Anthology

      PREFATORY NOTE

      This book has been compiled in order that boys and girls, already perhaps familiar with the great classics 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 passion, 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 passing-bell of Death.

      May, 1915.

      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;

        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 shore

          And dreamed a little space;

        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 shore

          As here I lie to-day.

        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 grass;

        The glow-worm and the nimble mouse

          Among her ruins flit and pass.

        And there, in orts of blackened bone,

          The widowed Trojan beauties lie,

        And Simois babbles over stone

          And waps and gurgles to the sky.

        Once there were merry days in Troy,

          Her chimneys smoked with cooking meals,

        The passing 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 nobly played,

          They played the game like Queens and Kings.

        So that, when Troy had greatly passed

          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 glass

          The Atlanteans wandered there;

        The paleness of their faces was

          Like ivory, so pale they were.

        And

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