Poems, 1908-1919. Drinkwater John

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      I think how year by year I still

      Find working in my dauntless will

      Sudden timidities that are

      Merely the echo of some far

      Forgotten tyrannies that came

      To youth’s bewilderment and shame;

      That yet a magisterial gown,

      Being worn by one of no renown

      And half a generation less

      In years than I, can dispossess

      Something my circumspecter mood

      Of excellence and quietude,

      And if a Bishop speaks to me

      I tremble with propriety.

      I think how strange it is that he

      Who goes most comradely with me

      In beauty’s worship, takes delight

      In shows that to my eager sight

      Are shadows and unmanifest,

      While beauty’s favour and behest

      To me in motion are revealed

      That is against his vision sealed;

      Yet is our hearts’ necessity

      Not twofold, but a common plea

      That chaos come to continence,

      Whereto the arch-intelligence

      Richly in divers voices makes

      Its answer for our several sakes.

      I see the disinherited

      And long procession of the dead,

      Who have in generations gone

      Held fugitive dominion

      Of this same primrose pasturage

      That is my momentary wage.

      I see two lovers move along

      These shadowed silences of song,

      With spring in blossom at their feet

      More incommunicably sweet

      To their hearts’ more magnificence,

      Than to the common courts of sense,

      Till joy his tardy closure tells

      With coming of the curfew bells.

      I see the knights of spur and sword

      Crossing the little woodland ford,

      Riding in ghostly cavalcade

      On some unchronicled crusade.

      I see the silent hunter go

      In cloth of yeoman green, with bow

      Strung, and a quiver of grey wings.

      I see the little herd who brings

      His cattle homeward, while his sire

      Makes bivouac in Warwickshire

      This night, the liege and loyal man

      Of Cavalier or Puritan.

      And as they pass, the nameless dead,

      Unsung, uncelebrate, and sped

      Upon an unremembered hour

      As any twelvemonth fallen flower,

      I think how strangely yet they live

      For all their days were fugitive.

      I think how soon we too shall be

      A story with our ancestry.

      I think what miracle has been

      That you whose love among this green

      Delightful solitude is still

      The stay and substance of my will,

      The dear custodian of my song,

      My thrifty counsellor and strong,

      Should take the time of all time’s tide

      That was my season, to abide

      On earth also; that we should be

      Charted across eternity

      To one elect and happy day

      Of yellow primroses in May.

      The clock is calling five o’clock,

      And Nonesopretty brings her flock

      To fold, and Tom comes back from town

      With hose and ribbons worth a crown,

      And duly at The Old King’s Head

      They gather now to daily bread,

      And I no more may meditate

      Our brief and variable state.