Geoffrey Bache Smith

“ Though grave-dust choke the sons of men,
And silence wait upon the rime,
At evening now the skies set forth
Last glories of the dying year:
The wind gives chase to relict leaves:
And we, we may not linger here. ”

“ A voice there is, cries through your every word,
Of him, that after greatest glory came
Down the grey road to darkness and to tears;
A voice like far seas in still valleys heard,
Crying of love and death and hope and fame
That change not with the changing of the years. ”

“ With a sail of canvas bronzèd dark,
And I will go out alone:
Nor fear nor sorrow my soul shall keep
When around me lies the sea,
And I will return with the night, and sleep
In the wind's wild harmony. ”

“ Is "depressing" and "grey,"
Is a heart-breaking strife
With death and with shame
And your polite laughter,
Till—the world pass away
In smoke and in flame,
And some of us die,
And some live on after
To build it anew. ”

“ Such as shall split the mountain-tops
And shrivel up blue heaven:
That there be men who mock at threats
And wag their heads at strife,
Love home above their own hearts' blood
And honour more than life. ”

“ Were labouring as holy brethren must,
Quietly, and in peace: and elder ones
Paced in the cloister, and some, older still,
Too old to work or dream, sat in the sunlight,
The sunlight which they soon should see no more. ”

“ And sweet it is, for hope is high,
And sad it is, for we have sinned.
Perfect is nature's every part
In sunny rest, or windy strife:
But never yet the perfect heart,
And never yet the perfect life! ”

“ Only the stain of a deadly quarrel,
Only that and the years divide:
One there is with a face as honest,
Heart as true, as the open sea,
One who never betrayed a comrade—
Death stands now betwixt him and me. ”

“ Many as leaves from autumn trees
The years shall flutter from on high,
And with their multiple decease
The souls of men shall fall and die,
Yet, while the empires turn to dust,
You shall live on, because you must. ”

“ The wind that scatters dying leaves
And whirls them from the autumn tree
Is grateful to the ship that cleaves
With stately prow the scurrying sea.
Heedless about the world we play
Like children in a garden close:
A postern bars the outward way
And what's beyond it no man knows ”

“ Was it the old gods' voice that found us
Here, where the bars of prison be?
From the far isle that neither knoweth
Change of season, nor time's increase,
Where is plenty, and no man soweth:
Calling to strife that shall end in peace. ”

“ Merlin, contriver of the riddling rime,
And Gawain, silent harbinger of ill.
So as the day draws ever toward the dark,
Ever toward peace the great wind's sounding breath,
And ever toward the further shore the bark
They drew to the dark, silent realm of death. ”

“ INTERCESSIONAL
There is a place where voices
Of great guns do not come,
Where rifle, mine, and mortar
For evermore are dumb:
Where there is only silence,
And peace eternal and rest,
Set somewhere in the quiet isles
Beyond Death's starry West. ”

“ And all the earth was sad, and skies were drear,
And the wind cried, and chased the relict leaves
Like ships,that the storm-tossed ocean batters and heaves,
And they fly before the gale, and the mariners fear. ”

“ A sunken precinct here we keep,
With woven wiles of endless sleep;
Our twisted stems of sere-hued green,
Our pallid blooms what sun has seen?
And he that tastes our magic breath
Shall sleep that sleep whose name is death. ”

“ Who are these on the wind, riders and riderless horses?
Riders the great ones that have been and are, and those to come shall be:
These are the children of might, life's champions and history's forces. ”

“ Have you heard the great awakening breath,
Like trump that summons the saints from death,
Of the wild, majestical wind, which blows
Loud and splendid, that each man knows
Far, O far away is the sea,
Breaking, murmuring, stark and free? ”

“ And placid brows where peace and learning sate:
Of misty gardens under evening skies
Where four would walk of old, with steps sedate.
Let's have no word of all the sweat and blood,
Of all the noise and strife and dust and smoke
(We who have seen Death surging like a flood,
Wave upon wave, that leaped and raced and broke) . ”

“ Hear we the sun-stricken breakers thunder
Over the shore where the heroes stand.
.....
Dark is the world our fathers left us,
Heavily, greyly the long years flow,
Almost the gloom has of hope bereft us,
Far is the high gods' song and low. ”

“ The sea-ways wide and blue,
And there be master-mariners
To sail them straight and true:
And there be many women fair
Who watch out anxiously,
And are enamoured of the day
Their dear ones come from sea ”

“ PURE VIRGINIA
York River Returns
Like smoke that vanishes on the morning breeze
Are passed the first beginnings of the world,
When time was even as a bud still curled,
And scarce the limit set of lands and seas ”

“ Yet such a grace and majesty are yours
There be still some, whose glad heart suffereth
All hate can bring from her misgotten stores,
Telling themselves, so England's self draw breath,
That's all the happiness on this side death. ”

“ All silent lies the mere,
The silver mere,
In saddest wise
Reflecting skies
Forlorn and sere.
Would autumn had not claimed its own
And would the swallows had not flown.
Skies overcast!
Leaves falling fast! ”

“ And desolate places
Shall spring and blossom:
One shall go forth
In the likeness of a child:
And men shall sing
And greatly rejoice:
All men shall sing
For the love that is in them,
And he shall behold it
And sing also. ”

“ That yet the whole was fair, I know not how:
Ships of gaunt masts, and stark, sea-smitten prow,
Idle, yet soon again to sweep the main
In the swift service of old merchants' gain,
Where are ye now, alas, where are ye now? ”

“ If there be one among the Muses nine
Loves not so much Completion as the Will,
And less the austere saint than the fond sinner:
Loves scanty ruins, garlanded with years,
Better than lofty palaces entire:
To her I dedicate this spoiléd sheaf
Of rime that scarcely came to harvesting. ”

“ Rhythm strained and false accord
In a ceaseless stream are poured;
Then sighs are heard, and men depart
To seek the sage physician's art,
Or silence, and a little ease,
When others' fingers touch the keys. ”

“ We praise, we praise the immortal dead,
Who strove beneath unheeding skies
For truth that raised the drooping head,
For light that gladdened weary eyes:
The martyr's cross, the warrior's sword,
How should they be of lesser worth
Than some unprofitable hoard
In ancient mines below the earth? ”

“ A broken arch or two, a few worn stones
Piled one upon another, and for paving
Uneven fragments with tall grass between:
Grass that is always green, winter and summer,
The grass that grows on long-forgotten graves. ”

“ And fear nor cheerless rains, nor scorching drouth:
"'Ye that have piled the rich, full-ripened crops
Of word and measure, till the rime, grown proud,
Did straight contemn the leaping mountain tops
And lose itself in air, and riven cloud:
"'Ye that have lived a dangerous life of war
Whose speech has been bold words and heady boasts
Gather, for strife and death unknown before,
Come gather all unto the fronting hosts.'
"I saw the last dim battle in the mist
There, where a dreary waste of barren sand
Doth mark the ultimate leagues of this fair land ”

“ When once the past was lost, and whelmed in tears.
Hither I came, where, in the dawns of time
Dim peoples, that the very stones forget,
Lived, loved, and fought, and wove the riddling rime
On a lake island mystically set. ”

“ Or fading in a forest-glade
'Mid violets and daffodils.
The years have fallen like dead leaves,
Unwept, uncounted, and unstayed
(Such as the autumn tempest thieves) ,
Since first this road the Romans made. ”

“ Among them, save with anguish on his brows:
And any wretched husbandman that ploughs
The upland acres in his habit spare
Is king, to those in palaces of glass
Who sit with grief and weariness for spouse. ”

“ This isle, was ne'er so tamed, and ne'er shall be,
Ye guard the ocean barrier, undismayed
'Midst hidden perils for a brave man's fears,
In iron craft that many smiths have made
With peaceful labour in the old, dead years. ”