“ Dark is the world our fathers left us,
Wearily, greyly the long years flow,
Almost the gloom has of hope bereft us,
Far is the high gods’ song and low:
Sombre the crests of the mountains lonely,
Leafless, wind-ridden, moan the trees:
Down in the valleys is twilight only,
Twilight over the mourning seas:
Time was when earth was always golden,
Time was when skies were always clear:
Spirits and souls of the heroes olden,
Faint are cries from the darkness, hear! ”

“ 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) .
Or let’s sit silently, we three together,
Around a wide hearth-fire that’s glowing red,
Giving no thought to all the stormy weather
That flies above the roof-tree overhead. ”

“ Now arm an uneventful rime
With panoply of flowers
Through the long summer hours. . . .
But now our fierce and warlike Muse
Doth soft companionship refuse,
And we must mount and ride
Upon a steed untried. . . .
We who have led by gradual ways
Our placid life to sterner days
And for old quiet things
Have set the strife of kings,
Who battled have with bloody hands
Through evil times in barren lands,
To whom the voice of guns
Speaks and no longer stuns,
Calm, though with death encompassèd,
That watch the hours go overhead
Knowing too well we must
With all men come to dust. . . . ”

“ We who are young, and have caught the splendour of
life,
Hunting it down the forested ways of the world,
Do we not wear our hearts like a banner unfurled
(Crowned with a chaplet of love, shod with the sandals
of strife) ? ”

“ And all your banners rent with ancient wars;
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.
“Over the Hills and Hollows Green”
Over the hills and hollows green
The springtide air goes valiantly,
Where many sainted singing larks
And blessed primaveras be:
But bitterly the springtide air
Over the desert towns doth blow,
About whose torn and shattered streets
No more shall children’s footsteps go. ”

“ Impenetrable, and we poor fools die
Nor even know what thing beyond them is:
O God, by whom men’s lives are multiplied,
Are scattered broadcast in the world like grain,
And after long time reaped again and stored,
O Thou who only canst be glorified
By man’s own passion and the supreme pain,
Accept this sacrifice of blood outpoured. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ære Perennius Written on Commemoration Sunday, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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? ”

“ The mighty deeds done once for all,
The voice heard once, and heard no more?
Rather they shine as doth the star
About the close of winter’s day,
That cheers the traveller afar
And draws him on, and points the way.
――――
We praise, we praise the immortal dead. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So we forbear the building of the rime,
And bid our hearts be steel for times and a time
Till ends the strife, and then,
When the New Age is verily begun,
God grant that we may do the things undone.
――――
Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. ”

“ 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 ”

“ That only change not with the changing years”——
A tale that shod itself with ancient shoon
And wrapped its cloak, and wandered from the west.
A Sonnet
There is a wind that takes the heart of a man,
A fresh wind in the latter days of spring,
When hate and war and every evil thing
That the wide arches of high Heaven span
Seems dust, and less to be accounted than
The omened touches of a passing wing:
When Destiny, that calls himself a king,
Goes all forgotten for the song of Pan:
For why? ”