John Masefield

“ Thought is but joy from murder that has been,
Life is but brute at war upon its kings.
There is no beauty, nor could beauty care
For us, this dust, that men make everywhere.
XXXV.
O WRETCHED man, that, for a little mile,
Crawls beneath heaven for his brother's blood,
Whose days the planets number with their style,
To whom all earth is slave, all living, food;
O withering man, within whose folded shell,
Lies yet the seed, the spirit's quickening corn,
That Time and Sun will change out of the cell
Into green meadows, in the world unborn ”

“ Beauty was here, on this beetle-droning downland;
The thought of a Cæsar in the purple came
From his palace by the Tiber in the Roman townland
To this wind-swept hill with no name.
Lonely Beauty came here and was here in sadness,
Brave as a thought on the frontier of the mind,
In the camp of the wild upon the march of madness,
The bright-eyed Queen of the blind.
Now where Beauty was are the wind-withered gorses
Moaning like old men in the hill-wind's blast,
The flying sky is dark with running horses
And the night is full of the past. ”

“ Only a moment held, only an hour seen,
Only an instant known in all that life has been,
One instant in the sand to drink that gush of grace,
The beauty of your way, the marvel of your face.
Death lies in wait for you, but few short hours he gives;
I perish even as you by whom all spirit lives.
Come to me, spirit, come, and fill my hour of breath
With hours of life in life that pay no toll to death.
XLII.
THEY called that broken hedge The Haunted Gate. ”

“ If Beauty be a dream, do but resolve
And fire shall come, that in the stubborn clay
Works to make perfect till the rocks dissolve,
The barriers burst and beauty takes her way,
Beauty herself, within whose blossoming Spring
Even wretched man shall clap his hands and sing.
XXXVI.
NIGHT is on the downland, on the lonely moorland,
On the hills where the wind goes over sheep-bitten turf,
Where the bent grass beats upon the unploughed poorland
And the pine woods roar like the surf. ”

“ Then blind and dark in heaven the sun proceeds,
Vast, dead and hideous, knocking on his moons,
Till crashing on his like creation breeds,
Striking such life, a constellation swoons;
From dead things striking fire a new sun springs,
New fire, new life, new planets with new wings.
XI.
IT may be so with us, that in the dark,
When we have done with Time and wander Space,
Some meeting of the blind may strike a spark,
And to Death's empty mansion give a grace. ”

“ I Long, long ago, when all the glittering earth II Night came again, but now I could not sleep III Even after all these years there comes the dream IV If I could come again to that dear place V Here in the self is all that man can know VI Flesh, I have knocked at many a dusty door VII But all has passed, the tune has died away VIII These myriad days, these many thousand hours IX There, on the darkened deathbed, dies the brain X So in the empty sky the stars appear XI It may be so with us, that in the dark XII What am I, Life? ”

“ What waste, that smallness of such power should need
Such clumsy tools so easy to destroy,
Such wasteful servants difficult to feed,
Such indirect dark avenues to joy.
Why, if its business is not mainly earth,
Should it demand such heavy chains to sense?
A heavenly thing demands a swifter birth,
A quicker hand to act intelligence;
An earthly thing were better like the rose,
At peace with clay from which its beauty grows.
XV.
AH, we are neither heaven nor earth, but men ”

“ He turns, or tames, or shows in their degrees.
Yet in himself are forces of like power,
Untamed, unreckoned; seeds that brain to brain
Pass across oceans bringing thought to flower,
New worlds, new selves, where he can live again
Eternal beauty's everlasting rose
Which casts this world as shadow as it goes.
XIX.
O LITTLE self, within whose smallness lies
All that man was, and is, and will become,
Atom unseen that comprehends the skies
And tells the tracks by which the planets roam ”

“ Lingers, then that, too, fades; then all is dark.
X.
SO in the empty sky the stars appear,
Are bright in heaven marching through the sky,
Spinning their planets, each one to his year,
Tossing their fiery hair until they die ”