John Presland

“ When Life seems all the truth,
And Death a mumbled far old fairy-tale;
When just the splendid days
Suffice our eager gaze,
The wondrous present that will never fail.
Then one day, with a fierce
Clamour of heart, we pierce
The light and see the shadows all behind,
And then, and not till then,
By the brief graves of men
The utter loveliness of flowers we find.
So little stretch of days,
And earth, with all her ways
Lovely enough, I think, for Paradise;
And body, mind, and heart,
Each separate complex part,
Wondrously made, and never quite made twice. ”

“ In the heart of man, as a treasure is hid in a shrine.
Love is splendid and fierce, as the summer sun
Drenches the sea and the sky with its blaze and shine,
Till every pebble is hot to the touch of the hand,
And the air is a-shimmer with heat o'er the hazy land—
Yet Love is not any of these things, Love is of one
With the strange, half-guessed at, vast, creative plan
We cannot see with our eyes nor understand—
Yet is Love pitiful too, for Love is of man. ”

“ And the seagull sweeps and soars on magnificent wings.
Love that is like a flame,
Held in the hollow hand,
So dear and precious a thing
As a light in a stranger land,
As a flickering candle to him who wanders by night.
Love that is wide as the dawn
To the eyes of night-bound men;
And the evil ghosts and the goblins it puts to flight,
And stealthy creatures of dark that rustle and creep,
And elfins and witches and all such devil's game
That cannot live in the light,
They squeak and gibber and cheep,
And vanish like shadows before the splendour of day. ”

“ Or enchanted silent fountains of a Persian Paradise.
There are beech and birch and elm-tree—evening-still or
morning-tossed—
And the splendid generous chestnuts with their flame-like
blooms embossed,
There are oak and ash and elder, till the very sun is lost
In the green, delicious gloaming that's the light of Paradise.
Deeper, wider, steadier this beauty ever grows,
And from field-side up to tree-top the endless colour flows,
Till road and house and wayside, in the first days of the rose,
Are fathoms deep in waves of green, submerged in Paradise. ”

“ When over the evening river the wild swan flies
The curve of those wings is like the arch of the skies
Over the shielded earth.
Love is most like a bird,
For birds have least of the dust that gave them birth,
They soar and poise and float,
They wheel and swerve and skim,
And their wings are strong to the wind, and swift to the light,
And their voice is a promise of dawn while yet it is night,
And their song is a pæan of hope before it is spring,
And the song of the bird to his mate is lyrical love. ”

“ O love that dwells in the innermost heart of man
Secret and dark and still,
Like a bird in the core of a green mid-summer tree—
Height upon height and depth upon depth where never the eye can see
The brown bird, hidden and still.
O Love that is wild and eager, sun-lit and free
Like a seagull that turns in the sunlight above the sea ”

“ And the stumbling flight of a beetle, and the dust
on a butterfly's wings.
The snails are out in the sunshine after the morning rain,
And the wasps are whirring and buzzing round the mulberry tree again,
And the ants are busy of course, working with might and main.
While the crickets leap, and rustle, and play at being blades of grass,
And humble-bumble the bees go, lurching as they pass,
And the flies are stupidly walking up the window-glass.
The sun is bright on the hedges, on thistle and bramble and briar,
The columbine leaves are heart-shaped, and shine as bright as fire
—And oh! ”

“ The very essence of God does Love enshrine;
For let the heart, however sorely tried,
Open itself to loving, and the wide
Earth is a home; love-lacking must decline
Where black fears crowd across the starless dark. ”

“ But the heart of men his love could not renew:
The weary heart, the ever-questioning,
The loving, lacking, lonely, incomplete
For ever longing to be merged in one
With something other than itself; to beat
To another's pulse; to be for ever done
With its sad weight of personality. ”

“ The birch-leaves o'er the silver of the bark;
Pale gold the poplars, like a lady's hair,
And thunderous gold along the hollows dark
The sunlit brackens flare.
THE LOVERS
There are ghosts we walk with, lady of mine,
Arm in arm, and side by side,
Pallid ghosts, though the sun may shine,
Ghosts that are cold in the warmth of day,
And neither of us may fend them away,
But step by step they go with us, stride by stride.
There are doors in your heart that are shut to me,
And behind them dwellers I cannot know ”

“ To live an April through, but must take wings
Out of a world too fair for loneliness.
"THERE'S DUTY, FRIEND, TO JOG WITH ARM IN ARM" There's duty, friend, to jog with arm in arm
Through these dark streets; there's kindliness indeed,
And there's the hope a little more to weed
Our own small patch of life which the tares harm;
There's patience for the folly of the earth;
There's pity for the poor who suffer wrong ”

“ One breath of healing to this dark life yields;
No morning sunshine greets these sidelong eyes
With blessings, daughters as they are of gloom,
Ghosts only, such as seem to have a shape
At night in some old evil, haunted room.
Would that they were indeed to be dissolved
At every sunrise!—they are living souls
Dragging mortality about foul streets
While overhead the star-lit heaven rolls.
Living souls are they, and they have their share
In seed and harvest, and the round world's boon
Of changing seasons, and the miracle
Of each month's waxing and waning of the moon. ”

“ From seashore to seashore races the green tide;
With the pricking green of hedges by the wet roadside
—Or ever March triumphant comes with great, glad stride—
There is green, there's green in England, and a tale of Paradise. ”

“ And the ripe earth, unlaboured, gave her yields,
No pain there was, no age, and all the flowers
Unwitheringly lovely filled the fields.
And all day long the birds in ecstasy
Sang without shadow of hawk or thought of death,
And the saint happily went about the ways
Filling each home with plenty—his very breath
Was like a little thrilling note of praise. ”

“ Faintly they smile when the white moonbeams play
Over the dust of the throne-room of Minos,
Over the pavements where small creatures stray,
The humble small things of a day.
But there are other nights, moonless and starless,
When no moth flutters, no bat flits, owl calls,
Something is stirring, something is rustling,
Something that is not of mortals befalls
In galleries, cellars, and halls.
Soundless and viewless, a strange ghostly happening,
Life, long since ashes, and flames, long since dead;
For the Angel of Time goes relentlessly, steadily
Over dark places that mankind has fled ”

“ Of deep on deep with green,
Of light on light
Across the waves of blossom, when the white
Is lovelier than the rose, except the rose
Is loveliest of all;
When through the day the cuckoo calls unseen,
And at nightfall
The nightingale, whose music no man knows
The magic heart of, sitting in the dark
Sings still the world-old way ”

“ Came as a benediction, and the smell
Of rain-sweet copses, and, where cattle browse,
Long grass, and running water in the dell.
And his heart opened with the love he had
For the dear toil-worn dwelling-place of men ”

“ When April's green on the copses, and bright on the shining wings
Of birds going backwards and forwards, while the whole green
forest sings.
All is our sister and brother, as once St. Francis said;
The little stones in the river, the bright sun overhead,
And newts, and the spawn of fishes, and the unnamed mighty dead.
This is the ballad for Herman. O friend, may good befall!
There is never a star so distant, there is never a creature small,
But living and knowing and loving in our brain we hold them all.
FRANCE
April 1915
Great ever, with the hope that seeks the stars ”