“ You clutched him: there was panther in your eyes,
We breathed like beasts in thickets, on the wall
Our shadows in huge challenge seemed to rise,
The room grew dark with anger. Yet through all
The shame and hurt and pity of it you were
Still strangely and imperishably dear,
As one who loves the wild day none the less
That breaks in bitter hands the buds of Spring,
Whose cold hand stops the breath of loveliness,
And drives the wailing ghost of beauty past,
Making the rose, — even the rose, a thing
For pain to be remembered by at last. ”

“ Wanders among a mortal race?
How were his footsteps led
That still about his face
Lingers a ghostly trace
Of a secret influence shed
By a Hand the world denies,
In a land her most son flies,
As a gift upon him thrust
For an end he knoweth not,
Yet will shine because he must,
Shine and sing because he must
Reap a wrong he soweth not
Of contempt anger and distrust
For a world which boweth not
To the Flame which binds our dust.
Go net the moon, go snare the sun,
Set them upon his either hand! ”

“ For out of the first lattice are the red lands that break
And out of the second lattice, sea like a green snake,
But out of the third lattice, under low eaves like wings
Is a new corner of the sky and the other side of things.'"
It opened in the inmost place an instant beyond uttering,
A casement and a chasm and a thunder of doors undone,
A seraph's strong wing shaken out the shock of its unshuttering
That split the shattered sunlight from a light behind the sun. ”

“ Praise! that a babe I leapt upon the world
Spread at my feet in its magnificence,
With trees as giants, flowers as flags unfurled.
And rains as diamonds in their excellence!
Praise! for the solemn splendour of surprise
That came with breaking day;
For all the ranks of stars that met my eyes
When sunset burned away!
Praise! that there burst on my unfolding heart
The coloured radiance of leafy June,
With choirs of song-birds perfected in art,
And nightingales beneath the summer moon —
Praise! that this beauty, an unravished bride
Doth hold her lover still ”

“ The Breton to the Norman spoke, like a little child spake he,
But his sea-blue eyes were empty as his home beside the sea:
"There are more windows in one house than there are eyes to see;
There are more doors in a man's house, but God has hid the key;
Ruin is a builder of windows; her legend witnesseth
Barbara, the saint of gunners, and a stay in sudden death." ”

“ Till the hand is raised to fling us for the final dice to Death.
"'There were two windows in your tower, Barbara, Barbara,
For all between the sun and moon in the lands of Africa.
Hath a man three eyes, Barbara, a bird three wings,
That you have riven roof and wall to look upon vain things?'
Her voice was like a wandering thing that falters, yet is free,
Whose soul has drunk in a distant land of the rivers of liberty.
There are more wings than the wind knows, or eyes than see the sun,
In the light of the lost window and the wind of the doors undone ”

“ With amber eyes about the pearl-flecked June.
Two skylarks soar
With singing flame
Into the sun whence first they came.
All else is only grasshoppers
Or a brown wing the shepherd stirs,
Who, like a tall tree moving, goes
Where the pale tide of sheep-drift flows.
See! the sun smites
With sea-drawn lights
The turned wing of a gull that glows
Aslant the violet, the profound
Dome of the mid-June heights.
Alas! again the grasshoppers,
The birds, the slumber-winging bees,
Alas! again for those and these
Demure and sweet things drowned ”

“ And when the night came with a flicker of wings
I have heard the earth breathing quiet and slow
Like a pulse in the tiny, wild tumult of things.
I have sung to the sun, and the moon and the stars,
In valleys uncharted of tumbled sea meadows
I have shouted aloud 'neath a sky whipped to smoke in the fret of my spars
And I fought as I fared; and my couch was a camp; and my songs were my scars.
Soldier! Soldier! Cosetting your sword! ”

“ Cæsar's toppling battle towers shall never stretch so far;
The slaves are dancing in their chains, the child laughs at the rod,
Because of the bird of the three wings, and the third face of God.'
The sword upon his shoulder shifted and shone and fell,
And Barbara lay very small and crumpled like a shell."
What wall upon what hinges turned stands open like a door?
Too simple for the sight of faith, too huge for human eyes,
What light upon what ancient way shines to a far off floor,
The line of the lost land of France or the plains of Paradise? ”

“ Cæsar hath made a treaty with the moon and with the sun
All the gods that men can praise, praise him every one.
There is peace with the anointed of the scarlet oils of Bel,
With the Fish God, where the whirlpool is a winding stair to hell,
With the pathless pyramids of slime, where the mitred negro lifts
To his black cherub in the cloud abominable gifts,
With the leprous silver cities where the dumb priests dance and nod,
But not with the three windows and the last name of God.'"
They are firing, we are falling, and the red skies rend and shiver us ... ”

“ Lest, tortured by the world's strong sin,
Her little bruised heart should die —
Give her your heart to shelter in,
O earth and sky!
Kneel, sun, to clothe her round about
With rays to keep her body warm;
And, kind moon, shut the shadows out
That work her harm.
Yes, even shield her from my will's
Wild folly — hold her safe and close! —
For my rough hand in touching spills
Life from the rose.
But teach me, too, that I may learn
Your passion classical and cool;
To me, who tremble so and burn,
Be pitiful!
Contents / Contents, p. 2
Laus Deo! ”

“ The Breton line went backwards and the Breton tale went on.
"Her father had sailed across the sea from the harbour of Africa,
When all the slaves took up their tools for the bidding of Barbara;
She smote the bare wall with her hand, and bade them smite again,
She poured them wealth of wine and meat to stay them in their pain,
And cried through the lifted thunder of thronging hammer and hod:
'Throw open the third window in the third name of God!'
Then the hearts failed and the tools fell; and far towards the foam
Men saw a shadow on the sands; and her father coming home." ”

“ Who treat their slaves well.
Thy father's household and thyself should be
More to her now than those who may be dead,
The place she lives in dearer
Than any unattainable far land
Where she is more forgotten than old dreams.
Why make the day of evil worse
By dwelling on it after it has past?
Near things alone are real,
Now is the whole of time:
Places beyond the horizon are but pictures;
Memory cheats the eye with an illusion! ”

“ Light, like a closing flower, covers to earth her herds,
Out of the world we only watch for the rise of moon;
Darker the twilight glimmers, dulls the warble of birds,
Over the silent field travels the night-jar's tune. ”

“ Barbara, Barbara, we may not loose a breath —
Be at the bursting doors of doom, and in the dark deliver us,
Who loosen the last window on the sun of sudden death.
"Barbara, the beautiful, stood up as a queen set free. ”

“ Gaul, charioted and charging, great Gaul upon a gun,
Tiptoe on all her thousand years, and trumpeting to the sun,
As day returns, as death returns, swung backward for a span,
Back on the barbarous reign returns the battering-ram of Man.
While that the east held hard and hot like pincers in a forge,
Came like the west wind roaring up the cannon of St. George,
Where the hunt is up and racing over stream and swamp and tarn,
And their batteries, black with battle, hold the bridge-heads of the Marne ”

“ We stifle cries with lightless eyes
And face eternal night;
We stifle cries to sacrifice
Our eyes for Human Sight.
And many give that men may live,
A life, a limb, a brain,
That fellow men may understand
And be for ever sane.
What matter if we lose a hand
If others wander hand in hand ”

“ Touch, and clasp, and be close! Kiss, oh kiss, and be warm!
What is here, O beloved, so like a sea without sound?
Under the swathe at our feet, swifter than wings of storm,
Summer speeds on his way: Spring lies dead in the ground.
How like a closing flower, clasped by a sleeping bee,
Life folds over us now: — and here in the midst love lies.
O beloved, O flower of night, no morrow's moon shall we see:
Between a dusk and a day we meet, and at dawn Time dies!
Contents / Contents, p. 2
Richard le Gallienne
The Palaces of the Rose
A Valentine
Which of my palaces? ”

“ And fought the far infinitude, a toiler
Like to himself and me, for things that are
Buried from the eyes alone
Of men whose sight is made of stone,
And led him out in ecstasy,
Over the dim boundary
By the pale gleam of a scimitar. ”

“ If on a day it should befall
That love must have her funeral;
And men weep tears that love is dead,
That never more her gracious head
Can turn to meet their eyes and hold
Their hearts with chains of silky gold ”

“ Beyond the bounds of the sun.
You body yourselves in the stars, inscrutable dancers,
Native where we are none.
O inhuman Numbers!
All things change and glide,
Corrupt and crumble, suffer wreck and decay,
But, obstinate dark Integrities, you abide,
And obey but them who obey.
All things else are dyed
In the colours of man's desire:
But you no bribe nor prayer
Avails to soften or sway. ”

“ And your eyes grew implacable in mine.
And like a trodden snake you turned to meet
The foe with sudden hissing ... then you smiled,
And broke our life in pieces at my feet,
"Your child?" you said: "Your child?"
Contents / Contents, p. 3
The Shore
The low bay melts into a ring of silver,
And slips it on the shore's reluctant finger
Though in an hour the tide will turn, will tremble,
Forsaking her because the moon persuades him.
But the black wood that leans and sighs above her
No tide can turn, no moon can slave nor summon. ”

“ Who raised us from our sleep? Is this
The resurrection of the dead?
Upon our bodies no flesh grows,
No bright blood through our temples springs,
No glory spreads, no trumpet blows,
The air is not white and blind with wings. ”

“ Fills the hushed day with other wings than birds'.
Now where on foam-crest waves the seagulls rock,
To their cliff-haven go the seagulls thence.
So too the shepherd gathers in his flock,
Because birds journey to their dens,
Tired sheep to their still fold.
A dark first bat swoops low and dips
About the shepherd who now sings
A song of timeless evenings;
For dusk is round him with wide wings,
Dusk murmurs on his moving lips.
There is not mortal man who knows
From whence the, shepherd's song arose:
It came a thousand years ago. ”

“ Like maps of stone-walled fields their branching roots
Hold the silt still so that thin grass grows there,
Its blades whitened with travelling powdery drift
The besom of the lightest breeze sets stirring. ”

“ His eyes, still greedy of their visions,
Fastened a swarthy town enisled in wheat,
And to the ebon threshold of each house,
Conjured forth the man that each was planned for:
Great creatures smiling with his father's smile,
Muscular, wealthy and self-satisfied,
Wearing loud-coloured raiment, earrings, chains,
Armlet and buckle, all of clanking gold. ”

“ Night cannot hide them from us.
In the dark, again,
We see the Silent People
Who once were men.
The Silent People of No Man's Land,
They rise, they rise,
With the glory of utter loss
In their stary eyes. ”

“ And across the carnage of the Guard by Paris in the plain
The Normans to the Bretons cried; and the Bretons cheered again;
But he that told the tale went home to his house beside the sea
And burned before St. Barbara, the light of the windows three.
Three candles for an unknown thing, never to come again,
That opened like the eye of God on Paris in the plain.
Contents
Richard Church
Psyche Goes Forth to Life
What are these tears of loneliness to-night? ”

“ Man after man, race after race
Drops jaded by the iterancy
Of petty fear.
Even as horses on the green steppes grazing,
Hundreds scattered through lonely peacefulness,
If shadow of cloud or red fox breaking earth
Delude but one with dream of a stealthy foe,
All are stampeded. ”

“ We puzzle at these splendid things.
For why great kings and rains should fall,
And wherefore leaves and queens should fly,
Or such rare wonders be at all,
You cannot tell; no more can I.
Yet this we know: new leaves and rain
Anon shall crown the vernal scene,
But dust of dynasts not again
Blows up into a king or queen.
Contents / Contents, p. 3
Ghosties at the Wedding
Turn down a glass afore his place ”

“ The Ballad of St. Barbara
(St. Barbara is the patroness of artillery, and of those who are in fear of sudden death.)
When the long grey lines came flooding upon Paris in the plain,
We stood and drank of the last free air we never could love again;
They had led us back from a lost battle, to halt we knew not where,
And stilled us; and our gaping guns were dumb with our despair.
The grey tribes flowed for ever from the infinite lifeless lands,
And a Norman to a Breton spoke, his chin upon his hands:
"There was an end to Ilium ”