LIKE a young child who to his mother's door
Runs eager for the welcoming embrace,
And finds the door shut, and with troubled face
Calls and through sobbing calls, and o'er and o'er
Calling, storms at the panel so before
A door that will not open, sick and numb,
I listen for a word that will not come,
And know at last I may not enter more.
Silence! And through the silence and the dark
By that closed door, the distant sob of tears
Beats on my spirit, as on fairy shores
The spectral sea; and through the sobbing, hark!
Down the fair-chambered corridor of years,
Ine quiet shutting, one by one, of doors.
Herman Hagedorn (1882-).
IF I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
Iarts at peace, under an English heaven.
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915).
1 Reprinted from Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, by permission of the Editor.
MOTHER of those whose need of mothering
Made them your children! By your open grave
High summer speaks with voice tall poplars have
At noon, and larks have found a place to sing,
Though round July's blue mirror coil and cling
The factory's dark breath. For you, who gave
Love-labour, yet more men shall live to save
The seed of men from Mammon's harvesting.
Wherefore I think you would not have us weep
That stand together here, and in the sun
Look last on you, who, from long labour, won
This quiet ground's full heritage of sleep,
But tears within the heart would have us keep,
That human love like yours grows fresh upon.
John Helston.
THESE have I lost: now cushats only call
In long-lost groves down vales of memory;
And cuckoos sing in springs that used to be;
While owls go hooting, weirdly musical,
'Neath purple nights that have been buried all
In the dark tomb of years; and ceaselessly
The singing rills reëcho from a sea
Where long ago they found their funeral.
And thro' the dusty crannies of my heart
The winds go wailing; and the dancing leaves
Beat their fine joys behind my closed eyes;
While in a secret storehouse set apart
I hear the sobbing of a sea that grieves,
And of a little summer wind that dies.
1 Reprinted from Aphrodite, and Other Poems, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company.
THE PENALTY OF LOVE1
IF Love should count you worthy, and should deign
One day to seek your door and be your guest,
Pause! ere you draw the bolt and bid him rest,
If in your old content you would remain.
For not alone he enters: in his train
Are angels of the mists, the lonely quest,
Dreams of the unfulfilled, the unpossessed;
And sorrow, and Life's immemorial pain.
He wakes desires you never may forget,
He shows you stars you never saw before,
He makes you share with him, for evermore,
The burden of the world's divine regret.
How wise were you to open not!
if you should turn him from the door!
1 Reprinted from Poems of the Unknown Way, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company.
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