The Book of the Homeless/Chapter 1 (complete)
THE ORPHANS OF FLANDERS
Where is the land that fathered, nourished, poured
The sap of a strong race into your veins,—
Land of wide tilth, of farms and granaries stored,
And old towers chiming over peaceful plains?
It is become a vision, barred away
Like light in cloud, a memory, a belief.
On those lost plains the Glory of yesterday
Builds her dark towers for the bells of Grief.
It is become a splendour-circled name
For all the world. A torch against the skies
Burns from that blood-spot, the unpardoned shame
Of them that conquered: but your homeless eyes
See rather some brown pond by a white wall,
Red cattle crowding in the rutty lane,
Some garden where the hollyhocks were tall
In the Augusts that shall never be again.
There your thoughts cling as the long-thrusting root
Clings in the ground; your orphaned hearts are there.
O mates of sunburnt earth, your love is mute
But strong like thirst and deeper than despair.
You have endured what pity can but grope
To feel; into that darkness enters none.
We have but hands to help: yours is the hope
Whose silent courage rises with the sun.
THE DANCE
A SONG
As the Wind and as the Wind
In a corner of the way,
Goes stepping, stands twirling,
Invisibly, comes whirling,
Bows before and skips behind
In a grave, an endless play—
So my Heart and so my Heart
Following where your feet have gone,
Stirs dust of old dreams there;
He turns a toe; he gleams there,
Treading you a dance apart.
But you see not. You pass on.
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LE PRÉCIEUX SANG
—Seigneur, qui pour un verre d'eau nous avez promis la mer illimitée,
Qui sait si vous n'avez pas soif aussi?
Et que ce sang qui est tout ce que nous avons soit propre à vous désaltérer,
C'est vrai, puisque vous l'avez dit!
Si vraiment il y a une source en nous, eh bien, c'est ce que nous allons voir!
Si ce vin a quelque vertu
Et si notre sang est rouge, comme vous le dites, comment le savoir
Autrement que quand il est répandu?
Si notre sang est vraiment précieux, comme vous le dites, si vraiment il est comme de l'or,
S'il sert, pourquoi le garder?
Et sans savoir ce qu'on peut acheter avec, pourquoi le réserver comme un trésor,
Mon Dieu, quand vous nous le demandez?
Nos péchés sont grands, nous le savons, et qu'il faut absolument faire pénitence,
Mais il est difficile pour un homme de pleurer.
Voici notre sang au lieu de larmes que nous avons répandu pour la France:
Faites-en ce que vous voudrez.
Prenez-le, nous vous le donnons, tirez-en vous-même usage et bénéfice,
Nous ne vous faisons point de demande
Mais si vous avez besoin de notre amour autant que nous avons besoin de votre justice,
Alors c'est que votre soif est grande!
Juillet 1915
THE PRECIOUS BLOOD
[ TRANSLATION ]
Oh, what if Thou, that for a cup of water promisest
The illimitable sea,
Thou, Lord, dost also thirst?
Hast Thou not said, our blood shall quench Thee best
And first
Of any drink there be?
If then there be such virtue in it, Lord,
Ah, let us prove it now!
And, save by seeing it at Thy footstool poured,
How, Lord—oh, how?
If it indeed be precious and like gold,
As Thou hast taught,
Why hoard it? There's no wealth in gems unsold,
Nor joy in gems unbought.
Our sins are great, we know it; and we know
We must redeem our guilt;
Even so.
But tears are difficult for a man to shed,
And here is our blood poured out for France instead,
To do with as Thou wilt!
Take it, O Lord! And make it Thine indeed,
Void of all lien and fee.
Nought else we ask of Thee;
But if Thou needst our Love as we Thy Justice need,
Great must Thine hunger be!
LA MORT DES JEUNES GENS DE LA DIVINE HELLADE
FRAGMENT
Antigone criant et marchant au supplice
N'avait pas de la mort leur sublime respect;
Ce n'était pas pour eux une funeste paix,
C'était un ordre auquel il faut qu'on obéisse.
Ils ne subissaient pas l'offense qu'il fît beau
Que le soleil mûrît les grappes de glycine;
Ils étaient souriant en face du tombeau,
Les rossignols élus que la rose assassine.
Ils ne regrettaient pas les tendres soirs futurs,
Les conversations sur les places d'Athènes,
Où, le col altéré de poussière et d'azur,
Pallas, comme un pigeon, pleure au bord des fontaines.
Ils ne regrettaient pas les gradins découverts
Où le public trépigne, insiste.
Pour regarder, avant qu'ils montent sur la piste,
Les cochers bleus riant avec les cochers verts.
Ils ne regrettaient pas ce loisir disparate
D'une ville qui semble un sordide palais.
Où l'on se réunit pour entendre Socrate
Et pour jouer aux osselets.
Ils étaient éblouis de tumulte et de risque,
Mais, si la fourbe mort les désignait soudain,
Ils laissaient sans gémir sur l'herbe du jardin
Les livres et le disque.
Ce n'était pas pour eux l'insupportable affront,
Ils se couchaient sans choc, sans lutte, sans tapage,
Comme on voit, ayant bien remué sous le front,
Un vers définitif s'étendre sur la page.
Ils étaient résignés, vêtus, rigides, prêts
Pour cette expérience étrange.
Comme Hyacinthe en fleur indolemment se change
Et comme Cyparis se transforme en cyprès.
Ils ne regrettaient rien de vivre en lonie.
D'être libres, d'avoir des mères et des sœurs,
Et de sentir ce lourd sommeil envahisseur
Après une courte insomnie.
Ils rentraient au séjour qui n'a plus de saison.
Où notre faible orgueil se refuse à descendre,
Sachant que l'urne étroite où gît un peu de cendre
Sera tout le jardin et toute la maison.
Jadis j'ai vu mourir des frères de mon âge.
J'ai vu monter en eux l'indicible torpeur.
Ils avaient tous si mal! Ils avaient tous si peur!
Ils se prenaient la tête avec des mains en nage.
Ils ne pouvaient pas croire, ayant si soif, si faim,
Un tel désir de tout avec un cœur si jeune,
A ce désert sans source, à cet immense jeûne,
A ce terme confus qui n 'a jamais de fin.
Ils n'attendaient plus rien de la tendresse humaine
Et cherchaient à chasser d'un effort douloureux
L'Ange noir qui se couche à plat ventre sur eux
Et qui les considère avant qu'il les emmène.
HOW THE YOUNG MEN DIED IN HELLAS
A FRAGMENT
[ TRANSLATION ]
Antigone went wailing to the dust.
She reverenced not the face of Death like these
To whom it came as no enfeebling peace
But a command relentless and august.
These grieved not at the beauty of the morn,
Nor that the sun was on the ripening flower;
Smiling they faced the sacrificial hour,
Blithe nightingales against the fatal thorn.
They grieved not that their feet no more should rove
The Athenian porticoes in twilight leisure,
Where Pallas, drunk with summer's gold and azure,
Brooded above the fountains like a dove.
They grieved not for the theatre's
high-banked tiers,
Where restlessly the noisy crowd leans over,
With laughter and with jostling, to discover
The blue and green of chaffing charioteers.
Nor for the fluted shafts, the carven stones
Of that sole city, bright above the seas,
Where young men met to talk with Socrates
Or toss the ivory bones.
Their eyes were lit with tumult and with risk,
But when they felt Death touch their hands and pass
They followed, dropping on the garden grass
The parchment and the disk.
It seemed no wrong to them that they must go.
They laid their lives down as the poet lays
On the white page the poem that shall praise
His memory when the hand that wrote is low.
Erect they stood and, festally arrayed,
Serenely waited the transforming hour,
Softly as Hyacinth slid from youth to flower,
Or the shade of Cyparis to a cypress shade.
They wept not for the lost Ionian days,
Nor liberty, nor household love and laughter,
Nor the long leaden slumber that comes after
Life's little wakefulness.
Fearless they sought the land no sunsets see.
Whence our weak pride shrinks back, and would return,
Knowing a pinch of ashes in an urn
Henceforth our garden and our house shall be.
Young men, my brothers, you whose morning skies
I have seen the deathly lassitude invade,
Oh, how you suffered! How you were afraid!
What death-damp hands you locked about your eyes!
You, so insatiably athirst to spend
The young desires in your hearts abloom,
How could you think the desert was your doom,
The waterless fountain and the endless end ?
You yearned not for the face of love, grown dim,
But only fought your anguished bones to wrest
From the Black Angel crouched upon your breast,
Who scanned you ere he led you down with him.
A MESSAGE
This is our gift to the Homeless.
What shall it bear from me
Safe in a land that prospers
Girded by leagues of sea?—
Tear moistened words of pity,
Bountiful sympathy.
Clearly we see the picture,
Horror has fixed our eyes.
Fighting to guard its hearthstones
A nation mangled lies.
Fire has charred its beauty.
Murder has stilled its cries;
And truths we love and cherish
Hang in the trembling scale.
If you win, we win by proxy.
If you fail, we are doomed to fail.
The world is beset by a monster.
Yet we watch to see who shall prevail.
Our souls are racked and quickened.
But prudence counsels no.
So we lavish our gold and pity
And wait to see how it will go,—
This pivotal war of the ages
With its heartrending ebb and flow.
For ever there comes the moment
When destiny bids "choose."
By the edge of the sword men perish.
By selfishness all they lose.
So Belgium stands transfigured
As the one who did not refuse.
CRY OF THE HOMELESS
Instigator of the ruin—
Whichsoever thou mayst be
Of the mastering minds of Europe
That contrived our misery—
Hear the wormwood-worded greeting
From each city, shore, and lea
Of thy victims:
"Enemy, all hail to thee!"
Yea: "All hail!" we grimly shout thee
That wast author, fount, and head
Of these wounds, whoever proven
When our times are throughly read.
"May thy dearest ones be blighted
And forsaken," be it said
By thy victims,
"And thy children beg their bread!"
Nay: too much the malediction.—
Rather let this thing befall
In the unfurling of the future,
On the night when comes thy call:
That compassion dew thy pillow
And absorb thy senses all
For thy victims.
Till death dark thee with his pall.
August, 1915
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THE LITTLE CHILDREN
"Suffer little children to come unto me,"
Christ said, and answering with infernal glee,
"Take them! "the arch-fiend scoffed, and from the tottering walls
Of their wrecked homes, and from the cattle's stalls.
And the dogs' kennels, and the cold
Of the waste fields, and from the hapless hold
Of their dead mothers' arms, famished and bare.
And maimed by shot and shell,
The master-spirit of hell
Caught them up, and through the shuddering air
Of the hope-forsaken world
The little ones he hurled.
Mocking that Pity in his pitiless might—
The Anti-Christ of Schrecklickeit.
ÉPITAPHE
Ci-gît un tel, mort pour la France et qui, vivant,
Poussait sa voiturette à travers les villages
Pour vendre un peu de fil, de sel ou de fromage.
Sous les portails d'azur aux feuillages mouvants.
Il a gagné son pain comme au Commandement
Que donne aux hommes Dieu dans le beau Livre sage.
Puis, un jour, sur sa tête a crevé le nuage
Que lance l'orageux canon de l'Allemand.
Ce héros, dans l'éclair qui délivra son âme.
Aura vu tout en noir ses enfants et sa femme
Contemplants anxieux son pauvre gagne-pain:
Ce chariot plus beau que n'est celui de l'Ourse
Et qu'il a fait rouler pendant la dure course
Qui sur terre commence un céleste destin.
Orthez, 29 Juillet 1915
AN EPITAPH
[ TRANSLATION ]
Here such an one lies dead for France. His trade
To push a barrow stocked with thread, cheese, salt
From town to town, under the azure vault,
Through endless corridors of rustling shade.
True to the sacred law of toil, he made
His humble living as the Book commands.
Till suddenly there burst upon his lands
The thunder of the German cannonade.
Poor hero! In the flash that smote him dead
He saw his wife and children all in black
Weeping about the cart that earned their bread—
The cart that, by his passionate impulse sped
On immortality's celestial track,
Shone brighter than the Wain above his head.
IN SLEEP
I dreamt (no "dream" awake—a dream indeed)
A wrathful man was talking in the Park:
"Where are the Higher Powers who know our need,
Yet leave us in the dark?
"There are no Higher Powers; there is no heart
In God, no love"—his oratory here,
Taking the paupers' and the cripples' part,
Was broken by a tear.
And next it seemed that One who did invent
Compassion, who alone created pity,
Walked, as though called, and hastened as He went
Out from the muttering city;
Threaded the little crowd, trod the brown grass.
Bent o'er the speaker close, saw the tear rise.
And saw Himself, as one looks in a glass,
In those impassioned eyes.
NOS MORTS
Pure armée au repos dans la hauteur des cieux,
Campement éternel, léger, silencieux,
Que pensez-vous de voir s'anéantir les hommes?
A n'être pas sublime aucun ne condescend,
Comme un cri vers la nue on voit jaillir leur sang
Qui sur nos cœurs contrits lentement se rabaisse.
—Morts divins, portez-nous un plausible secours!
Notre douleur n'est pas la sœur de votre ivresse.
Vous mourez! Concevez que c'est un poids trop lourd
Pour ceux qui dans leur grave et brûlante tristesse
Ont toujours confondu la Vie avec l'Amour.
Comtesse de Noailles
OUR DEAD
[ TRANSLATION ]
Stars that behold our world upon its way,
Pure legions camped upon the plains of night,
Mute watchful hosts of heaven, what must you say
When men destroy each other in their might?
Upon their deadly race each runner starts,
Nor one but will his brothers all outrun!
Ah, see their blood jet upward to the sun
Like living fountains refluent on our hearts!
O dead divinely for so great a faith,
Help us, whose agony is but begun,
For bitterly we yield you up to death,
We who had dreamed that Life and Love were one.
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TWO SONGS OF A YEAR
1914-1915
I
CHILDREN'S KISSES
So; it is nightfall then.
The valley flush
That beckoned home the way for herds and men
Is hardly spent:
Down the bright pathway winds, through veils of hush
And wonderment.
Unuttered yet the chime
That tells of folding-time;
Hardly the sun has set;—
The trees are sweetly troubled with bright words
From new-alighted birds.
And yet,…
Here, round my neck, are come to cling and twine,
The arms, the folding arms, close, close and fain,
All mine!—
I pleaded to, in vain,
I reached for, only to their dimpled scorning,
Down the blue halls of morning;—
Where all things else could lure them on and on,
Now here, now gone,
From bush to bush, from beckoning bough to bough,
With bird-calls of Come Hither!—
Ah, but now…
Now it is dusk.—And from his heaven of mirth,
A wilding skylark sudden dropt to earth
Along the last low sunbeam yellow-moted,—
Athrob with joy—
There pushes here, a little golden Boy,
Still gazing with great eyes:
And wonder-wise,
All fragrancy, all valor silver-throated,
My daughterling, my swan.
My Alison.
Closer than homing lambs against the bars
At folding-time, that crowd, all mother-warm,
They crowd, they cling, they wreathe;—
And thick as sparkles of the thronging stars,
Their kisses swarm.
O Rose of Being at whose heart I breathe.
Fold over, hold me fast
In the dim Eden of a blinding kiss.
And lightning heart's desire, be still at last.
Heart can no more,—
Life can no more
Than this.
II
THE SANS-FOYER
Love, that Love cannot share,—
Now turn to air!
And fade to ashes, O my daily bread,
Save only if you may
Bless you, to be the stay
Of the uncomforted.
Behold, you far-off lights,—
From smoke-veiled heights,
If there be dwelling in our wilderness!
For Love the refugee,
No stronghold can there be,—
No shelter more, while these go shelterless.
Love hath no home, beside
His own two arms spread wide;—
The only home, among all walls that are:
So there may come to cling,
Some yet forlorner thing
Feeling its way, along this blackened star.
RAIN IN BELGIUM
The heavy rain falls down, falls down,
On city streets whence all have fled,
Where tottering ruins skyward frown
Above the staring silent dead.
Here shall ye raise your Kaiser's throne,
Stained with the blood for freedom shed.
Here where men choked for breath in vain
Who in fair fight had all withstood,
Here on this poison-haunted plain,
Made rich with babes' and women's blood,
Here shall ye plant your German grain,
Here shall ye reap your children's food.
The harvest ripens—Reaper come!
Bring children singing Songs of Hate
Taught by the mother in the home—
Fit comrade she for such a mate.
Soon shall ye reap what ye have sown;
God's mills grind thoroughly though late.
The heavy rain beats down, beats down;
I hear in it the tramp of Fate!
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L'EXILÉ
"O deuil de ne pouvoir emporter sur la mer
Dans l'écume salée et dans le vent amer,
L'épi de son labeur et le fruit de sa treille,
Ni la rose que l'aurore fait plus vermeille
Ni rien de tout de ce qui, selon chaque saison.
Pare divinement le seuil de la maison!
Mais, puisque mon foyer n'est plus qu'un peu de cendre,
Et que, dans mon jardin, je ne dois plus entendre
Sur les arbres chanter les oiseaux du printemps;
Que nul ne reviendra de tous ceux que j'attends,
S'abriter sous le toit où nichaient les colombes,
Adieu donc, doux pays où nous avions nos tombes,
Où nous devions, à l'heure où se ferment les yeux,
Nous endormir auprès du sommeil des aïeux!
Nous partons. Ne nous pleurez pas, tendres fontaines.
Terre que nous quittons pour des terres lointaines,
O toi que le brutal talon du conquérant
A foulée et qu'au loin, de sa lueur de sang,
Empourpre la bataille et rougit l'incendie!
Qu'un barbare vainqueur nous chasse et qu'il châtie
En nous le saint amour que nous avons pour toi.
C'est bien. La force pour un jour, prime le droit,
Mais l'exil qu'on subit pour ta cause. Justice,
Laisse au destin vengeur le temps qu'il s'accomplisse.
Nous reviendrons. Et soit que nous passions la mer
Parmi l'embrun cinglant et dans le vent amer,
Soit que le sort cruel rudement nous disperse,
Troupeau errant, sous la rafale ou sous l'averse,
Ne nous plains pas, cher hôte, en nous tendant la main.
Car n'est-il pas pour toi un étranger divin
Celui qui, le front haut et les yeux pleins de flamme,
A quitté sa maison pour fuir un joug infâme
Et dont le fier genou n'a pas voulu ployer
Et qui, pauvre, exilé, sans pain et sans foyer,
Sent monter, de son cœur à sa face pâlie.
Ce même sang sacré que saigne la Patrie.
THE EXILE
[ TRANSLATION ]
Bitter our fate, that may not bear away
On the harsh winds and through the alien spray
Sheaves of our fields and fruit from the warm wall,
The rose that reddens at the morning's call,
Nor aught of all wherewith the turning year
Our doorway garlanded, from green to sere.…
But since the ash is cold upon the hearth.
And dumb the birds in garden and in garth.
Since none shall come again, of all our loves,
Back to this roof that crooned with nesting doves.
Now let us bid farewell to all our dead.
And that dear corner of earth where they are laid.
And where in turn it had been good to lay
Our kindred heads on the appointed day.
Weep not, O springs and fountains, that we go.
And thou, dear earth, the earth our footsteps know,
Weep not, thou desecrated, shamed and rent.
Consumed with fire and with blood-shed spent.
Small strength have they that hunt us from thy fold
To loosen love's indissoluble hold,
And brighter than the flames about thy pyre
Our exiled faith shall spring for thee, and higher.
We shall return. Let Time reverse the glass.
Homeless and scattered from thy face we pass.
Through rain and tempest flying from our doors.
On seas unfriendly swept to stranger shores.
But, O you friends unknown that wait us there.
We ask no pity, though your bread we share,
For he who, flying from the fate of slaves
With brow indignant and with empty hand,
Has left his house, his country and his graves,
Comes like a Pilgrim from a Holy Land.
Receive him thus, if in his blood there be
One drop of Belgium's immortality.
HORREUR ET BEAUTÉ
Sabreur de mains d'enfants qui demandaient du pain.
Brûleur de basilique et de bibliothèque.
Geste obscène, œil sanglant, front d'anthropopithèque,
L'homme ne s'est jamais plus hideusement peint.
Mais Roncevaux n'a rien de plus beau, sous son Pin,.
Rien de plus pur, sous son Laurier, la fable Grecque,
Que ce jeune Monarque et son vieil Archevêque:
C'est Achille et Nestor, c'est Roland et Turpin.
Roi, d'un juste reflux puissions-nous voir la vague!
Et toi, puisque ta main éleva dans sa bague
Le seul reflet de ciel qui bénit cet Enfer,
Que la pourpre sur toi soit plus cardinalice.
Prêtre ! et que de la Croix qui n'était pas de Fer
Un Christ plus abondant coule dans ton calice!
HORROR AND BEAUTY
[ TRANSLATION ]
Gashed hands of children who cry out for bread—
While as the flames from sacred places rise
The Blonde Beast, hideous, with blood-shot eyes
And obscene gesture mutilates the dead—
But neither Roncesvalles where Roland bled
With Turpin, nor Greek deeds of high emprise
Can to a pitch of purer beauty rise
Than the Young King, the Priest, unconqueréd.
Oh King, soon all thy foes may'st thou repel!
And thou, High-Priest, from whose ring, raised to men,
Shone the one gleam of Heaven in that Hell,
May thy empurpled vestments so avail
That from the Cross—not made of Iron then—
A richer Christ glow in thy holy grail.
Translated by Walter V. R. Berry
THE UNDERGRADUATE KILLED IN BATTLE
Sweet as the lawn beneath his sandalled tread
Or the scarce rippled stream beneath his oar,
For its still, channelled current constant more,
His life was, and the few blithe words he said.
One or two poets read he, and reread;
One or two friends in boyish ardour wore
Next to his heart, incurious of the lore
Dodonian woods might murmur o'er his head.
Ah, demons of the whirlwind, have a care
What, trumpeting your triumphs, ye undo!
The earth once won, begins your long despair
That never, never is his bliss for you.
He breathed betimes this clement island air
And in unwitting lordship saw the blue.
Oxford, August, 1915
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THE CHILDREN AND THE FLAG
The little children in my country kiss the American flag.
What of those children over the sea
That are beating about the world's rough ways,
Like the tender blossoms from off a tree
That a sudden gale in Spring betrays?
The children? Oh, let them look for the sign
Of a wave-borne flag, thou land of mine!
On the old gray sea its course it holds,
Life for the famished is in its gift.…
And the children are crowding to kiss its folds,
While the tears of their mothers fall free and swift.—
And what of the flag their lips have pressed?
Oh, guard it for ever—That flag is blest.
THE TROUBLER OF TELARO
1
Warm vines bloom now along thy rampart steeps
Thy shelves of olives, undercliffs of azure.
And like a lizard of the red rock sleeps
The wrinkled Tuscan sea, panting for pleasure.
Nets, too, festooned about thine elfin port,
Telaro, in the Etrurian mountain's side,
Heavings of golden luggers scarce distort
The image of thy belfry where they ride.
But thee, Telaro, on a night long gone
That grey and holy tower upon the mole
Suddenly summoned, while yet lightnings shone
And hard gale lingered, with a ceaseless toll
That choked, with its disastrous monotone,
All the narrow channels of the hamlet's soul.
2
For what despair, fire, shipwreck, treachery?
Was it for threat that from the macchia sprang
For Genoa's feud, the oppressor's piracy.
Or the Falcon of Sarzana that it rang?
Was the boat-guild's silver plundered? Blood should pay.
Hardwon the footing of the fishers' clan
The sea-cloud-watchers.—Loud above the spray
The maddening iron cry, the appeal of man.
Washed through the torchless midnight on and on.
Are not enough the jeopardies of day?
Riot arose—fear's Self began the fray:
But the tower proved empty. By the lightning's ray
They found no human ringer in the room. . . .
The bell-rope quivered out in the sea-spume. . . .
3
A creature fierce, soft, witless of itself,
A morbid mouth, circled by writhing arms.
By its own grasp entangled on that shelf.
Had dragged the rope and spread the death-alarms;
Insensitive, light-forgotten, up from slime,
From shelter betwixt rocks, issuing for prey
Disguised, had used man's language of dismay.
The spawn of perished times had late in time
Emerged, and griefs upon man's grief imposed
Incalculable.
But the fishers closed
The blind mouth, and cut off the suckers cold.
Two thousand fathoms the disturber rolled
From trough to trough into the gulf Tyrrhene;
And fear sank with it back into its night obscene.
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LE PRINTEMPS DE 1915
Tu me disais de ta voix douce,
Tu me disais en insistant:
—Y a-t-il encor un Printemps
Et les feuilles repoussent-elles?
La guerre accapare le ciel
Les eaux, les monts, les bois, la terre:
Où sont les fleurs couleur de miel
Pour les abeilles volontaires?
Où sont les pousses des roncerois
Et les boutons des anémones?
Où sont les flûtes dans les bois
Des oiseaux sombres aux becs jaunes?
—Hélas! plus n'est de floraison
Que celle des feux dans l'espace:
Bouquet de rage et de menace
S'éparpillant sur l'horizon.
Plus n'est, hélas! de splendeur rouge
Que celle, hélas! des boulets fous
Éclaboussant de larges coups
Clochers, hameaux, fermes et bouges.
C'est le printemps de ce temps-ci:
Le vent répand de plaine en plaine.
Là-bas, ces feuillaisons de haine;
C'est la terreur de ce temps-ci.
Saint-Cloud, le 31 Juillet 1915
THE NEW SPRING
[ TRANSLATION ]
"Is the old spring-time dead,
And shall we never see
New leaves upon the tree?
"Shall the black wings of war
Blot out sun, moon and star,
And never a bud unfold
To the bee its secret gold?
"Where are the wind-flowers streaked,
And the wayward bramble shoots.
And the black-birds yellow-beaked
With a note like woodland flutes?"
No flower shall bloom this year
But the wild flame of fear
Wreathing the evil night
With burst of deadly light.
No splendour of petals red
But that which the cannon shed,
Raining their death-bloom down
On farm and tower and town.
This is the scarlet doom
By the wild sea-winds hurled
Over a land of gloom,
Over a grave-strewn world.
1915
Though desolation stain their foiled advance,
In ashen ruins hearth-stones linger whole:
Do what they may, they cannot master France;
Do what they can, they cannot quell the soul.
Barrett Wendell
THE TRYST
I said to the woman: Whence do you come,
With your bundle in your hand?
She said: In the North I made my home,
Where slow streams fatten the fruitful loam,
And the endless wheat-fields run like foam
To the edge of the endless sand.
I said : What look have your houses there,
And the rivers that glass your sky?
Do the steeples that call your people to prayer
Lift fretted fronts to the silver air,
And the stones of your streets, are they washed and fair
When the Sunday folk go by?
My house is ill to find, she said,
For it has no roof but the sky;
The tongue is torn from the steeple-head,
The streets are foul with the slime of the dead.
And all the rivers run poison-red
With the bodies drifting by.
I said: Is there none to come at your call
In all this throng astray?
They shot my husband against a wall.
And my child (she said), too little to crawl,
Held up its hands to catch the ball
When the gun-muzzle turned its way.
I said: There are countries far from here
Where the friendly church-bells call,
And fields where the rivers run cool and clear,
And streets where the weary may walk without fear,
And a quiet bed, with a green tree near,
To sleep at the end of it all.
She answered: Your land is too remote,
And what if I chanced to roam
When the bells fly back to the steeples' throat,
And the sky with banners is all afloat.
And the streets of my city rock like a boat
With the tramp of her men come home?
I shall crouch by the door till the bolt is down,
And then go in to my dead.
Where my husband fell I will put a stone,
And mother a child instead of my own.
And stand and laugh on my bare hearth-stone
When the King rides by, she said.
Paris, August 27th, 1915
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FINISTERRE
O that on some forsaken strand,
Lone ending of a lonely land,
On such an eve we two were lying,
To hear the quiet water sighing
And feel the coolness of the sand.
A red and broken moon would grow
Out of the dusk and even so
As here to-night the street she faces,
Between the half-distinguished spaces
Of sea and sky would burn and go.
The moon would go and overhead,
Like tapers lighted o'er the dead.
Star after silver star would glimmer,
The lonely night grow calmer, dimmer,
The quiet sea sink in its bed.
We, at the end of Time and Fate,
Might unconcerned with love or hate
As the sea's voices, talk together.
Wherefore we went apart and whither.
And all the exiled years relate.
Thus were life's grey chance-'ravelled sleave'
Outspread, we something might perceive
Which never would to chance surrender,
But through the tangled woof its slender
Golden, elusive pattern weave.
Then while the great stars larger shone
Leaned on the sea, and drew thereon
Faint paths of light, across them faring
Might steal the ship that comes for bearing
Sore-wounded souls to Avalon.
A REASON FOR KEEPING SILENT
I think it better that at times like these
We poets keep our mouths shut, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He's had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth
Or an old man upon a winter's night.
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MUSICAL SCORE
LA LÉGENDE DE SAINT CHRISTOPHE
PAGE OF SCORE OF UNPUBLISHED OPERA
[ ACTE I, SCÈNE III ]
La partition est éditée par Rouart, Lerolle & Cie., Paris