Poetry

arms dripped red. And then came Bran
And at his heels a hundred murderers ran,
With prisoners now, clamouring to take and try them
And burn them, wedge their nails up, crucify them.

29

“God!⁠ ⁠… Once the lying spirit of a cause
With maddening words dethrones the mind of men,
They’re past the reach of prayer. The eternal laws
Hate them. Their eyes will not come clean again,
But doom and strong delusion drive them then,
Without ruth, without rest⁠ ⁠… the iron laughter
Of the immortal mouths goes hooting after.

30

“And we had firebrands too. Tower after tower
Fell sheathed in thundering flame. The street was like
A furnace mouth. We had them in our power!
Then was the time to mock them and to strike,
To flay men and spit women on the pike,
Bidding them dance. Wherever the most shame
Was done the doer called on Dymer’s name.

31

“Faces of men in torture⁠ ⁠… from my mind
They will not go away. The East lay still
In darkness when we left the town behind
Flaming to light the fields. We’d had our will:
We sang, ‘Oh, we will make the frost distil
From Time’s grey forehead into living dew
And break whatever has been and build new.’

32

“Day found us on the border of this wood,
Blear-eyed and pale. Then the most part began
To murmur and to lag, crying for food
And shelter. But we dared not answer Bran.
Wherever in the ranks the murmur ran
He’d find it⁠—‘You, there, whispering. Up, you sneak,
Reactionary, eh? Come out and speak.’

33

“Then there’d be shrieks, a pistol shot, a cry,
And someone down. I was the third he caught.
The others pushed me out beneath his eye,
Saying, ‘He’s here; here, Capture.’ Who’d have thought⁠—
My old friends? But I know now. I’ve been taught⁠ ⁠…
They cut away my two hands and my feet
And laughed and left me for the birds to eat.

34

“Oh, God’s name! If I had my hands again
And Dymer here⁠ ⁠… it would not be my blood.
I am stronger now than he is, old with pain,
One grip would make him mine. But it’s no good,
I’m dying fast. Look stranger, where the wood
Grows lighter. It’s the morning. Stranger dear,
Don’t leave me. Talk a little while. Come near.”

35

But Dymer, sitting hunched with knee to chin,
Close to the dying man, answered no word.
His face was stone. There was no meaning in
His wakeful eyes. Sometimes the other stirred
And fretted, near his death; and Dymer heard,
Yet sat like one that neither hears nor sees.
And the cold East whitened beyond the trees.

Canto V

1

Through bearded cliffs a valley has driven thus deep
Its wedge into the mountain and no more.
The faint track of farthest-wandering sheep
Ends here, and the grey hollows at their core
Of silence feel the dulled continuous roar
Of higher streams. At every step the skies
Grow less and in their place black ridges rise.

2

Hither, long after noon, with plodding tread
And eyes on earth, grown dogged, Dymer came,
Who all the long day in the woods had fled
From the horror of those lips that screamed his name
And cursed him. Busy wonder and keen shame
Were driving him, and little thoughts like bees
Followed and pricked him on and left no ease.

3

Now, when he looked and saw this emptiness
Seven times enfolded in the idle hills,
There came a chilly pause to his distress,
A cloud of the deep world-despair that fills
A man’s heart like the incoming tide and kills
All pains except its own. In that broad sea
No hope, no change, and no regret can be.

4

He felt the eternal strength of the silly earth,
The unhastening circuit of the stars and sea,
The business of perpetual death and birth,
The meaningless precision. All must be
The same and still the same in each degree⁠—
Who cared now? And the smiled and could forgive,
Believing that for sure he would not live.

5

Then, where he saw a little water run
Beneath a bush, he slept. The chills of May
Came dropping and the stars peered one by one
Out of the deepening blue, while far away
The western brightness dulled to bars of grey.
Half-way to midnight, suddenly, from dreaming
He woke wide into present horror, screaming.

6

For he had dreamt of being in the arms
Of his beloved and in quiet places;
But all at once it filled with night alarms
And rapping guns: and men with splintered faces,
—No eyes, no nose, all red⁠—were running races
With worms along the floor. And he ran out
To find the girl and shouted: and that shout

7

Had carried him into the waking world.
There stood the concave, vast, unfriendly night,
And over him the scroll of stars unfurled.
Then wailing like a child he rose upright,
Heart-sick with desolation. The new blight
Of loss had nipt him sore, and sad self-pity
Thinking of her⁠—then thinking of the City.

8

For, in each moment’s thought, the deed of Bran,
The burning and the blood and his own shame,
Would tease him into madness till he ran
For refuge to the thought of her; whence came
Utter and endless loss⁠—no, not a name,
Not a word, nothing left⁠—himself alone
Crying amid that valley of old stone:

9

“How soon it all ran out! And I suppose
They, they up there, the old contriving powers,
They knew it all the time⁠—for someone knows
And waits and watches till we pluck the flowers,
Then leaps. So soon⁠—my store of happy hours
All gone before I knew. I have expended
My whole wealth in a day. It’s finished, ended.

10

“And nothing left. Can it be possible
That joy flows through and, when the course is run,
It leaves no change, no mark on us to tell
Its passing? And as poor as we’ve begun
We end the richest day? What we have won,
Can it all die like this?⁠ ⁠… Joy flickers on
The razor-edge of the present and is gone.

11

“What have I done to bear upon my name
The curse of Bran? I was not of his crew,
Nor any man’s. And Dymer has the blame⁠—
What have I done? Wronged whom? I never knew.
What’s Bran to me? I had my deed to do
And ran out by myself, alone and free,
—Why should earth sing with joy and not for me?

12

“Ah, but the earth never did sing for joy⁠ ⁠…
There is a glamour on the leaf and flower
And April comes and whistles to a boy
Over white fields: and,