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Read Ebook: Bay: A Book of Poems by Lawrence D H David Herbert
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Ebook has 144 lines and 6195 words, and 3 pages
GUARDS Where the trees rise like cliffs
THE LITTLE TOWN AT EVENING The chime of the bells
LAST HOURS The cool of an oak's unchequered shade
TOWN London
AFTER THE OPERA Down the stone stairs
GOING BACK The night turns slowly round
ON THE MARCH We are out on the open road
BOMBARDMENT The town has opened to the sun
WINTER-LULL Because of the silent snow
THE ATTACK When we came out of the wood
OBSEQUIAL ODE Surely you've trodden straight
SHADES Shall I tell you, then, how it is?--
BREAD UPON THE WATERS So you are lost to me
RUINATION The sun is bleeding its fires upon the mist
RONDEAU The hours have tumbled their leaden sands
TOMMIES IN THE TRAIN The sun shines
WAR-BABY The child like mustard-seed
NOSTALGIA The waning moon looks upward
COLOPHON
GUARDS!
A Review in Hyde Park 1913. The Crowd Watches.
WHERE the trees rise like cliffs, proud and blue-tinted in the distance, Between the cliffs of the trees, on the grey- green park Rests a still line of soldiers, red motionless range of guards Smouldering with darkened busbies beneath the bay- onets' slant rain.
Colossal in nearness a blue police sits still on his horse Guarding the path; his hand relaxed at his thigh, And skyward his face is immobile, eyelids aslant In tedium, and mouth relaxed as if smiling--ineffable tedium!
So! So! Gaily a general canters across the space, With white plumes blinking under the evening grey sky. And suddenly, as if the ground moved The red range heaves in slow, magnetic reply.
EVOLUTIONS OF SOLDIERS
The red range heaves and compulsory sways, ah see! in the flush of a march Softly-impulsive advancing as water towards a weir from the arch Of shadow emerging as blood emerges from inward shades of our night Encroaching towards a crisis, a meeting, a spasm and throb of delight.
The wave of soldiers, the coming wave, the throbbing red breast of approach Upon us; dark eyes as here beneath the busbies glit- tering, dark threats that broach Our beached vessel; darkened rencontre inhuman, and closed warm lips, and dark Mouth-hair of soldiers passing above us, over the wreck of our bark.
And so, it is ebb-time, they turn, the eyes beneath the busbies are gone. But the blood has suspended its timbre, the heart from out of oblivion Knows but the retreat of the burning shoulders, the red-swift waves of the sweet Fire horizontal declining and ebbing, the twilit ebb of retreat.
THE LITTLE TOWN AT EVENING
THE chime of the bells, and the church clock striking eight Solemnly and distinctly cries down the babel of children still playing in the hay. The church draws nearer upon us, gentle and great In shadow, covering us up with her grey.
Like drowsy children the houses fall asleep Under the fleece of shadow, as in between Tall and dark the church moves, anxious to keep Their sleeping, cover them soft unseen.
Hardly a murmur comes from the sleeping brood, I wish the church had covered me up with the rest In the home-place. Why is it she should exclude Me so distinctly from sleeping with those I love best?
LAST HOURS
THE cool of an oak's unchequered shade Falls on me as I lie in deep grass Which rushes upward, blade beyond blade, While higher the darting grass-flowers pass Piercing the blue with their crocketed spires And waving flags, and the ragged fires Of the sorrel's cresset--a green, brave town Vegetable, new in renown.
Over the tree's edge, as over a mountain Surges the white of the moon, A cloud comes up like the surge of a fountain, Pressing round and low at first, but soon Heaving and piling a round white dome. How lovely it is to be at home Like an insect in the grass Letting life pass.
There's a scent of clover crept through my hair From the full resource of some purple dome Where that lumbering bee, who can hardly bear His burden above me, never has clomb. But not even the scent of insouciant flowers Makes pause the hours.
Down the valley roars a townward train. I hear it through the grass Dragging the links of my shortening chain Southwards, alas!
TOWN
LONDON Used to wear her lights splendidly, Flinging her shawl-fringe over the River, Tassels in abandon.
And up in the sky A two-eyed clock, like an owl Solemnly used to approve, chime, chiming, Approval, goggle-eyed fowl.
There are no gleams on the River, No goggling clock; No sound from St. Stephen's; No lamp-fringed frock.
Instead, Darkness, and skin-wrapped Fleet, hurrying limbs, Soft-footed dead.
London Original, wolf-wrapped In pelts of wolves, all her luminous Garments gone.
London, with hair Like a forest darkness, like a marsh Of rushes, ere the Romans Broke in her lair.
It is well That London, lair of sudden Male and female darknesses Has broken her spell.
AFTER THE OPERA
DOWN the stone stairs Girls with their large eyes wide with tragedy Lift looks of shocked and momentous emotion up at me. And I smile.
Ladies Stepping like birds with their bright and pointed feet Peer anxiously forth, as if for a boat to carry them out of the wreckage, And among the wreck of the theatre crowd I stand and smile.
They take tragedy so becomingly. Which pleases me.
But when I meet the weary eyes The reddened aching eyes of the bar-man with thin arms, I am glad to go back to where I came from.
GOING BACK
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