A Shropshire Lad and Other Poems Read online

  VIII

  Soldier from the wars returning,

  Spoiler of the taken town,

  Here is ease that asks not earning;

  Turn you in and sit you down.

  Peace is come and wars are over,

  Welcome you and welcome all,

  While the charger crops the clover

  And his bridle hangs in stall.

  Now no more of winters biting,

  Filth in trench from fall to spring,

  Summers full of sweat and fighting

  For the Kesar or the King.

  Rest you, charger, rust you, bridle;

  Kings and kesars, keep your pay;

  Soldier, sit you down and idle

  At the inn of night for aye.

  IX

  The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers

  Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,

  The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.

  Pass me the can, lad; there’s an end of May.

  There’s one spoilt spring to scant our mortal lot,

  One season ruined of our little store.

  May will be fine next year as like as not:

  Oh ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.

  We for a certainty are not the first

  Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled

  Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed

  Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.

  It is in truth iniquity on high

  To cheat our sentenced souls of aught they crave,

  And mar the merriment as you and I

  Fare on our long fool’s-errand to the grave.

  Iniquity it is; but pass the can.

  My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;

  Our only portion is the estate of man:

  We want the moon, but we shall get no more.

  If here to-day the cloud of thunder lours

  To-morrow it will hie on far behests;

  The flesh will grieve on other bones than ours

  Soon, and the soul will mourn in other breasts.

  The troubles of our proud and angry dust

  Are from eternity, and shall not fail.

  Bear them we can, and if we can we must.

  Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

  X

  Could man be drunk for ever

  With liquor, love, or fights,

  Lief should I rouse at morning

  And lief lie down of nights.

  But men at whiles are sober

  And think by fits and starts,

  And if they think, they fasten

  Their hands upon their hearts.

  XI

  Yonder see the morning blink:

  The sun is up, and up must I,

  To wash and dress and eat and drink

  And look at things and talk and think

  And work, and God knows why.

  Oh often have I washed and dressed

  And what’s to show for all my pain?

  Let me lie abed and rest:

  Ten thousand times I’ve done my best

  And all’s to do again.

  XII

  The laws of God, the laws of man,

  He may keep that will and can;

  Not I: let God and man decree

  Laws for themselves and not for me;

  And if my ways are not as theirs

  Let them mind their own affairs.

  Their deeds I judge and much condemn,

  Yet when did I make laws for them?

  Please yourselves, say I, and they

  Need only look the other way.

  But no, they will not; they must still

  Wrest their neighbour to their will,

  And make me dance as they desire

  With jail and gallows and hell-fire.

  And how am I to face the odds

  Of man’s bedevilment and God’s?

  I, a stranger and afraid

  In a world I never made.

  They will be master, right or wrong;

  Though both are foolish, both are strong.

  And since, my soul, we cannot fly

  To Saturn nor to Mercury,

  Keep we must, if keep we can,

  These foreign laws of God and man.

  XIII

  The Deserter

  ‘What sound awakened me, I wonder,

  For now ’tis dumb.’

  ‘Wheels on the road most like, or thunder:

  Lie down; ’twas not the drum.’

  Toil at sea and two in haven

  And trouble far:

  Fly, crow, away, and follow, raven,

  And all that croaks for war.

  ‘Hark, I heard the bugle crying,

  And where am I?

  My friends are up and dressed and dying,

  And I will dress and die.’

  ‘Oh love is rare and trouble plenty

  And carrion cheap,

  And daylight dear at four-and-twenty:

  Lie down again and sleep.’

  ‘Reach me my belt and leave your prattle:

  Your hour is gone;

  But my day is the day of battle,

  And that comes dawning on.

  ‘They mow the field of man in season:

  Farewell, my fair,

  And, call it truth or call it treason,

  Farewell the vows that were.’

  ‘Ay, false heart, forsake me lightly:

  ’Tis like the brave.

  They find no bed to joy in rightly

  Before they find the grave.

  ‘Their love is for their own undoing,

  And east and west

  They scour about the world a-wooing

  The bullet to their breast.

  ‘Sail away the ocean over,

  Oh sail away,

  And lie there with your leaden lover

  For ever and a day.’

  XIV

  The Culprit

  The night my father got me

  His mind was not on me;

  He did not plague his fancy

  To muse if I should be

  The son you see.

  The day my mother bore me

  She was a fool and glad,

  For all the pain I cost her,

  That she had borne the lad

  That borne she had.

  My mother and my father

  Out of the light they lie;

  The warrant would not find them,

  And here ’tis only I

  Shall hang so high.

  Oh let not man remember

  The soul that God forgot,

  But fetch the county kerchief

  And noose me in the knot,

  And I will rot.

  For so the game is ended

  That should not have begun.

  My father and my mother

  They had a likely son,

  And I have none.

  XV

  Eight O’Clock

  He stood, and heard the steeple

  Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town.

  One, two, three, four, to market-place and people

  It tossed them down.

  Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour,

  He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;

  And then the clock collected in the tower

  Its strength, and struck.

  XVI

  Spring Morning

  Star and coronal and bell

  April underfoot renews,

  And the hope of man as well

  Flowers among the morning dews.

  Now the old come out to look,

  Winter past and winter’s pains,

  How the sky in pool and brook

  Glitters on the grassy plains.

  Easily the gentle air

  Wafts the turning season on;

  Things to comfort them are there,

  Though ’tis true the best are gone.

  Now the scorned un
lucky lad

  Rousing from his pillow gnawn

  Mans his heart and deep and glad

  Drinks the valiant air of dawn.

  Half the night he longed to die,

  Now are sown on hill and plain

  Pleasures worth his while to try

  Ere he longs to die again.

  Blue the sky from east to west

  Arches, and the world is wide,

  Though the girl he loves the best

  Rouses from another’s side.

  XVII

  Astronomy

  The Wain upon the northern steep

  Descends and lifts away.

  Oh I will sit me down and weep

  For bones in Africa.

  For pay and medals, name and rank,

  Things that he has not found,

  He hove the Cross to heaven and sank

  The pole-star underground.

  And now he does not even see

  Signs of the nadir roll

  At night over the ground where he

  Is buried with the pole.

  XVIII

  The rain, it streams on stone and hillock,

  The boot clings to the clay.

  Since all is done that’s due and right

  Let’s home; and now, my lad, good-night,

  For I must turn away.

  Good-night, my lad, for nought’s eternal;

  No league of ours, for sure.

  To-morrow I shall miss you less,

  And ache of heart and heaviness

  Are things that time should cure.

  Over the hill the highway marches

  And what’s beyond is wide:

  Oh soon enough will pine to nought

  Remembrance and the faithful thought

  That sits the grave beside.

  The skies, they are not always raining

  Nor grey the twelvemonth through;

  And I shall meet good days and mirth,

  And range the lovely lands of earth

  With friends no worse than you.

  But oh, my man, the house is fallen

  That none can build again;

  My man, how full of joy and woe

  Your mother bore you years ago

  To-night to lie in the rain.

  XIX

  In midnights of November,

  When Dead Man’s Fair is nigh,

  And danger in the valley,

  And anger in the sky,

  Around the huddling homesteads

  The leafless timber roars,

  And the dead call the dying

  And finger at the doors.

  Oh, yonder faltering fingers

  Are hands I used to hold;

  Their false companion drowses

  And leaves them in the cold.

  Oh, to the bed of ocean,

  To Africk and to Ind,

  I will arise and follow

  Along the rainy wind.

  The night goes out and under

  With all its train forlorn;

  Hues in the east assemble

  And cocks crow up the morn.

  The living are the living

  And dead the dead will stay,

  And I will sort with comrades

  That face the beam of day.

  XX

  The night is freezing fast,

  To-morrow comes December;

  And winterfalls of old

  Are with me from the past;

  And chiefly I remember

  How Dick would hate the cold.

  Fall, winter, fall; for he,

  Prompt hand and headpiece clever,

  Has woven a winter robe,

  And made of earth and sea

  His overcoat for ever,

  And wears the turning globe.

  XXI

  The fairies break their dances

  And leave the printed lawn,

  And up from India glances

  The silver sail of dawn.

  The candles burn their sockets,

  The blinds let through the day,

  The young man feels his pockets

  And wonders what’s to pay.

  XXII

  The sloe was lost in flower,

  The April elm was dim;

  That was the lover’s hour,

  The hour for lies and him.

  If thorns are all the bower,

  If north winds freeze the fir,

  Why, ’tis another’s hour,

  The hour for truth and her.

  XXIII

  In the morning, in the morning,

  In the happy field of hay,

  Oh they looked at one another

  By the light of day.

  In the blue and silver morning

  On the haycock as they lay,

  Oh they looked at one another

  And they looked away.

  XXIV

  Epithalamium

  He is here, Urania’s son,

  Hymen come from Helicon;

  God that glads the lover’s heart,

  He is here to join and part.

  So the groomsman quits your side

  And the bridegroom seeks the bride:

  Friend and comrade yield you o’er

  To her that hardly loves you more.

  Now the sun his skyward beam

  Has tilted from the Ocean stream.

  Light the Indies, laggard sun:

  Happy bridegroom, day is done,

  And the star from Œta’s steep

  Calls to bed but not to sleep.

  Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings

  All desired and timely things.

  All whom morning sends to roam,

  Hesper loves to lead them home.

  Home return who him behold,

  Child to mother, sheep to fold,

  Bird to nest from wandering wide:

  Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.

  Pour it out, the golden cup

  Given and guarded, brimming up,

  Safe through jostling markets borne

  And the thicket of the thorn;

  Folly spurned and danger past,

  Pour it to the god at last.

  Now, to smother noise and light,

  Is stolen abroad the wildering night,

  And the blotting shades confuse

  Path and meadow full of dews;

  And the high heavens, that all control,

  Turn in silence round the pole.

  Catch the starry beams they shed

  Prospering the marriage bed,

  And breed the land that reared your prime

  Sons to stay the rot of time.

  All is quiet, no alarms;

  Nothing fear of nightly harms.

  Safe you sleep on guarded ground,

  And in silent circle round

  The thoughts of friends keep watch and ward,

  Harnessed angels, hand on sword.

  XXV

  The Oracles

  ’Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona mountain

  When winds were in the oakenshaws and all the cauldrons tolled,

  And mute’s the midland navel-stone beside the singing fountain,

  And echoes list to silence now where gods told lies of old.

  I took my question to the shrine that has not ceased from speaking,

  The heart within, that tells the truth and tells it twice as plain;

  And from the cave of oracles I heard the priestess shrieking

  That she and I should surely die and never live again.

  Oh priestess, what you cry is clear, and sound good sense I think it;

  But let the screaming echoes rest, and froth your mouth no more.

  ’Tis true there’s better boose than brine, but he that drowns must drink it;

  And oh, my lass, the news is news that men have heard before.

  The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;

  Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the
air.

  And he that stands will die for nought, and home there’s no returning.

  The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.

  XXVI

  The half-moon westers low, my love,

  And the wind brings up the rain;

  And wide apart lie we, my love,

  And seas between the twain.

  I know not if it rains, my love,

  In the land where you do lie;

  And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,

  You know no more than I.

  XXVII

  The sigh that heaves the grasses

  Whence thou wilt never rise

  Is of the air that passes

  And knows not if it sighs.

  The diamond tears adorning

  Thy low mound on the lea,

  Those are the tears of morning,

  That weeps, but not for thee.

  XXVIII

  Now dreary dawns the eastern light,

  And fall of eve is drear,

  And cold the poor man lies at night,

  And so goes out the year.

  Little is the luck I’ve had,

  And oh, ’tis comfort small

  To think that many another lad

  Has had no luck at all.

  XXIX

  Wake not for the world-heard thunder

  Nor the chime that earthquakes toll.

  Star may plot in heaven with planet,

  Lightning rive the rock of granite,

  Tempest tread the oakwood under:

  Fear not you for flesh nor soul.

  Marching, fighting, victory past,

  Stretch your limbs in peace at last.

  Stir not for the soldiers drilling

  Nor the fever nothing cures:

  Throb of drum and timbal’s rattle

  Call but man alive to battle,

  And the fife with death-notes filling

  Screams for blood but not for yours.

  Times enough you bled your best;

  Sleep on now, and take your rest.

  Sleep, my lad; the French are landed,

  London’s burning, Windsor’s down;

  Clasp your cloak of earth about you,

  We must man the ditch without you,

  March unled and fight short-handed,

  Charge to fall and swim to drown.

  Duty, friendship, bravery o’er,

  Sleep away, lad; wake no more.