John Le Gay Brereton

Once more the Christian festival is near,
And I, for whom each day repeats all days
Continuously in ecstasy of praise,
Love’s birthday lasting through the unending year,
Am dreaming how the spirit draws me sheer
From farthest wandering in the illusive maze
To that white centre whose creative blaze
Spun me aloft and sets me tremulous here.
And since all heaven is figured in my heart,
As in a dewdrop ere it change and live
There shines the glory of the eternal dome,
Mother, to you the showering meteors dart
Of free affection, fancies fugitive,
And flare, with increasing heat and splendour, home.

Hey, Toby, Toby, Toby!—Dead?
The silence is a flood
That closes, choking, overhead,
And chills the living blood.

The leaping friend, whose jolly bark
Was greeting every night,
No more to thrill the summer dark
With welcome of delight?

Beside his grave I bend the knee,
And O, my eyes are dim.
He hunted for the dog in me:
I found the man in him.

Where yonder ruddy-misted star
Is tumbling down the placid sky
The people’s aims were not so high
As our heroic motives are;
To love and trust they set a bar,
And “Profit” was their only cry;
They paid but little heed how nigh
Came thundering the iron car.

It rushed upon them and it passed
Leaving a ghost of pain and fear
To haunt the ruin it had made.
But surely they have learnt at last?
What far faint murmur can we hear
Of frantic howling? Listen! . . . “TRADE.”

Behind us lay the homely shore
With youthful memories aureoled;
A sky of dazzling blue before,
We sailed a sea of molten gold.

To our old haven we return;
By smoky hills as grey as mud
We see the sullen sunset burn
Malignant on a lake of blood.

Yes, we return: but memory roams
A foul, bleak age of pain that yields
The smoke and flame of ruined homes,
The muck of cannon-pitted fields.

The world, all busy round us here of late,
Is still unchanged: but you are twenty-one.
The mind, victorious with the rising sun,
Steps boldly and blithely through the imagined gate
On greener grass where brighter flowers await
The quickened senses and the waters run
With livelier music, and a web is spun
Of loveliest pattern on the loom of fate.
Doubt nothing, fare right on with manly trust,
And know, whatever failures be in store,
Though all your light seem shimmering blinding haze,
And flowers and grass fly up in choking dust,
Better than you can fancy waits before
For those who find the secret of the maze.

O wistful eyes that haunt the gloom of sleep,
Are you my own, remembered from the night
I sat before my glass in dumb affright
And saw my cowering soul afraid to weep?
Perhaps you are his, foreshadowed, when I creep
Behind him and confess the hopeless blight
That wilts the bloom of our supreme delight
The breath of horror from the unknown deep.
Eyes that have never seen a mother’s face,
Have you no mercy that you stare and stare,
Although I never felt the hope I slew?
Wide eyes, but when I kneel to God for grace,
Your steadfast pity deepens my despair;
The darkness I desire is full of you.

Nurse not your grief, nor make obsequious moan
When I have shed this flesh I love so well,
Nor slowly toll the dull heart-bruising knell,
Nor carve my name in customary stone;
But let the generous earth reclaim her own
And my usurious profit who can tell?
Dash tears aside, let joy resume her spell;
Stars glitter where the storm is overblown.
Because I have lived I would not have one say:
“Here long ago a man of such a name
Was left to moulder in his pit of clay.”
Let only love remember how I came
And built an earthen altar in my day
And lit thereon a comfortable flame.

I.

The beast exultant spreads the nostril wide,
Snuffing a sickly hate-enkindling scent;
Proud of his rage, on sudden carnage bent,
He leaps, and flings the helpless guard aside.
Again, again the hills are gapped and dyed,
Again the hearts of waiting women spent.
Is there no cooler pathway to content?
Can we not heal the insanity of pride?

Silence the crackle and thunder of battling guns,
And drive your men to strategy of peace;
Crush ere its birth the hell-begotten crime;
Still there’s a war that no true warrior shuns,
That knows no mercy, looks for no surcease,
But ghastlier battles, victories more sublime.



II.

Envy has slid in silence to its hole,
And Peace is basking where the workers meet,
And fire has purged ...

The doom is imminent of unholy hate.
Hail to the light that glimmers where the leaves
Are shaken by winds of dawning, and the sheaves
Of hemlock swirl and scatter in the spate!
Love, that has learned in faith to sorrow and wait,
Sings loud his glorious charm and subtly weaves
The spell subduing madness that receives
The madman at his own mad estimate.

Ah, but the ponderous horror! Nay, not yet
The cloud of sorrow leeward growls and rolls;
The eyes that meet the morn are heavy and wet.
The loss the military mind enscrolls,
Spilt blood and battered bones, we may forget,
But not the wastage of beloved souls

When my time is come to die,
I would shun the decent gloom,
Whispered word and weeping eye,
Fitful hum of knowing fly
Questing through the darkened room.

I would lay my skin and bone
Where no busy care could trace
Failing steps by bush and stone,
With my farewell dream alone
In a bird-frequented place.

So the sounds that bless my ear
When my weary eyelids close
Will be songs of hope and cheer;
So departing, I shall hear
How the tide of living flows.

So my memories shall not be
Blurred by griefs however true;
So my drowsy sense may see
Eyes that light in love on me;
So I’ll not be leaving you.

What of these tender feet
That have never toddled yet?
What dances shall they beat,
With what red vintage wet?
In what wild way will they march or stray, by what sly paynims met?

The toil of it none may share;
By yourself must the way be won
Through fervid or frozen air
Till the overland journey’s done;
And I would not take, for your own dear sake, one thorn from your track, my son.

Go forth to your hill and dale,
Yet take in your hand from me
A staff when your footsteps fail,
A weapon if need there be;
’Twill hum in your ear when the foeman’s near, athirst for the victory.

In the desert of dusty death
It will point to the hidden spring;
Should you weary and fail for breath,
It will burgeon and branch and swing
Till you sink to...

When winter chills your aged bones
As by the fire you sit and nod,
You’ll hear a passing wind that moans,
And think of one beneath the sod.

You’ll feebly sleek your hair of grey,
And mutter words that none may know,
And dream you touch the sodden clay
That laps the dream of long ago.

The shrinking ash may fall apart
And show a gleam that lingers yet.
A moment in your cooling heart
May shine a sparkle of regret.

And where the pit is chill and deep,
And bones are mouldering in the clay,
A thrill of buried love will creep
And shudder aimlessly away.

A golden largesse from a store untold
Announced the ruddy day’s imperial birth,
And woke a loyal world to jubilant mirth
And hopes that boasted, madly over-bold.
Shadow and thunder from a dull cloud rolled,
A shiver chilled the lately glittering firth,
As gloom set heavy hand upon the earth;
Yet look, on westward hills a gleam of gold.
You have laughed and bidden us laugh, O lord of jest;
You have wept and given us grief, O lonely friend;
And now we sit with silent lips and white,
And dream what craggy ways thou wanderest,
Not finding yet of hope or strife an end,
O soul set free from bondage of the night.