Poems of To-Day: an Anthology

Excerpt

1. ALL THAT'S PAST

  Very old are the woods;
    And the buds that break
  Out of the briar's boughs,
    When March winds wake,
  So old with their beauty are—
    Oh, no man knows
  Through what wild centuries
    Roves back the rose.

  Very old are the brooks;
    And the rills that rise
  Where snow sleeps cold beneath
    The azure skies
  Sing such a history
    Of come and gone,
  Their every drop is as wise
    As Solomon.

  Very old are we men;
    Our dreams are tales
  Told in dim Eden
    By Eve's nightingales;

{2}

  We wake and whisper awhile,
    But, the day gone by,
  Silence and sleep like fields
    Of amaranth lie.

Walter de la Mare.

2. PRE-EXISTEHCE

  I laid me down upon the shore
    And dreamed a little space;
  I heard the great waves break and roar;
    The sun was on my face.

  My idle hands and fingers brown
    Played with the pebbles grey;
  The waves came up, the waves went down,
    Most thundering and gay.

  The pebbles, they were smooth and round
    And warm upon my hands,
  Like little people I had found
    Sitting among the sands.

  The grains of sands so shining-small
    Soft through my fingers ran;
  The sun shone down upon it all,
    And so my dream began:

  How all of this had been before;
    How ages far away
  I lay on some forgotten shore
    As here I lie to-day.

{3}

  The waves came shining up the sands,
    As here to-day they shine;
  And in my pre-pelasgian hands
    The sand was warm and fine.

  I have forgotten whence I came,
    Or what my home might be,
  Or by what strange and savage name
    I called that thundering sea.

  I only know the sun shone down
    As still it shines to-day,
  And in my fingers long and brown
    The little pebbles lay.

Frances Cornford.

  Troy Town is covered up with weeds,
    The rabbits and the pismires brood
  On broken gold, and shards, and beads
    Where Priam's ancient palace stood.

  The floors of many a gallant house
    Are matted with the roots of grass;
  The glow-worm and the nimble mouse
    Among her ruins flit and pass.

  And there, in orts of blackened bone,
    The widowed Trojan beauties lie,
  And Simois babbles over stone
    And waps and gurgles to the sky.

{4}

  Once there were merry days in Troy,
    Her chimneys smoked with cooking meals,
  The passing chariots did annoy
    The sunning housewives at their wheels.

  And many a lovely Trojan maid
    Set Trojan lads to lovely things;
  The game of life was nobly played,
    They played the game like Queens and Kings.

  So that, when Troy had greatly passed
    In one red roaring fiery coal,
  The courts the Grecians overcast
    Became a city in the soul.

  In some green island of the sea,
    Where now the shadowy coral grows
  In pride and pomp and empery
    The courts of old Atlantis rose....