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TITLE: GEORGIAN POETRY 1911-12
AUTHOR: VARIOUS
EBOOK: E05723 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GEORGIAN POETRY

1911-1912

DEDICATED

TO

ROBERT BRIDGES

BY THE WRITERS

AND THE EDITOR

PREFATORY NOTE

This volume is issued in the belief that English poetry is now once
again putting on a new strength and beauty.

Few readers have the leisure or the zeal to investigate each volume as
it appears; and the process of recognition is often slow. This
collection, drawn entirely from the publications of the past two years,
may if it is fortunate help the lovers of poetry to realize that we are
at the beginning of another "Georgian period" which may take rank in due
time with the several great poetic ages of the past.

It has no pretension to cover the field. Every reader will notice the
absence of poets whose work would be a necessary ornament of any
anthology not limited by a definite aim. Two years ago some of the
writers represented had published nothing; and only a very few of the
others were known except to the eagerest "watchers of the skies." Those
few are here because within the chosen period their work seemed to have
gained some accession of power.

My grateful thanks are due to the writers who have lent me their poems,
and to the publishers (Messrs Elkin Mathews, Sidgwick and Jackson,
Methuen, Fifield, Constable, Nutt, Dent, Duckworth, Longmans, and
Maunsel, and the Editors of 'Basileon', 'Rhythm', and the 'English
Review') under whose imprint they have appeared.

E.M.

Oct. 1912.

  "Of all materials for labour, dreams are the hardest; and the
  artificer in ideas is the chief of workers, who out of nothing will
  make a piece of work that may stop a child from crying or lead nations
  to higher things. For what is it to be a poet? It is to see at a
  glance the glory of the world, to see beauty in all its forms and
  manifestations, to feel ugliness like a pain, to resent the wrongs of
  others as bitterly as one's own, to know mankind as others know single
  men, to know Nature as botanists know a flower, to be thought a fool,
  to hear at moments the clear voice of God."

  DUNSANY

CONTENTS

LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE
  The Sale of Saint Thomas

GORDON BOTTOMLEY
  The End of the World    (from 'Chambers of Imagery,' 2nd series)
  Babel: The Gate of God  (from 'Chambers of Imagery,' 2nd series)

RUPERT BROOKE
  The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
  Dust
  The Fish
  Town and Country
  Dining-room Tea

GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
  The Song of Elf       (a fragment from the Ballad of the White Horse)

WILLIAM H. DAVIES
  The Child and the Mariner    (from 'Songs of Joy')
  Days too Short               (from 'Songs of Joy')
  In May                       (from 'Songs of Joy')
  The Heap of Rags             (from 'Songs of Joy')
  The Kingfisher               (from 'Farewell to Poesy')

WALTER DE LA MARE
  Arabia                       (from 'The Listeners')
  The Sleeper                  (from 'The Listeners')
  Winter Dusk                  (from 'The Listeners')
  Miss Loo                     (from 'The Listeners')
  The Listeners

JOHN DRINKWATER
  The Fires of God             (from 'Poems of Love and Earth')

JAMES ELROY FLECKER
  Joseph and Mary              (from 'Forty-Two Poems')
  The Queen's Song             (from 'Forty-Two Poems')

WILFRID WILSON GIBSON
  The Hare                     (from 'Fires,' Book III)
  Geraniums
  Devil's Edge                 (from 'Fires,' Book III)

D. H. LAWRENCE
  The Snapdragon

JOHN MASEFIELD
  Biography

HAROLD MONRO
  Child of Dawn                (from 'Before Dawn')
  Lake Leman                   (from 'Before Dawn')

T. STURGE MOORE
  A Sicilian Idyll (first part)

RONALD ROSS
  Hesperus                     (from 'Lyra Modulata')

EDMUND BEALE SARGANT
  The Cuckoo Wood              (from 'The Casket Songs')

JAMES STEPHENS
  In the Poppy Field           (from 'The Hill of Vision')
  In the Cool of the Evening   (from 'The Hill of Vision')
  The Lonely God               (from 'The Hill of Vision')

ROBERT CALVERLEY TREVELYAN
  Dirge

BIBLIOGRAPHY

       *       *       *       *       *

LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

THE SALE OF SAINT THOMAS

[A quay with vessels moored]

Thomas:

To India! Yea, here I may take ship;
From here the courses go over the seas,
Along which the intent prows wonderfully
Nose like lean hounds, and track their journeys out,
Making for harbours as some sleuth was laid
For them to follow on their shifting road.
Again I front my appointed ministry.--
But why the Indian lot to me? Why mine
Such fearful gospelling? For the Lord knew
What a frail soul He gave me, and a heart
Lame and unlikely for the large events.--
And this is worse than Baghdad! though that was
A fearful brink of travel. But if the lots,
That gave to me the Indian duty, were
Shuffled by the unseen skill of Heaven, surely
That fear of mine in Baghdad was the same
Marvellous Hand working again, to guard
The landward gate of India from me. There
I stood, waiting in the weak early dawn
To start my journey; the great caravan's
Strange cattle with their snoring breaths made steam
Upon the air, and (as I thought) sadly
The beasts at market-booths and awnings gay
Of shops, the city's comfortable trade,
Lookt, and then into months of plodding lookt.
And swiftly on my brain there came a wind
Of vision; and I saw the road mapt out
Along the desert with a chalk of bones;
I saw a famine and the Afghan greed
Waiting for us, spears at our throats, all we
Made women by our hunger; and I saw
Gigantic thirst grieving our mouths with dust,
Scattering up against our breathing salt
Of blown dried dung, till the taste eat like fires
Of a wild vinegar into our sheathed marrows;
And a sudden decay thicken'd all our bloods
As rotten leaves in fall will baulk a stream;
Then my kill'd life the muncht food of jackals.--
The wind of vision died in my brain; and lo,
The jangling of the caravan's long gait
Was small as the luting of a breeze in grass
Upon my ears. Into the waiting thirst
Camels and merchants all were gone, while I
Had been in my amazement. Was this not
A sign? God with a vision tript me, lest
Those tall fiends that ken for my approach
In middle Asia, Thirst and his grisly band
Of plagues, should with their brigand fingers stop
His message in my mouth. Therefore I said,
If India is the place where I must preach,
I am to go by ship, not overland.
And here my ship is berthed. But worse, far worse
Than Baghdad, is this roadstead, the brown sails,
All the enginery of going on sea,
The tackle and the rigging, tholes and sweeps,
The prows built to put by the waves, the masts

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