THE JUDGEMENT
OF VALHALLA

“I’m sorry I done it, Major.”

We bandaged the livid face;

And led him out, ere the wan sun rose,

To die his death of disgrace.

The bolt-heads locked to the cartridge;

The rifles steadied to rest,

As cold stock nestled at colder cheek

And foresight lined on the breast.

“Fire!” called the Sergeant-Major.

The muzzles flamed as he spoke:

And the shameless soul of a nameless man

Went up in the cordite-smoke.

Up from the fret of the earth-world, through the Seven Circles of Flame,

With the seven holes in Its tunic for sign of the death-in-shame,

To the little gate of Valhalla the coward-spirit came.

Cold, It crouched in the man-strong wind that sweeps Valhalla’s floor;

Weak, It pawed and scratched on the wood; and howled, like a dog, at the Door

Which is shut to the souls who are sped in shame, for ever and evermore:

For It snuffed the Meat of the Banquet-boards where the Threefold Killers sit,

Where the Free Beer foams to the tankard-rim, and the Endless Smokes are lit....

And It saw the Nakéd Eye come out above the lintel-slit.

And now It quailed at Nakéd Eye which judges the naked dead;

And now It snarled at Nakéd Truth that broodeth overhead;

And now It looked to the earth below where the gun-flames flickered red.

[5]

It muttered words It had learned on earth, the words of a black-coat priest

Who had bade It pray to a pulpit god—but ever Eye’s Wrath increased;

And It knew that Its words were empty words, and It whined like a homeless beast:

Till, black above the lintel-slit, the Nakéd Eye went out;

Till, loud across the Killer-Feasts, It heard the Killer-Shout—

The three-fold song of them that slew, and died ... and had no doubt.

Below your black priest’s heaven,

Above his tinselled hell,

Beyond the Circles Seven,

The Red-Steel Killers dwell—

The men who drave, to blade-ring home, behind the marching shell.

We knew not good nor evil,

Save only right of blade;

Yet neither god nor devil

Could hold us from our trade,

When once we watched the barrage lift, and splendidly afraid

Came scrambling out of cover,

And staggered up the hill....

The bullets whistled over;

Our sudden dead lay still;

And the mad machine-gun chatter drove us fighting-wild to kill.

Then the death-light lit our faces,

And the death-mist floated red

O’er the crimson cratered places

Where his outposts crouched in dread....

And we stabbed or clubbed them as they crouched; and shot them as they fled;

[7]

And floundered, torn and bleeding,

Over trenches, through the wire,

With the shrapnel-barrage leading

To the prey of our desire—

To the men who rose to meet us from the blood-soaked battle-mire;

Met them; gave and asked no quarter;

But, where we saw the Gray,

Plunged the edged steel of slaughter,

Stabbed home, and wrenched away....

Till red wrists tired of killing-work, and none were left to slay.

Now—while his fresh battalions

Moved up to the attack—

Screaming like angry stallions,

His shells came charging back,

And stamped the ground with thunder-hooves and pawed it spouting-black

And breathed down poison-stenches

Upon us, leaping past....

Panting, we turned his trenches;

And heard—each time we cast

From parapet to parados—the scything bullet-blast.

Till the whistle told his coming;

Till we flung away the pick,

[8]

Heard our Lewis guns’ crazed drumming,

Grabbed our rifles, sighted quick,

Fired ... and watched his wounded writhing back from where his dead lay thick.

So we laboured—while we lasted:

Soaked in rain or parched in sun;

Bullet-riddled; fire-blasted;

Poisoned: fodder for the gun:

So we perished, and our bodies rotted in the ground they won.

It heard the song of the First of the Dead, as It couched by the lintel-post;

And the coward-soul would have given Its soul to be back with the Red-Steel host....

But Eye peered down; and It quailed at the Eye; and Nakéd Truth said: “Lost.”

And Eye went out. But It might not move; for, droned in the dark, It heard

The Second Song of the Killer-men—word upon awful word

Cleaving the void with a shrill, keen sound like the wings of a pouncing bird.

Higher than tinselled heaven,

Lower than angels dare,

Loop to the fray, swoop on their prey,

The Killers of the Air.

We scorned the Galilean,

We mocked at Kingdom-Come:

The old gods knew our pæan—

Our dawn-loud engine-hum:

The old red gods of slaughter,

The gods before the Jew!

We heard their cruel laughter,

Shrill round us, as we flew:

When, deaf to earth and pity,

Blind to the guns beneath,

We loosed upon the city

Our downward-plunging death.

The Sun-God watched our flighting;

No Christian priest could tame

Our deathly stuttered fighting:—

The whirled drum, spitting flame;

The roar, of blades behind her;

The banking plane up-tossed;

The swerve that sought to blind her;

Masked faces, glimpsed and lost;

[10]

The joy-stick wrenched to guide her;

The swift and saving zoom,

What time the shape beside her

Went spinning to its doom.

No angel-wings might follow

Where, poised behind the fray,

We spied our Lord Apollo

Stoop down to mark his prey—

The hidden counter-forces;

The guns upon the road;

The tethered transport-horses,

Stampeding, as we showed—

Dun hawks of death, loud-roaring—

A moment to their eyes:

And slew; and passed far-soaring;

And dwindled up the skies.

But e’en Apollo’s pinions

Had faltered where we ran,

Low through his veiled dominions,

To lead the charging van!

The tree-tops slathered under;

The Red-Steel Killers knew,

Hard overhead, the thunder

And backwash of her screw;

The blurred clouds raced above her;

The blurred fields streaked below,

[11]

Where waited, crouched to cover,

The foremost of our foe;

Banking, we saw his furrows

Leap at us, open wide:

Hell-raked the man-packed burrows;

And crashed—and crashing, died.

It heard the song of the Dead in Air, as It huddled against the gate;

And once again the Eye peered down—red-rimmed with scorn and hate

For the shameless soul of the nameless one who had neither foe nor mate.

And Eye was shut. But Nakéd Truth bent down to mock the Thing:—

“Thou hast heard the Song of the Red-edged Steel, and the Song of the Crashing Wing:

Shall the word of a black-coat priest avail at Valhalla’s harvesting?

Shalt thou pass free to the Seven Halls—whose life in shame was sped?”

And Truth was dumb. But the brooding word still echoed overhead,

As roaring down the void outburst the last loud song of the dead.

In Thor’s own red Valhalla,

Which priest may not unbar;

But only Nakéd Truth and Eye,

Last arbiters of War;

Feast, by stark right of courage,

The Killers from Afar.

We put no trust in heaven,

We had no fear of hell;

But lined, and ranged, and timed to clock,

Our barrage-curtains fell,

When guns gave tongue and breech-blocks swung

And palms rammed home the shell.

The Red-Steel ranks edged forward,

And vanished in our smoke;

Back from his churning craters,

The Gray Man reeled and broke;

While, fast as sweat could lay and set,

Our rocking muzzles spoke.

We blew him from the village;

We chased him through the wood:

Till, tiny on the crest-line

Where once his trenches stood,

We watched the wag of sending flag

That told our work was good:

[13]

Till, red behind the branches,

The death-sun sank to blood;

And the Red-Steel Killers rested....

But we, by swamp and flood,

Through mirk and night—his shells for light—

Blaspheming, choked with mud,

Roped to the tilting axles,

Man-handled up the crest;

And wrenched our plunging gun-teams

Foam-flecked from jowl to breast,

Downwards, and on, where trench-lights shone—

For we, we might not rest!

Shell-deafened; soaked and sleepless;

Short-handed; under fire;

Days upon nights unending,

We wrought, and dared not tire—

With whip and bit from dump to pit,

From pit to trench with wire.

The Killers in the Open,

The Killers down the Wind,

They saw the Gray Man eye to eye—

But we, we fought him blind,

Nor knew whence came the screaming flame

That killed us, miles behind.

[14]

Yet, when the triple rockets

Flew skyward, blazed and paled,

For sign the lines were broken;

When the Red Steel naught availed;

When, through the smoke, on shield and spoke

His rifle bullets hailed;

When we waited, dazed and hopeless,

Till the layer’s eye could trace

Helmets, bobbing just above us

Like mad jockeys in a race....

Then—loaded, laid, and unafraid,

We met him face to face;

Jerked the trigger; felt the trunnions

Rock and quiver; saw the flail

Of our zero-fuses blast him;

Saw his gapping ranks turn tail;

Heard the charging-cheer behind us ...

And dropped dead across the trail.

It heard the Song of the Gunner-Dead die out to a sullen roar:

But Nakéd Truth said never a word; and Eye peered down no more.

For Eye had seen; and Truth had judged ... and It might not pass the Door!

And now, like a dog in the dark, It shrank from the voice of a man It knew:—

“There are empty seats at the Banquet-board, but there’s never a seat for you;

For they will not drink with a coward soul, the stark red men who slew.

There’s meat and to spare, at the Killer-Feasts where Thor’s swung hammer twirls;

There’s beer and enough, in the Free Canteen where the Endless Smoke upcurls;

There are lips and lips, for the Killer-Men, in the Hall of the Dancing-Girls.

There’s a place for any that passes clean—but for you there’s never a place:

The Endless Smoke would blacken your lips, and the Girls would spit in your face;

And the Beer and the Meat go sour on your guts—for you died the death of disgrace.

[16]

We were pals on earth: but by God’s brave Son and the bomb that I reached too late,

I damn the day and I blast the hour when first I called you mate;

And I’d sell my soul for one of my feet, to hack you from the gate—

To hack you hence to the lukewarm hells that the priest-made ovens heat,

Or the faked-pearl heaven of pulpit gods, where the sheep-faced angels bleat

And the halo’s rim is as hard to the head as the gilded floor to the feet.”

It heard the stumps of Its one-time mate go waddling back to the Feast.

And, once and again, It whined for the Meat; ere It slunk, like a tongue-lashed beast,

To the tinselled heaven of pulpit gods and the tinselled hell of their priest.

Dear, let me thank you for this:

That you made me remember, in fight,

England—all mine at your kiss,

At the touch of your hands in the night:

England—your giving’s delight.

Lightly she slept, that splendid mother mine

Who faced death, undismayed, two hopeless years....

(“Think of me sometimes, son, but not with tears

Lest my soul grieve,” she writes. Oh, this divine

Unselfishness!) ...

Her favourite print smiled down—

The stippled Cupid, Bartolozzi-brown—

Upon my sorrow. Fire-gleams, fitful, played

Among her playthings—Toby mugs and jade....

And then I dreamed that—suddenly, strangely clear—

A voice I knew not, faltered at my ear:

“Courage!” ... Your own dear voice, loved since, and known!

And now that she sleeps well, come times her voice

Whispers in day-dreams: “Courage, son! Rejoice

That, leaving you, I left you not alone.”

I came from the City of Fear,

From the scarred brown land of pain,

Back into life again ...

And I thought, as the leave-boat rolled

Under the veering stars—

Wind a-shriek in her spars—

Shivering there, and cold,

Of music, of warmth, and of wine—

To be mine

For a whole short week ...

And I thought, adrowse in the train,

Of London, suddenly near;

And of how—small doubt—I should find

There, as of old,

Some woman—foolishly kind:

Fingers to hold,

A cheek,

A mouth to kiss—and forget,

Forget in a little while,

Forget

When I came again

To the scarred brown land of pain,

To the sodden things and the vile,

And the tedious battle-fret.

My dear,

I cannot forget!

[20]

Not even here

In this City of Fear.

I remember the poise of your head,

And your look, and the words you said

When we met,

And the waxen bloom at your breast,

And the sable fur that caressed

Your smooth white wrists, and your hands ...

Remember them yet,

Here

In the desolate lands;

Remember your shy

Strange air,

And growing aware—

I,

Who had reckoned love

Man’s toy for an hour—

Of love’s hidden power:

A thrill

That moved me to touch and adore

Some intimate thing that you wore—

A glove,

Or the flower

A-glow at your breast,

The frill

Of fur that circled your wrist ...

These, had my hands caressed;

[21]

These, not you, had I kissed—

I,

Who had thought love’s fires

Only desires.

Dear,

That hidden power thrills in me yet.

There is never one hour—

Not even here

In this City of Fear—

When I quite forget.

When the ink has dried on the pen,

When the sword returns to its sheath;

When the world of women and men,

And the waters around and beneath,

Char and shrivel and burn—

What will God give in return?...

Has He better to offer in heaven above

Than wine and music, laughter and love?

Laughter, music and wine,

The promise of love in your eyes ...

Sleeping, I dream them mine;

Waking, my spirit cries—

Here in the mud and the rain—

“God, give me London again!

I would lose all earth and the heavens above

For just one banquet of laughter and love.”

When my flesh returns to its earth,

When my pen is dust as my sword;

If one thing I wrought find worth

In the eyes of our kindly Lord,

I will only ask of His grace

That He grant us a lowly place

Where his warriors toast Him, in heaven above,

With wine and music, laughter and love.

If man backs horses, plays cards or dice,

Or bets on an ivory ball,

He knows the rules, and he reckons the price—

Be it one half-crown, or his all.

(And it isn’t sense, and it isn’t pluck,

To double the stakes when you’re out of luck!)

If he plays—with his life for a limit—here,

It’s an even-money game:

He can lay on the Red—which is Conquered Fear,

Or the Black—which is Utter Shame.

(And there isn’t much choice between Reds and Blacks,

For Death throws “zero” whichever he backs.)

So that whether man plays for the red gold’s wealth

Where the little ball clicks and spins,

Or hazards his life in the black night’s stealth

When machine-gun fire begins—

It’s a limited gamble; and each of us knows

What he stands to lose ere the tables close.

But woman’s gamble—(there’s only one:

And it takes some pluck to play,

[24]

When the rules are broke ere the game’s begun;

When, lose or win, you must pay!)—

Is a double wager on human kind,

A limitless risk—and she goes it blind.

For she stakes, at love, on a single throw,

Pride, Honour, Scruples and Fears,

And dreams no lover can hope to know,

And the gold of the after-years.

(And all for a man; and there’s no man lives

Who is worth the odds that a woman gives.)

So that since you hazarded this for me

On the day love’s die was cast,

I’ll love you—gambler!—while “fours” beat three;

And I’ll lay on our love to last,

So long as a man will wager a price

On a horse or a card or the ball or the dice.

Here, in a land where hardly a rose is,

Silkiest blossoms of broidered flowers

Brush my cheek as each tired eye closes,

Haunt my sleep through the desolate hours.

Roses never of nature’s making,

Roses loved for a rose-red night,

Roses visioned at dawn-light’s breaking

Veiling a bosom as roses white!

Why does the ghost of you linger and stay with me—

Ghost of the rose-buds that perfumed our bed,

Ghost of a rose-girl who blossomed to play with me—

Here in a land where the roses are dead?

Day-time and night-time the death-flower blazes,

Saffron at gun-lip and orange and red,

Here where June’s rose-tree lies shattered as May’s is,

Here where I dream of the nights that are dead—

Nights that were sweet with the scent and the touch of you,

[26]

Rose-girl in ninon with buds at your breast,

Rose-girl who promised and granted so much of you,

All that was tender and all that was best.

Growl of the guns cannot shatter the dream of you,

Banish the thought of one exquisite hour,

Or the scent of your hair in the dawn, or the gleam of you

White as white roses through roses a-flower.

Times more than once, all ways about the world,

Have I clasped hands; waved sorrowful good-bye;

Watched far cliffs fading, till my sea-wake swirled

To mingle bluely with a landless sky:

Then—even as the sea-drowned cliffs behind—

Felt sorrow drowning into memory;

And heard, in every thrill of every wind,

New voices welcoming across the sea.

Until it seemed nor land nor love had power

To hold my heart in any firm duress:

Grieving, I sorrowed but a little hour;

Loving, I knew desire’s sure faithfulness:

Until, by many a love dissatisfied,

Of each mistrustful and to each untrue,

I found—as one who, having long denied,

Finds faith at last—this greater Love, in you.

Parting? We are not parted, woman mine!

Though hands have clasped, though lips have kissed good-bye;

Though towns glide past, and fields, and fields of brine—

[28]

My body takes the warrior-way, not I.

I am still with you; you, with me; one heart;

One equal union, soul to certain soul:

Time cannot sever us, nor sorrow part,

Nor any sea, who keep our vision whole.

How can I grieve, who know your spirit near;

Who watch with newly understanding eyes

This England of your giving, newly dear,

Sink where my sea-wake swirls to darkling skies?

Lilac, her cliffs have faded into mist....

Yet still I hold them white in memory,

Feeling, against these lips your lips have kissed,

The home-wind thrilling down an English sea.

Just got your letter and the poems. Thanks.

You always were a brainy sort of chap:

Though pretty useless as a subaltern—

Too much imagination, not enough

Of that rare quality, sound commonsense

And so you’ve managed to get on the Staff:

Influence, I suppose: a Captain, too!

How do tabs suit you? Are they blue or green?

About your book. I’ve read it carefully,

So has Macfaddyen (you remember him,

The light-haired chap who joined us after Loos?);

And candidly, we don’t think much of it.

The piece about the horses isn’t bad;

But all the rest, excuse the word, are tripe—

The same old tripe we’ve read a thousand times.

My grief, but we’re fed up to the back-teeth

With war-books, war-verse, all the eye-wash stuff

That seems to please the idiots at home.

[30]

You know the kind of thing, or used to know:

“Heroes who laugh while Fritz is strafing them”—

(I don’t remember that you found it fun,

The day they shelled us out of Blouwpoort Farm!)

“After the fight. Our cheery wounded. Note

The smile of victory: it won’t come off”—

(Of course they smile; so’d you, if you’d escaped,

And saw three months of hospital ahead....

They don’t smile, much, when they’re shipped back to France!)

“Out for the Great Adventure”—(twenty-five

Fat, smirking wasters in some O.T.C.,

Who just avoided the Conscription Act!)

“A strenuous woman-worker for the Cause”—

(Miss Trixie Toogood of the Gaiety,

Who helped to pauperize a few Belgiques

In the great cause of self-advertisement!) ...

Lord knows, the newspapers are bad enough;

But they’ve got some excuse—the censorship—

Helping to keep their readers’ spirits up—

Giving the public what it wants: (besides,

One mustn’t blame the press, the press has done

[31]

More than its share to help us win this war—

More than some other people I could name):

But what’s the good of war-books, if they fail

To give civilian-readers an idea

Of what life is like in the firing-line?...

You might have done that much; from you, at least,

I thought we’d get an inkling of the truth.

But no; you rant and rattle, beat your drum,

And blow your two-penny trumpet like the rest:

“Red battle’s glory,” “honour’s utmost task,”

“Gay jesting faces of undaunted boys,” ...

The same old Boys’-Own-Paper balderdash!

Mind you, I don’t deny that they exist,

These abstract virtues which you gas about—

(We shouldn’t stop out here long, otherwise!)—

Honour and humour, and that sort of thing;

(Though heaven knows where you found the glory-touch,

Unless you picked it up at G.H.Q.);

But if you’d commonsense, you’d understand

That humour’s just the Saxon cloak for fear,

Our English substitute for “Vive la France,”

Or else a trick to keep the folk at home

From being scared to death—as we are scared;

[32]

That honour ... damn it, honour’s the one thing

No soldier yaps about, except of course

A soldier-poet—three-and-sixpence net.

Honest to God, it makes me sick and tired

To think that you, who lived a year with us,

Should be content to write such tommy-rot.

I feel as though I’d sent a runner back

With news that we were being strafed like Hell ...

And he’d reported: “Everything O. K.”

Something’s the matter: either you can’t see,

Or else you see, and cannot write—that’s worse.

Hang it, you can’t have clean forgotten things

You went to bed with, woke with, smelt and felt,

All those long months of boredom streaked with fear:

Mud, cold, fatigue, sweat, nerve-strain, sleeplessness,

And men’s excreta viscid in the rain,

And stiff-legged horses lying by the road,

Their bloated bellies shimmering, green with flies....

Have you forgotten? you who dine to-night

In comfort at the Carlton or Savoy.

[33]

(Lord, but I’d like a dart at that myself—

Oysters, crême something, sole vin blanc, a bird,

And one cold bottle of the very best—

A girl to share it: afterwards, a show—

Lee White and Alfred Lester, Nelson Keys;

Supper to follow.

... Our Brigade’s in rest—

The usual farm. I’ve got the only bed.

The men are fairly comfy—three good barns.

Thank God, they didn’t have to bivouac

After this last month in the Salient.) ...

You have forgotten; or you couldn’t write

This sort of stuff—all cant, no guts in it,

Hardly a single picture true to life.

Well, here’s a picture for you: Montauban—

Last year—the flattened village on our left—

On our right flank, the razed Briqueterie,

Their five-nines pounding bits to dustier bits—

Behind, a cratered slope, with batteries

Crashing and flashing, violet in the dusk,

And prematuring every now and then—

In front, the ragged Bois de Bernafay,

Bosche whizz-bangs bursting white among its trees.

[34]

You had been doing F.O.O. that day;

(The Staff knows why we had an F.O.O.:

One couldn’t flag-wag through Trônes Wood; the wires

Went down as fast as one could put them up;

And messages by runner took three hours.)

I got the wind up rather: you were late,

And they’d been shelling like the very deuce.

However, back you came. I see you now,

Staggering into “mess”—a broken trench,

Two chalk-walls roofed with corrugated iron,

And, round the traverse, Driver Noakes’s stove

Stinking and smoking while we ate our grub.

Your face was blue-white, streaked with dirt; your eyes

Had shrunk into your head, as though afraid

To watch more horrors; you were sodden-wet

With greasy coal-black mud—and other things.

Sweating and shivering, speechless, there you stood.

I gave you whisky, made you talk. You said:

“Major, another signaller’s been killed.”

“Who?”

“Gunner Andrews, blast them. O my Christ!

[35]

His head—split open—when his brains oozed out,

They looked like bloody sweetbreads, in the muck.”

And you’re the chap who writes this claptrap verse!

Lord, if I’d half your brains, I’d write a book:

None of your sentimental platitudes,

But something real, vital; that should strip

The glamour from this outrage we call war,

Shewing it naked, hideous, stupid, vile—

One vast abomination. So that they

Who, coming after, till the ransomed fields

Where our lean corpses rotted in the ooze,

Reading my written words, should understand

This stark stupendous horror, visualize

The unutterable foulness of it all....

I’d shew them, not your glamourous “glorious game,”

Which men play “jesting” “for their honour’s sake”—

(A kind of Military Tournament,

With just a hint of danger—bound in cloth!)—

But War,—as war is now, and always was:

[36]

A dirty, loathsome, servile murder-job:—

Men, lousy, sleepless, ulcerous, afraid,

Toiling their hearts out in the pulling slime

That wrenches gum-boot down from bleeding heel

And cakes in itching arm-pits, navel, ears:

Men stunned to brainlessness, and gibbering:

Men driving men to death and worse than death:

Men maimed and blinded: men against machines—

Flesh versus iron, concrete, flame and wire:

Men choking out their souls in poison-gas:

Men squelched into the slime by trampling feet:

Men, disembowelled by guns five miles away,

Cursing, with their last breath, the living God

Because he made them, in His image, men....

So—were your talent mine—I’d write of war

For those who, coming after, know it not.

And if posterity should ask of me

What high, what base emotions keyed weak flesh

To face such torments, I would answer: “You!

Not for themselves, O daughters, grandsons, sons,

[37]

Your tortured forebears wrought this miracle;

Not for themselves, accomplished utterly

This loathliest task of murderous servitude;

But just because they realized that thus,

And only thus, by sacrifice, might they

Secure a world worth living in—for you.” ...

Good-night, my soldier-poet. Dormez bien!

Wherein the bard—released from War’s confusions—

Preludes with egotistical allusions.

Six years ago—or is it six-and-twenty?

(How vast the gulf from those ecstatic days!)—

When the whole earth snored on in slothful plenty

(Tho’ poets cashed small pittance for their lays);

When war appeared less real than G. A. Henty,

And Oxo’s snaky signs were yet ablaze;

When all seemed peaceful as the press of Cadbury,

And no one dreamed of bombs, or bet a Bradbury;

Or e’er stern Mars had roped us in his tether,

Ere British guns had thundered at Le Câteau:

We fitted out—my Muse and I together—

And launched adown the galley-slips of Chatto

[39]

A barque of verse, full-rigged for halcyon weather,

Which many a critic judged to take the gâteau:

(Though some there were, high pundits of disparity,

Who wept at our unscholarly vulgarity).

We have sailed far since then; crossed our horizon;

Published our loves and travels in a novel

(A tale, men say, that Peckham’s flapper cries on,

So that both Boots and Smith’s before us grovel);

And eaten ration bully-beef—with flies on;

And sheltered gratefully in many a hovel,

What time we sang of guns and gore and trenches—

Instead of oysters, tango-teas and wenches.

For times have changed since we wrote “One of Us”:

Et nos mutamus—more or less—in illis.

Muse finds herself in urbe somewhat rus;

And I—if I disport with Amaryllis—

Where once my motor flashed, prefer a ’bus;

[40]

And shuddering note how vast the supper-bill is;

And signing, sigh in secret for the calm,

Chaste, cheap seclusion of my Chiltern farm.

Yes, Muse and I are tired, and super-serious:

Her damask cheek is lined a bit, and wrinkled.

We are grown old, and London’s late nights weary us:

While the gold wine that erst in ice-pail tinkled,

Her doctor finds extremely deleterious;

And mine forbids me red lips, passion-crinkled:

So now we cultivate domestic habits

Amongst our pigs, our poultry, and our rabbits.

Yet sometimes, as we trench our stubborn soil,

Or feed our sows, or strow the peat-moss litter,

Or set the morrow’s chicken-mash to boil,

Or wander out where our young turkeys twitter,

Or read by mellow candle-light—since oil

Is dear and scarce; or talk—a little bitter

[41]

Because we find that Food Control Committees

Are all composed of men brought up in cities;

Sometimes, in this five-acre paradise

Whither my nerve-racked spirit fled the battle

Deferring to sound Harley Street advice—

A silver badge its only martial chattel,

I hear a voice, loud as the market price

That butchers bid for Rhondda’s missing cattle,

Voice of my Muse, still vibrant with old passion,

Telling how poetry is now the fashion.

“Look you,” she cries, “the Wheels are turning, turning.

Though Pegasus long since wore out his pinions,

Somehow his shod hooves keep the bread-mills churning.

Shrill, night and day, sing Marsh Georgian minions:

Each sinking sun sets some new Noyes a-burning,

Each rising moon reveals fresh hordes of Binyons;

[42]

Who batten fat on unsuspecting editors,

And—unlike you—contrive to pay their creditors.

“Poet, forsooth! You agricultural brute!

Have you no soul above the weight of porkers?

Was it for this I hearkened to your suit,

Gave you my metres and my rhymes—some, corkers?

Up, Gilbert! rummage out your rusty lute:

Polish it blacker than your black Minorcas:

And let its notes once more, in refluent stanzas,

Dower the Income-tax with glad Bonanzas.”

So she; and—since I loathe to disappoint

The least illusion of the equal sex—

Let Byron’s oil once more these locks anoint,

Once more let honour meet these Cox-drawn cheques ...

Though well I know that times are spare of joint,

And satire’s song less like to please than vex;

Now small beer, Smallwood, raids and strikes and rations,

Have near eclipsed the gaiety of nations:

[43]

Still, let me sing. Yet not as once I sung:

Love, fear, and death have chastened, sobered, saddened,

One who knew life’s full burden-time too young;

Whom never youth’s unhampered freedom gladdened,

But only envy and ambition stung,

And fickle passions—in love’s semblance maddened;

So that he needs must tumble now, poor clown,

On this Pindaric stage for half-a-crown:

Yet one who, ’spite a past that shocked St. Tony

And paid recording angels overtime,

Still holds his own at sonnet or canzone.

As some shall know who follow this, my rhyme—

Some few: for gladly would I lay a pony,

Or larger sum, against a ten-cent dime,

That most of those who read this metred tract’ll

Not know a spondee from a pterodactyl.

Explains—a task few modern penmen shirk—

The sociology of this great work.

God bless Democracy, George Bernard Shaw,

And William Dunn, our sanest, saintliest hatter!

God bless that great anomaly, the Law;

Aye, may our knights on hoarded tea wax fatter!

God bless Sir Arthur Yapp’s unfailing jaw,

Lord Lansdowne’s pen, and brave Horatio’s chatter!

And—lest in England Bolos quite prevail—

God bless King Northcliffe and his “Daily Mail!”

Long live the old Press—“Times,” “D. T.,” “Spectator”!

Long live the New—“Age,” “Europe,” “Statesman,” “Witness”!

Long live each acti temporis laudator!

Long live Lloyd George in unmolested Pitt-ness!

Long live “The Nation,” facile demonstrator

Of everybody’s—save its own—unfitness!

[45]

Long live Valera, Carson, Devlin, Plunkett!

Long live the lads who fight, the cads who funk it!

Long live our German banks, sub duce Plender!

Long may our railways rule our bounding sea!

Long may impatient Cuthberts paw their fender,

What time their patient Phyllis pours their tea!

Long life to each investor and each spender!

Long live the Staff! Long live the A.S.E.!

So long as England’s in the melting-pot,

A prudent bard must sing, “Long live the lot!”

For who shall say—at close of Armageddon,

When the world’s finished beggaring its neighbour,

When the last shell’s been fired, the last pig fed on—

If we’ll be ruled by Capital or Labour:

If a Welsh harp shall twang part-songs of Seddon,

While Simon pipes a compromising tabor:

[46]

Or whether every stalwart War-Loan-lender’s son

Will find his Empire dividends signed “Henson”?

Not I: not all the better men who fought

While dilutees preserved their precious skin:

Not those great early dead, whose single thought

Ran—“England: Germany: we’ve got to win.”

Poor simple souls, of H. G. Wells untaught,

They never realized their next-of-kin

Would read how they had died to make life cheerier

For the dear blacks in Briningized Nigeria.

Public, forgive your fool; if now and then—

Black bubbles on the verse’s stream—appear

Thoughts of our worn, unlettered fighting-men;

If sometimes, through the grease-paint’s gay veneer,

Truth shews—a wrinkled hag. The traitor pen

[47]

Forgets how blood is cheap and paper dear:

And I’m no more the blithe, nut-loving squirrel

Who frisked it in the consulship of Birrell.

Which is, perchance, the reason why my mind

Turns oft to those dear days, now dead as mutton;

When Haldane’s soul with Bethmann-Hollweg dined;

And no one ploughed up golf-greens, sown by Sutton,

To bed the humble tuber’s sprouting rind;

Or dashed off shorthand billets-doux in Dutton,

Or changed a blear-eyed pauper to a swell man

In six short weeks of concentrated Pelman:

Why now—sad minstrel in un-Sandoned sack-cloth—

I sing the twilight of the times I knew.

No more our glaring footlights blurr a back-cloth

Woven of misery and hung askew;

For Time, stern judge of Us, has donned his black cloth,

[48]

And to the Mob delivered up the Few ...

Unless, of course, the Mob’s but swapped its Peers

For a worse dynasty—of profiteers.

God knows, we had our faults—greed, blindness, pride.

God also knows we had a dashed good time.

Were they the worse for that—our boys who died,

By earth and air and sea in every clime?

God knows! But if ghost-feet still strut and side

About their clubs, if ghost-eyes read this rhyme,

I think they’d like their vanished epoch’s swan-song

To be a merry tune, and not a wan song.

So clear the stage, and ring the curtain up!

Once more—ere Empires yield to Leagues of Nations,

And bayonets to Socialistic gup—

Let Beauty, in diaphanous creations,

Ogle the stalls, and subsequently sup

Off iced champagne and ortolan collations....

Whereafter, if my pen won’t bring me pelf,

Damned if I don’t turn Socialist myself!

Sets forth, despite the Law’s dull interference,

A lady’s birth, age, family, and appearance.

Arms have I sung full oft, both steel and white ones;

Guns have I sung till I can sing no more;

Men have I sung, both common and polite ones:

Yet never sang one heroine before.

Come, then, my ghost-girls, dark, fair, plump, and slight ones,

Come in the finest, flimsiest frocks ye wore....

Alas, not one of you quite fills the bill—

A life-size model for my Lady Jill.

Pardon, then, Magda, Gladys, Nancy, Florence,

Doris, Patricia, Mollie, Celandine,

Nor hold your erstwhile suitor in abhorrence

Because, from one, he takes eyes subtly green;

From other, hands a Sargent or a Lawrence

[50]

Had envied for his canvas; here, the sheen

Of gold hair, auburn-shot, in whose abundance,

What time Jill dreamed, young Cupids watched the sun dance;

There a smooth throat, an arched, attractive ankle,

Soft cheek, curved back in bloom to close-set ear,

Red mouth full-lipped, a voice whose love-tones rankle

Still in this heart of mine,—a voice so dear

That ... But no more! In fear this rhyming prank’ll

Offend some damozel whom I revere,

I state: Jill’s just an ordinary blonde,

Fair, frail, flirtatious, rather fast than fond.

You know the type—aristo-plutocratic,

Out of blue blood by hard North Country cash;

A self-assertive sire; a dam, lymphatic

(Since rarely strawberry leaves and sovereigns clash);

Their sole son, daring in the diplomatic

(Thumping his Underwood while kingdoms crash);

[51]

Their daughter ... Is there a man alive can swear

Exactly what she did or did not dare?

For Jill was one of those astounding females,

Born in a chaster, pre-Edwardian day;

When lone Lucindas dared not dine nor tea males

For dread lest scandal dub them “coryphée”;

When none drank deep of D’Abernonian dream-ales,

But quietly our Empire went its way,

Nor realised that subalterns on horses

Monopolized the brain-power of its Forces:

One who was yet a span from flapperhood,

Still puzzling o’er the simplest of equations;

What time in robe of saffron Phoebus stood,

And all our Lanes were gay with green carnations,

And private hansoms sought the Johnian Wood,

And the shrill cycle-bell’s first tintillations

Resounded from the dawning to the dark

In a Rolls-Royceless, Peter Panless Park:

[52]

One who attained the pig-tail’s ribboned dowry,

And helped to pass a Kipling tambourine,

When first from lands of wattle, maple, Maori,

Men came at summons of a dying Queen:

One who, at Auteuil, Dresden, and Rathgowrie,

Acquired that polish reft of which, I ween,

It is not possible for our Dianas

To emulate a modern grande dame’s manners:

One on whose head the ostrich-feathers nodded

In Alexandrine courts—and chez Bassano;

In whose young ears, song’s angels disembodied.

Rang the last notes of Melbourne’s own soprano;

Whose lithe feet, Moykoff-shod, the grouse-moors plodded,

Or danced the new Machiché Brasiliano,

In times before, unchaperoned of skinny ma,

Suburbia’s daughters sought the darkling kinema:

To put the matter briefly—One of Them.

[53]

Bear witness, Muses Nine, how most unworthy

Is my gold nib to touch their garment’s hem.

Say, Byron (for as bard I still prefer thee

To all whose pallid minor stars be-gem

These Gotha nights) would not such task deter thee

From the rhymed octave—sometime known as Whistlecraft—

In which, poor ass, I ply this weekly thistlecraft?

Οίμοι! that I can never be a poet

Modelled on spoon-fed college Adonäises,

Whose metres reek of Porson, Jebb, and Jowett,

Whose very thoughts derive from donnish däises.

Alas! for us who, writing life, must know it—

Its sights, its scents, its ladies, lords, and Läises.

Alas! for my refusal to disseminate—

Even in verse—the scholarly-effeminate.

And oh! ten thousand times alas, should Jill

Be recognised in these Parnassian pages.

[54]

Woe for the libel action, and the bill

Which he must face who in the law engages.

And ah! thank Heaven for a metric skill

That shields this head from Justice Darling’s rages ...

Safeguarded by thy last experience, G. Moore,

I maiden-name my lady—Lewis-Seymour.

In which the author, contrary to custom,

Goes for the gloves—as Sohrab went for Rustum.

I have discovered, after much perusal

Of Cannan, George Mackenzie, Walpole, Bennett,

A Law whose discipline brooks no refusal,—

A neo-rheo-literary tenet

Which runs: “In art, forbear to pick and choose. All

That happens, happens. Wherefore, up and pen it!

Let the scribe’s tale be casual and cursory;

End where you like—but start us in the nursery.”

And so I fain had traced, through many a canto,

My heroine; all dimples in her cot;

Bored with her lessons; laughing at the panto.;

Immersed in “Fauntleroy” or Walter Scott:

But, since green herbs from memory’s campo santo

[56]

Provide no flavouring for satire’s pot,

For seething, bubbling cauldron such as this is,

I’ll skip the skipping-rope and jump to kisses.

’Tis such a night as only London knew

In the full seasons of our heart’s content—

When, like some fairy pageant in review,

Love, Pleasure, Luxury together blent,

Made life not all too boring for the Few;

And Unemployment, fix’t at ten per cent.,

Furnished—by all means of charity bazaars—

Right many a dame with perquisites and “pars.”

London, in London’s June! Above, the starshine:

Below, against the rails of Berkeley Square,

The patient lights of brougham, or rarer car, shine—

Waiting stiff-shirted squires and ladies fair:

Music, from high French windows that afar shine,

[57]

Thrills, till a dancer well might curse and swear,

And call himself a “dashed unlucky fella”

To miss the Lewis-Seymour’s Cinderella.

Within those halls, where plush-breeched flunkeys stand,

What sounds, what scents, what visions of delight!

How—to the bluest Blue Hungarian band—

Youth whirls away the unreturning night!

How—perfumed as the blooms of Samarcand—

The dying flow’rets whisper, “Carlton White!”

But, oh! to weary war-time ration-hunters,

How like a dream, this stand-up supper—Gunter’s!

For here, in reach of every slender hand which is

Scarce languidly outstretched to porcelain plate,

Are dainties drawn from each vale, stream, or strand which is

Most famed for fruit or fish or fowl or cate:

[58]

Creamed strawberries; thin, lavish-buttered sandwiches

Of livered geese (that now squawk Hymns of Hate),

Of priceless hams and tongues and caviar; ices;

And sugared sweets in myriad strange devices....

Yet sweeter far than all these sweet things, Jill is:

Queen of my verse and this “Young People’s Dance”:

Fairer than fairest of Mayfairy fillies!

Sweet, is the smile that lights a countenance

Bright as moon-dappled, pink-tipped lotus-lilies;

Sweet, are her jade-green eyes that gleam and glance—

And give no hint of yester-tea-time’s flare-up

When stern mamma forbade her bind her hair up.

Jill’s hair! How beautiful it is; the tresses

Warm-golden, soft as cygnet’s earliest downing.

Jill’s foot! How slim the arch the flounce caresses.

[59]

Jill’s brow! How pure; how yet uncreased in frowning.

(My Muse! How easily the jade impresses

On this base coin a stamp of pseudo-Browning.)

Jill’s youth! Jill’s dreams! These luxuries that lap her!...

Don’t they present a most alluring flapper?

So thinks, at least, this lad in evening raiment—

Shoes, shirt-front, collar, waistcoat-buttons, glowing;

This sub. of other days—when soldier’s payment

Scarcely sufficed each monthly mess-bill’s owing,

And triple stars full fifteen years delay meant;

He, who presents the goblet, over-flowing

With icy rubies to its crinkled brim,

And asks if Jill won’t “sit this out” with him....

And there it hangs, word-carven, my last image.

(Browning again! now Keats!) O hapless pair,

[60]

Loth lover and bold maiden of a dim age—

Lost to us now, and dead, but still most fair.

O Attic shapes! Arcadian girlhood’s slim age,

And silken youth with brilliantined hair!

What climaxes must I not sacrifice,

Who write this epic at a weekly price?

For—as long melodies are sweet, but sweeter

Poems in short instalments, such as mine—

Seven full days, teased puppet of this metre,

Must thy parched tongue await that roseate wine;

Seven full nights, fond boy, must thou entreat her;

Whilst mantle to her cheeks, incarnadine,

Youth’s beauty, beauty’s youth—and readers vex’t

Know, need know, nothing more till Tuesday next.

Brings life to week-old statues; makes them prance

To love’s light tune—and ends the Seymours’ dance.

Pale shapes I locked in memory’s studio,

Your draperies stir. From vein to marble vein

The life-blood leaps. Eyes gleam, and pulses glow.

Once more my octaves rap their old refrain

To re-create the weekly puppet-show.

Fond boy, to work! My Jill’s herself again,

And answers your entreaty—sideways glancing—

“Perhaps I will. It’s jolly hot for dancing.”

So they twain pass—smart sub. and flapper stately—

From the high halls of Gunter’s prank’t refection.

And out across the waxèd boards, where lately

[62]

Twirled the swift waltz to La Poupée’s “Selection.”

And on, past couples gossiping sedately;

And on, past couples screened against detection;

To a dim-shaded, fairy-lighted alcove,

Fit haunt for single maid and single tall cove:—

Such as—in land of Taj Mahal and mugger,

Where girls book weeks ahead their supper dances—

Screens some pale flirt, some lad who yearns to hug her,

From the brown khitmatghar’s averted glances.

(Who knows thy secrets, darkling Kala-juggah—

The orbs downcast, the fingers’ coy advances,

The swiftly stifled sob that hooks the stripling—

Save I, Victoria Cross, and Rudyard Kipling!)

And there, beneath the new-sponged potted palm-tree,

[63]

That mid-day brought and morning shall remove—

Mayfair’s own wind-unruffled, ever-calm tree,

Whose drooping branches shield Mayfairies’ love—

She lisps of Waller parts, and thy dead charm, Tree

(Twin stars now shining in the “flies” above!);

While he admits he has or hasn’t seen them ...

Till a shy sudden silence falls between them,

A cloud across the sun of lightling banter.

O Jill, my gold-spoon cake-and-Moët miss!

Hast thou not dreamed, since thy first tam-o’-shanter,

Of soldier boy, of dance-night such as this?

Faintly they catch the polka’s throb, the canter

Of homing hansom-cab where lovers kiss:

And “Oh,” thinks he, “what eyes, what lips, what hair, too!”

And “Oh,” thinks she “the ninny doesn’t dare to.”

[64]

Voiceless, they sit: but now her eyes, upturning,

Seek his: and now, beneath the lashes’ veil,

Leaps a quick flame to set youth’s pulses burning;

And now she feels her resolution fail:

And now gains strength anew the curious yearning

For love’s adventure: now, her fingers frail

Tighten about the kerchief’s lacy tissue:

And now, at last, he says, “Jill, I must kiss you.”

“Bobbie, you mustn’t.” “Jill—just one.” Her shoulder

Stiffens; resists the half-encircling arm.

Hands fend away the hand that seeks to hold her.

Lips murmur. Lashes flutter in alarm.

“No, Bobbie. No.” My foolish boy, be bolder;

The moment’s fear is half the moment’s charm....

Alas! His missed and amateurish peck

Grazes the ear-lobe; lands upon the neck.

[65]

Readers, both kissed and kissless, chide not; pity

These withered fruits from Jill’s dead seas of dreaming.

Think—or in France, or in this barraged city,

How many a dear one owes his brass hat’s gleaming,

How many a husband thanks his safe Committee,

To some fond woman’s sound strategic scheming!

Ponder—can crafts which men from want to plenty ship,

Be steered without an arduous apprenticeship?

Ponder! Nor blame my Jill if she disguises

Love’s disappointment in disapprobation.

If, Artemis in judgment now, she rises—

The outraged goddess, armed for flagellation—

And, with a voice whose every note comprises

Disgust, revolt, pain, virtue, indignation,

Drives from her father’s chaste, offended portals

The meekest of apologising mortals.

[66]

And blame not me, her bard—whose verses weave her

This coronal of memory’s budding-hours,

Who loved her long ago, yet now must leave her

Lorn ’mid the dance’s débris, and the flowers

Which fade as day-dreams of that first deceiver—

Because, while War yet ravens and devours,

While still the blind guns thunder out in Flanders,

I sing the type which cozens and philanders.

For, young as Spring and old as Cleopatra,

Certain as Nature’s self, this type endureth:

On Skindles’ lawn, in jungles of Sumatra,

She blooms—a wax-white weed that no rake cureth:

From Westminster to wats of Pura Chatra,

Her false lips smile, her gladsome optic lureth:

WAAC’s may be WREN’s; wars, peace; to-day’s full Colonel,

To-morrow’s clerk ... but Jill is sempiternal.

Continues—symptomatically terse—

This first of serials in doggerel verse.

O Jill, my peerless, perfumed, powdered darling;

Quintessence of all fairies I’ve adored

In London’s lanes, by Devon Budleigh’s farling,

At Berkeley’s, Kettner’s, Ritz’s, Carlton’s board;

Jill whose white hands ne’er knew roughhouse-work’s gnarling;

Whose clothes not twenty Coxes could afford!

How shall man sing the seasoned cee-sprung carriage

In which you rolled from that first kiss to marriage?

What days they were! What noon-times and what twilights!

The whole wide earth seemed fashioned for your pleasure;

Its very heavens, gold-and-crystal skylights

[68]

Whereunder you picked orchid blooms at leisure.

For others, shadowed gloom; for you, the high lights—

The pomp, the pride, the dance’s twanging measure ...

And if one begged: “Take coin,” you’d say, “and toss it her.

Poor thing! That skirt was never cut by Rossiter.”

Dear, rotten days! And yet, a Jack grows wistful

At thoughts of all the Jills whom he remembers,

In times when he had boodle by the fist-full

And fires of youth—where now are only embers.

Jack’s Jills! Why, Muse possesses quite a list full,

May’s Jill, and June’s Jill, August’s, and September’s ...

Yet dares no more than skim each light adventure

Which followed on flirtationship’s indenture.

[69]

For there’s a tide in the affairs of flappers,

Of those, at least, that West End mothers breed—

(Your Wapping matron’s more inclined to slap hers:

A vulgar trick—yet one which serves some need!)—

A spring-time blood-tide, mounting to young nappers,

Heady as wine, a mischief-making mead,

Which—though a man find every known excuse for ’em—

To put it mildly, does the very deuce for ’em.

And shall my sweetest Muse, than whom none chaster

E’er fluttered to console the middle-age-time

Of any neurasthenic poetaster,

Ope her full throat to sing Jill’s ’prentice rage-time?—

The unnerving doubts, the certainties which braced her,

The follied moments and the ensuing sage time,

The major and the minor bards who sung to her,

The men who knelt, the “little friends” who clung to her;

[70]

The last strange morning-dreams, the tea-tray’s rattle,

The letters—opened, skimmed, and tossed aside;

The leisured getting-up, the breakfast-prattle,

The summoning ’phone-bell and the mid-day ride;

The lunch; the afternoons of tittle-tattle—

Town’s latest scandal, dance, divorce or bride;

The “dear boys,” climbers, partis, portion-stalkers;

The furtive teas at Charbonnel and Walker’s;

The Morny-scented bath before the dinner;

The deft maid’s fingers in the unruly hair;

The risqué talk of some sweet social sinner,

Half-heard across the table’s candle-glare;

The Bridge, so much too high for a beginner;

The Ball; the moment’s whisper on the stair:

The thousand faces, phases, thoughts, books, travellings,

Which whirl youth’s silk cocoon in its unravellings.

[71]

Ah no! not ours with huckstering pen to retail

How slumb’rous beauties wake from girl-time’s dozing.

Let Hubert Wales and D. H. Lawrence detail

The purfled passion-blossom’s slow unclosing.

No rainbow’s purple e’er shall tinge our she-tale,

No censor’s yoke restrain its swift composing.

Moreover—quite apart from Muse’s purity—

There’s nothing half so dull as immaturity.

So please imagine—(though I know it’s risky

To trust in Britons for imagination,

Save those rare few whom peace-time’s hoarded whisky

Still fires to spiritual exaltation,

Or such as stand, when questioning House grows frisky,

Pat on their first inspired asseveration)—

Jill as she was in times of sugared plenty:

The Bond Street goddess, ætat three-and-twenty.

[72]

Goddess, indeed! These meagre days that skimp us,

Poor mortals, bullied, badged, and bombed and rationed,

Scarce knows that breed which once on high Olympus

Flaunted in radiant raiment, Poiret-fashioned.

Goddess indeed! A self-sure, jade-eyed, slim puss—

Of life’s each latest luxury impassioned;

Sleek; mateless; restless; rampant; supple-sinewed;

Sharp-clawed; capricious; and ... to be continued.