Collected Poems Volume II Part 6

"They sewed him up in his shroud With a round-shot top and toe, To sink him under the salt sharp sea Where all good seamen go.

"They lowered him down in the deep, And there in the sunset light They boomed a broadside over his grave, As meanin' to say 'Good-night.'

"They sailed away in the dark To the dear little isle they knew; And they hung his drum by the old sea-wall The same as he told them to.

"Two hundred years went by, And the guns began to roar, And England was fighting hard for her life, As ever she fought of yore.

"'It's only my dead that count,'

She said, as she says to-day; 'It isn't the s.h.i.+ps and it isn't the guns 'Ull sweep Trafalgar's Bay.'

"D'you guess who Nelson was?

You may laugh, but it's true as true!

There was more in that pore little chawed-up chap Than ever his best friend knew.

"The foe was creepin' close, In the dark, to our white-cliffed isle; They were ready to leap at England's throat, When--O, you may smile, you may smile;

"But--ask of the Devons.h.i.+re men; For they heard in the dead of night The roll of a drum, and they saw _him_ pa.s.s On a s.h.i.+p all s.h.i.+ning white.

"He stretched out his dead cold face And he sailed in the grand old way!

The fishes had taken an eye and his arm, But he swept Trafalgar's Bay.

"Nelson--was Francis Drake!

O, what matters the uniform, Or the patch on your eye or your pinned-up sleeve, If your soul's like a North Sea storm?"

EDINBURGH

I

City of mist and rain and blown grey s.p.a.ces, Dashed with wild wet colour and gleam of tears, Dreaming in Holyrood halls of the pa.s.sionate faces Lifted to one Queen's face that has conquered the years, Are not the halls of thy memory haunted places?

Cometh there not as a moon (where the blood-rust sears Floors a-flutter of old with silks and laces), Gliding, a ghostly Queen, thro' a mist of tears?

II

Proudly here, with a loftier pinnacled splendour, Throned in his northern Athens, what spells remain Still on the marble lips of the Wizard, and render Silent the gazer on glory without a stain!

Here and here, do we whisper, with hearts more tender, Tusitala wandered thro' mist and rain; Rainbow-eyed and frail and gallant and slender, Dreaming of pirate-isles in a jewelled main.

III

Up the Canongate climbeth, cleft asunder Raggedly here, with a glimpse of the distant sea Flashed through a crumbling alley, a glimpse of wonder, Nay, for the City is throned on Eternity!

Hark! from the soaring castle a cannon's thunder Closeth an hour for the world and an aeon for me, Gazing at last from the martial heights whereunder Deathless memories roll to an ageless sea.

IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE

Three long isles of sunset-cloud, Poised in an ocean of gold, Floated away in the west As the long train southward rolled;

And through the gleam and shade of the panes, While meadow and wood went by, Across the streaming earth We watched the steadfast sky.

Dark before the westward window, Heavy and bloated, rolled The face of a drunken woman Nodding against the gold;

Dark before the infinite glory, With bleared and leering eyes, It stupidly lurched and nodded Against the tender skies.

_What had ye done to her, masters of men, That her head be bowed down thus-- Thus for your golden vespers, And deepening angelus?_

Dark, besotted, malignant, vacant, s...o...b..ring, wrinkled, old, Weary and wickedly smiling, She nodded against the gold.

Pitiful, loathsome, maudlin, lonely, Her moist, inhuman eyes Blinked at the flies on the window, And could not see the skies.

As a beast that turns and returns to a mirror And will not see its face, Her eyes rejected the sunset, Her soul lay dead in its place,

Dead in the furrows and folds of her flesh As a corpse lies lapped in the shroud; Silently floated beside her The isles of sunset-cloud.

_What had ye done to her, years upon years, That her head should be bowed down thus-- Thus for your golden vespers, And deepening angelus?_

Her nails were blackened and split with labour, Her back was heavily bowed; Silently floated beside her The isles of sunset-cloud.

Over their tapering streaks of lilac, In breathless depths afar, Bright as the tear of an angel Glittered a lonely star.

While the hills and the streams of the world went past us, And the long train roared and rolled Southward, and dusk was falling, She nodded against the gold.

AN EAST-END COFFEE-STALL

Down the dark alley a ring of orange light Glows. G.o.d, what leprous tatters of distress, Droppings of misery, rags of Thy loneliness Quiver and heave like vermin, out of the night!

Like crippled rats, creeping out of the gloom, O Life, for one of thy terrible moments there, Lit by the little flickering yellow flare, Faces that mock at life and death and doom,

Faces that long, long since have known the worst, Faces of women that have seen the child Waste in their arms, and strangely, terribly, smiled When the dark nipple of death has eased its thirst;

Faces of men that once, though long ago, Saw the faint light of hope, though far away,-- Hope that, at end of some tremendous day, They yet might reach some life where tears could flow;

Faces of our humanity, ravaged, white, Wrenched with old love, old hate, older despair, Steal out of vile filth-dropping dens to stare On that wild monstrance of a naphtha light.

They crowd before the stall's bright altar rail, Grotesque, and sacred, for that light's brief span, And all the shuddering darkness cries, "All hail, Daughters and Sons of Man!"