With sturdier limbs and mightier brain
The old soul takes the road again.

Such is my own belief and trust;

This hand, this hand that holds the pen, Has many hundred times been dust

And turned, as dust, to dust again; These eyes of mine have blinked and shone In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon.

All that I rightly think or do,

Or make, or spoil, or bless, or blast,

Is curse or blessing justly due

For sloth or effort in the past. My life's a statement of the sum Of vice indulged, or overcome.

I know that in my lives to be

My sorry heart will ache and burn,
And worship unavailingly,

The woman whom I used to spurn,
And shake to see another have
The love I spurned, the love she gave.

And I shall know, in angry words,

In gibes, and mocks, and many a tear, A carrion flock of humming-birds,

The gibes and scorns I uttered here. The brave word that I failed to speak Will brand me dastard on the cheek.

And as I wander on the roads

I shall be helped and healed and blessed; Dear words shall cheer and be as goads

To urge to heights before unguessed.
My road shall be the road I made;
All that I gave shall be repaid.

So shall I fight, so shall I tread,

In this long war beneath the stars;

So shall a glory wreathe my head,

So shall I faint and show the scars,
Until this case, this clogging mould,
Be smithied all to kingly gold.

BY A BIERSIDE

JOHN MASEFIeld

This is a sacred city built of marvelous earth.
Life was lived nobly here to give such beauty birth.
Beauty was in this brain and in this eager hand:

Death is so blind and dumb, Death does not understand.
Death drifts the brain with dust and soils the young limbs' glory
Death makes justice a dream, and strength a traveller's story.
Death drives the lovely soul to wander under the sky.
Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die.

From THE EVERLASTING MERCY

JOHN MASEFIELD

I opened the window wide and leaned
Out of the pigstye of that fiend

And felt a cool wind go like grace

About the sleeping market-place.

The clock struck three, and sweetly, slowly,
The bells chimed Holy, Holy, Holy;

And summat made me think of things.
How long those ticking clocks had gone
From church and chapel, on and on,
Ticking the time out, ticking slow
To men and girls who'd come and go,

And how a change had come. And then
I thought, "you tick the different men."

What with fight and what with drinking
And being alone there thinking,
My mind began to carp and tetter,
"If this life's all, the beasts are better."

O Christ who holds the open gate,

O Christ who drives the furrow straight,
O Christ, the plough, O Christ, the laughter,
Of holy white birds flying after,
Lo, all my heart's field red and torn,
And Thou wilt bring young green corn,
The young green corn divinely springing,
The young green corn forever singing;
And when the field is fresh and fair
Thy blessed feet shall glitter there.
And we will walk the weeded field,
And tell the golden harvest's yield,
The corn that makes the holy bread
By which the soul of man is fed,
The holy bread, the food unpriced,
Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.

TRUTH

JOHN MASEFIELD

Man with his burning soul
Has but an hour of breath
To build a ship of Truth
In which his soul may sail,
Sail on the sea of death.
For death takes toll

Of beauty, courage, youth,
Of all but Truth.

Life's city ways are dark,
Men mutter by; the wells
Of the great waters moan.
O Death, O sea, O tide,

When we have thrown off this old suit
So much in need of mending,

To sink among the naked mute,
Is that, think you, our ending?
We follow many, more we lead,
And you who sadly turf us,
Believe not that all living seed
Must flow above the surface.

Sensation is a gracious gift

But were it cramped to station, The prayer to have it cast adrift Would spout from all sensation. Enough if we have winked to sun,

Have sped the plough a season,
There is a soul for labor done,
Endureth for a season.

Then let our trust be firm in Good,
Though we be of the fasting;
Our questions are a mortal brood,
Our work is everlasting.

We Children of Beneficence

Are in its being sharers;

And Whither vainer sounds than Whence
For word of such wayfarers.

A SONG OF DERIVATIONS

ALICE MEYNELL

I come from nothing, but from where
Come the undying thoughts I bear?
Down, through long links of death and birth,
From the past poets of earth,

My immortality is there.

I am like the blossom of an hour

But long, long vanished sun and shower Awoke my breath in the young world's air. I track the past back everywhere

Through seed and flower and seed and flower.

Or, I am like a stream that flows
Full of cold springs that arose

In morning lands, on distant hills;
And down the plain my channel fills

With melting of forgotten snows.

Voices I have not heard, possessed

My own fresh songs; my thoughts are blessed With relics of the far unknown.

And mixed with memories not my own The sweet streams throng into my breast.

Before this life began to be,
The happy songs that wake in me
Woke long ago and far apart.

Heavily on this little heart

Presses this immortality.