god

AN ATTACK ON BARBERCRAFT

[Dedicated to George Cecil Jones]


At last an end of all I hoped and feared!
Muttered the hermit through his elfin beard.

Then what art thou? the evil whisper whirred.
I doubt me soerly if the hermit heard.

To all God's questions never a word he said,
But simply shook his venerable head.

God sent all plagues; he laughed and heeded not,
Till people certified him insane.

But somehow all his fellow-luntaics
Began to imitate his silly ticks.

There dwelt a widow learned and devout,
Behind our hamlet on the eastern hill.
Three sons she had, who went to find the world.
They promised to return, but wandered still.
The cities used them well, they won their way,
Rich gifts they sent, to still their mother's sighs.
Worn out with honors, and apart from her,
They died as many a self-made exile dies.
The mother had a hearth that would not quench,
The deathless embers fought the creeping gloom.
She said to us who came with wondering eyes—

Had she come all the way for this,
To part at last without a kiss?
Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain
That her own eyes might see him slain
Beside the haystack in the floods?

Along the dripping leafless woods,
The stirrup touching either shoe,
She rode astride as troopers do;
With kirtle kilted to her knee,
To which the mud splash'd wretchedly;
And the wet dripp'd from every tree
Upon her head and heavy hair,
And on her eyelids broad and fair;
The tears and rain ran down her face.

The Hartley men are noble, and
Ye'll hear a tale of woe;
I'll tell the doom of the Hartley men -
The year of sixty two.

'Twas on the Thursday morning, on
The first month of the year,
When there befell the thing that well
May rend the heart to hear.

Ere chanticleer with music rare
Awakes the old homestead,
The Hartley men are up and off
To earn their daily bread.

On, on they toil; with heat they broil,
And streams of sweat still glue
The stour unto their skins, till they

The fox lay still by the birch-tree's root
In the heather.
The hare was running with nimble foot
O'er the heather.
Was ever brighter a sunshine-day,
Before, behind me, and every way,
O'er the heather!

The fox laughed low by the birch-tree's root
In the heather.
The hare was running with daring foot
O'er the heather.

I am so happy for everything!
Hallo! Why go you with mighty spring
O'er the heather?

The fox lay hid by the birch-tree's root

1 'I die, I die!' the Mother said,
2 'My children die for lack of bread.
3 What more has the merciless Tyrant said?'
4 The Monk sat down on the stony bed.

5 The blood red ran from the Grey Monk's side,
6 His hands and feet were wounded wide,
7 His body bent, his arms and knees
8 Like to the roots of ancient trees.

9 His eye was dry; no tear could flow:
10 A hollow groan first spoke his woe.
11 He trembled and shudder'd upon the bed;

I've wearied of so many things
Adored in youthful days;
Music no more my spirit wings,
E'en when Master play.
For stage and screen I have no heart,
Great paintings leave me cold;
Alas! I've lost the love of Art
That raptured me of old.

Only my love of books is left,
Yet that begins to pall;
And if of it I am bereft,
I'll read no more at all.
Then when I am too frail to walk
I'll sit out in the sun,
And there with Nature I will talk . . .
Last friend and dearest one.

My Daddy used to wallop me for every small offense:
"Its takes a hair-brush back," said he, "to teach kids common-sense."
And still to-day I scarce can look a hair-brush in the face.
Without I want in sympathy to pat a tender place.
For Dad declared with unction: "Spare the brush and spoil the brat."
The dear old man! What e'er his faults he never did do that;
And though a score of years have gone since he departed hence,
I still revere his deity, The God of Common-sense.

How often I have played the ass (Man's universal fate),

Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.

For where the thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You will find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all;
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dungpits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.

All this stood upon her and was the world
and stood upon her with all its fear and grace
as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless
yet wholly image, like the Ark of God,
and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.

As she endured it all: bore up under
the swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone,
the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn,
serenely as a woman carrying water
moves with a full jug. Till in the midst of play,
transfiguring and preparing for the future,
the first white veil descended, gliding softly