THE SONG OF THE SWORD and other verses

by

W. E. HENLEY

LONDON Published by DAVID NUTT in the Strand 1892

p. viiTo R. T. Hamilton-Bruce

Edinburgh, Mar. 17, 1892

p. xiiWith three exceptions, these numbers have appeared in ‘The National Observer,’ by permission of whose proprietors they are here reprinted.

p. 1THE SONG OF THE SWORD (To Rudyard Kipling)

p. 3The Sword Singing— The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword Clanging imperious Forth from Time’s battlements His ancient and triumphing Song.

In the beginning, Ere God inspired Himself Into the clay thing Thumbed to His image, The vacant, the naked shell Soon to be Man: p. 4Thoughtful He pondered it, Prone there and impotent, Fragile, inviting Attack and discomfiture: Then, with a smile— As He heard in the Thunder That laughed over Eden The voice of the Trumpet, The iron Beneficence, Calling His dooms To the Winds of the world— Stooping, He drew On the sand with His finger A shape for a sign Of His way to the eyes That in wonder should waken, For a proof of His will To the breaking intelligence: p. 5That was the birth of me: I am the Sword.

Hard and bleak, keen and cruel, Short-hilted, long-shafted, I froze into steel: And the blood of my elder, His hand on the hafts of me, Sprang like a wave In the wind, as the sense Of his strength grew to ecstasy, Glowed like a coal At the throat of the furnace, As he knew me and named me The War-Thing, the Comrade, Father of honour And giver of kingship, The fame-smith, the song-master, p. 6Bringer of women On fire at his hands For the pride of fulfilment, Priest (saith the Lord) Of his marriage with victory. Ho! then, the Trumpet, Handmaid of heroes, Calling the peers To the place of espousal! Ho! then, the splendour And sheen of my ministry, Clothing the earth With a livery of lightnings! Ho! then, the music Of battles in onset And ruining armours, And God’s gift returning In fury to God! p. 7Glittering and keen As the song of the winter stars, Ho! then, the sound Of my voice, the implacable Angel of Destiny!— I am the Sword.

Heroes, my children, Follow, O follow me, Follow, exulting In the great light that breaks From the sacred companionship: Thrust through the fatuous, Thrust through the fungous brood Spawned in my shadow And gross with my gift! Thrust through, and hearken, O hark, to the Trumpet, p. 8The Virgin of Battles, Calling, still calling you Into the Presence, Sons of the Judgment, Pure wafts of the Will! Edged to annihilate, Hilted with government, Follow, O follow me Till the waste places All the grey globe over Ooze, as the honeycomb Drips, with the sweetness Distilled of my strength: And, teeming in peace Through the wrath of my coming, They give back in beauty The dread and the anguish They had of me visitant! p. 9Follow, O follow, then, Heroes, my harvesters! Where the tall grain is ripe Thrust in your sickles: Stripped and adust In a stubble of empire, Scything and binding The full sheaves of sovranty: Thus, O thus gloriously, Shall you fulfil yourselves: Thus, O thus mightily, Show yourselves sons of mine— Yea, and win grace of me: I am the Sword.

I am the feast-maker: Hark, through a noise Of the screaming of eagles, p. 10Hark how the Trumpet, The mistress of mistresses, Calls, silver-throated And stern, where the tables Are spread, and the work Of the Lord is in hand! Driving the darkness, Even as the banners And spears of the Morning; Sifting the nations, The slag from the metal, The waste and the weak From the fit and the strong; Fighting the brute, The abysmal Fecundity; Checking the gross, Multitudinous blunders, The groping, the purblind p. 11Excesses in service, Of the Womb universal, The absolute Drudge; Changing the charactry Carved on the World, The miraculous gem In the seal-ring that burns On the hand of the Master— Yea! and authority Flames through the dim, Unappeasable Grisliness Prone down the nethermost Chasms of the Void; Clear singing, clean slicing; Sweet spoken, soft finishing; Making death beautiful, Life but a coin To be staked in the pastime p. 12Whose playing is more Than the transfer of being; Arch-anarch, chief builder, Prince and evangelist, I am the Will of God: I am the Sword.

The Sword Singing— The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword Clanging majestical, As from the starry-staired Courts of the primal Supremacy, His high, irresistible song.

p. 13LONDON VOLUNTARIES (To Charles Whibley)

p. 15I

Andante con mote

Forth from the dust and din, The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare, The odour and sense of life and lust aflare, The wrangle and jangle of unrests, Let us take horse, dear heart, take horse and win— As from swart August to the green lap of May— To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware In any of her innumerable nests Of that first sudden plash of dawn, Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large, Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day p. 16In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn Forward and up, in wider and wider way Shall float the sands and brim the shores On this our haunch of Earth, as round she roars And spins into the outlook of the Sun (The Lord’s first gift, the Lord’s especial charge) With light, with living light, from marge to marge, Until the course He set and staked be run.

Through street and square, through square and street, Each with his home-grown quality of dark And violated silence, loud and fleet, Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp, The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, O hark, Sweet, how the old mare’s bit and chain p. 17Ring back a rough refrain Upon the marked and cheerful tramp Of her four shoes! Here is the Park, And O the languid midsummer wafts adust, The tired midsummer blooms! O the mysterious distances, the glooms Romantic, the august And solemn shapes! At night this City of Trees Tunis to a tryst of vague and strange And monstrous Majesties, Let loose from some dim underworld to range These terrene vistas till their twilight sets: When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand Beggared and common, plain to all the land For stooks of leaves! And lo! the wizard hour Whose shining, silent sorcery hath such power! Still, still the streets, between their carcanets p. 18Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep: But see how gable ends and parapets In gradual beauty and significance Emerge! And did you hear That little twitter-and-cheep,

Breaking inordinately loud and clear On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? ’Tis a first nest at matins! And behold A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold! A spent witch homing from some infamous dance— Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade! And lo! a little wind and shy, The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), A sense of space and water, and thereby A lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky. And look, O look! a tangle of silver gleams p. 19And dusky lights, our River and all his dreams, His dreams of a dead past that cannot die!

What miracle is happening in the air, Charging the very texture of the gray With something luminous and rare? The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire, And, as one lights a candle, it is day. The extinguisher that fain would strut for spire On the formal little church is not yet green Across the water: but the house-tops nigher, The corner-lines, the chimneys—look how clean, How new, how naked! See the batch of boats, Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam! And those are barges that were goblin floats, Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream! And in the piles the water frolics clear, p. 20The ripples into loose rings wander and flee, And we—we can behold that could but hear The ancient River singing as he goes New-mailed in morning to the ancient Sea. The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass: The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake, And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and take His hobnailed way to work! Let us too pass: Through these long blindfold rows Of casements staring blind to right and left,

Each with his gaze turned inward on some piece Of life in death’s own likeness—Life bereft Of living looks as by the Great Release (Perchance of shadow-shapes from shadow-shows), Whose upshot all men know yet no man knows.

Reach upon reach of burial—so they feel, p. 21These colonies of dreams! And as we steal Homeward together, but for the buxom breeze That frolics at our heel, Greeting the town with news of the summer seas, We might—thus awed, thus lonely that we are— Be wandering some depopulated star, Some world of memories and unbroken graves, So broods the abounding Silence near and far: Till even your footfall craves Forgiveness of the majesty it braves.

p. 22II

Scherzando

Down through the ancient Strand The Spirit of October, mild and boon And sauntering, takes his way This golden end of afternoon, As though the corn stood yellow in all the land And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon.

Lo! the round sun, half down the western slope— Seen as along an unglazed telescope— Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day: Gifting the long, lean, lanky street And its abounding confluences of being With aspects generous and bland: Making a thousand harnesses to shine p. 23As with new ore from some enchanted mine, And every horse’s coat so full of sheen He looks new-tailored, and every ’bus feels clean, And never a hansom but is worth the feeing; And every jeweller within the pale Offers a real Arabian Night for sale; And even the roar Of the strong streams of toil that pause and pour Eastward and westward sounds suffused— Seems as it were bemused And blurred, and like the speech Of lazy seas upon a lotus-eating beach— With this enchanted lustrousness, This mellow magic, that (as a man’s caress Brings back to some faded face beloved before A heavenly shadow of the grace it wore Ere the poor eyes were minded to beseech) Old things transfigures, and you hail and bless p. 24Their looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more; Till the sedate and mannered elegance

Of Clement’s is all tinctured with romance; The while the fanciful, formal, finicking charm Of Bride’s, that madrigal in stone, Glows flushed and warm And beauteous with a beauty not its own; And the high majesty of Paul’s Uplifts a voice of living light, and calls— Calls to his millions to behold and see How goodly this his London Town can be!

For earth and sky and air Are golden everywhere, And golden with a gold so suave and fine The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. Trafalgar Square (The fountains volleying golden glaze) p. 25Gleams like an angel-market. High aloft Over his couchant Lions in a haze Shimmering and bland and soft, A dust of chrysoprase, Our Sailor takes the golden gaze Of the saluting sun, and flames superb As once he flamed it on his ocean round. The dingy dreariness of the picture-place, Turned very nearly bright, Takes on a certain dismal grace, And shows not all a scandal to the ground. The very blind man pottering on the kerb, Among the posies and the ostrich feathers And the rude voices touched with all the weathers Of all the varying year, Shares in the universal alms of light. The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, p. 26The glistering signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires— ’Tis El Dorado—El Dorado plain, The Golden City! And when a girl goes by, Look! as she turns her glancing head, A call of gold is floated from her ear!

Golden, all golden! In a golden glory, Long lapsing down a golden coasted sky, The day not dies but seems Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed Upon a past of golden song and story And memories of gold and golden dreams.

p. 27III

Largo e mesto

Out of the poisonous East, Over a continent of blight, Like a maleficent Influence released From the most squalid cellarage of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the abominable— The hangman wind that tortures temper and light— Comes slouching, sullen and obscene, Hard on the skirts of the embittered night: And in a cloud unclean Of excremental humours, roused to strife By the operation of some ruinous change Wherever his evil mandate run and range Into a dire intensity of life, p. 28A craftsman at his bench, he settles down To the grim job of throttling London Town.

And, by a jealous lightlessness beset That might have oppressed the dragons of old time Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime, A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams, Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, The afflicted city, prone from mark to mark In shameful occultation, seems A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shifting Rent in the stuff of a material dark Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper’s living blotch of bale: Uncoiling monstrous into street on street p. 29Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread, Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet Somewhither in the hideousness ahead; Working through wicked airs and deadly dews That make the laden robber grin askance At the good places in his black romance, And the poor, loitering harlot rather choose Go pinched and pined to bed Than lurk and shiver and curse her wretched way From arch to arch, scouting some threepenny prey.

Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows, His green garlands and windy eyots forgot, The old Father-River flows, His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom, As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore, Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides, p. 30Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rot In the squalor of the universal shore: His voices sounding through the gruesome air As from the ferry where the Boat of Doom With her blaspheming cargo reels and rides: The while his children, the brave ships, No more adventurous and fair Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound brides, But infamously enchanted, Huddle together in the foul eclipse, Or feel their course by inches desperately, As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted, From sinister reach to reach—out—out—to sea.

And Death the while— Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile, Death in his threadbare working trim— p. 31Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland, And with expert, inevitable hand Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung, Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart: Thus signifying unto old and young, However hard of mouth or wild of whim, ’Tis time—’tis time by his ancient watch—to part With books and women and talk and drink and art: And you go humbly after him To a mean suburban lodging: on the way To what or where Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say: And you—how should you care So long as, unreclaimed of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable, Thus vicious and thus patient sits him down To the black job of burking London Town?

p. 32IV

Allegro maëstoso

Spring winds that blow As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may; Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow, Like matrons heavy-bosomed and aglow With the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay, What makes this insolent and comely stream Of appetence, this freshet of desire (Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!), Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre? Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churn The wealth of her enchanted urn Till, over-billowing all between p. 33Her cheerful margents grey and living green, It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing, An estuary of the joy of being? Why should the buxom leafage of the Park Touch to an ecstasy the act of seeing? —As if my paramour, my bride of brides, Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abides In some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark, Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade, In the divine conviction robed and crowned The globe fulfils his immemorial round But as the marrying-place of all things made!

There is no man, this deifying day, But feels the primal blessing in his blood. The sacred impulse of the May Brightening like sex made sunshine through her veins, p. 34There is no woman but disdains To vail the ensigns of her womanhood. None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes, Bounteous in looks of her delicious best, On her inviolable quest: These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets those, But all desirable and frankly fair, As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst, And in the knowledge went imparadised. For look! a magical influence everywhere, Look how the liberal and transfiguring air Washes this inn of memorable meetings, This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings, Till, through its jocund loveliness of length A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore, A brimming reach of beauty met with strength, It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream, p. 35Some vision multitudinous and agleam, Of happiness as it shall be evermore!

Praise God for giving Through this His messenger among the days His word the life He gave is thrice-worth living! For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan— Not dead, not dead, as dreamers feigned, But the lush genius of a million Mays Renewing his beneficent endeavour!— Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed and reigned Since in the dim blue dawn of time The universal ebb-and-flow began, To sound his ancient music, and prevails By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme Here in this radiant and immortal street Lavishly and omnipotently as ever p. 36In the open hills, the undissembling dales, The laughing-places of the juvenile earth. For lo! the wills of man and woman meet, Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared As once in Eden’s prodigal bowers befell, To share his shameless, elemental mirth In one great act of faith, while deep and strong, Incomparably nerved and cheered, The enormous heart of London joys to beat To the measures of his rough, majestic song: The lewd, perennial, overmastering spell That keeps the rolling universe ensphered

And life and all for which life lives to long Wanton and wondrous and for ever well.

p. 37RHYMES AND RHYTHMS

p. 39I

Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade On desolate sea and lonely sand, Out of the silence and the shade What is the voice of strange command Calling you still, as friend calls friend With love that cannot brook delay, To rise and follow the ways that wend Over the hills and far away?

Hark in the city, street on street A roaring reach of death and life, Of vortices that clash and fleet And ruin in appointed strife, p. 40Hark to it calling, calling clear, Calling until you cannot stay From dearer things than your own most dear Over the hills and far away.

Out of the sound of ebb and flow, Out of the sight of lamp and star, It calls you where the good winds blow, And the unchanging meadows are: From faded hopes and hopes agleam, It calls you, calls you night and day Beyond the dark into the dream Over the hills and far away.

p. 41II

A desolate shore, The sinister seduction of the Moon, The menace of the irreclaimable Sea.

Flaunting, tawdry and grim, From cloud to cloud along her beat, Leering her battered and inveterate leer, She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, Her horrible old man, Mumbling old oaths and warming His villainous old bones with villainous talk— The secrets of their grisly housekeeping Since they went out upon the pad p. 42In the first twilight of self-conscious Time: Growling, obscene and hoarse, Tales of unnumbered Ships, Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance In some vile alley of the night Waylaid and bludgeoned— Dead.