Читать книгу Grass of Parnassus - Lang Andrew, May Kendall - Страница 3

To you, who know the face of war,

You, that for England wander far,

You that have seen the Ghazis fly

From English lads not sworn to die,

You that have lain where, deadly chill,

The mist crept o’er the Shameful Hill,

You that have conquered, mile by mile,

The currents of unfriendly Nile,

And cheered the march, and eased the strain

When Politics made valour vain,

Ian, to you, from banks of Ken,

We send our lays of Englishmen!

To Corinth leads one road, you say:

Is there a Corinth, or a way?

Each bland or blatant preacher hath

His painful or his primrose path,

And not a soul of all of these

But knows the city ’twixt the seas,

Her fair unnumbered homes and all

Her gleaming amethystine wall!

Blind are the guides who know the way,

The guides who write, and preach, and pray,

I watch their lives, and I divine

They differ not from yours and mine!

One man we knew, and only one,

Whose seeking for a city’s done,

For what he greatly sought he found,

A city girt with fire around,

A city in an empty land

Between the wastes of sky and sand,

A city on a river-side,

Where by the folk he loved, he died. 1

Alas! it is not ours to tread

That path wherein his life he led,

Not ours his heart to dare and feel,

Keen as the fragrant Syrian steel;

Yet are we not quite city-less,

Not wholly left in our distress —

Is it not said by One of old,

Sheep have I of another fold?

Ah! faint of heart, and weak of will,

For us there is a city still!

Dear city of Zeus, the Stoic says, 2

The Voice from Rome’s imperial days,

In Thee meet all things, and disperse,

In Thee, for Thee, O Universe!

To me all’s fruit thy seasons bring,

Alike thy summer and thy spring;

The winds that wail, the suns that burn,

From Thee proceed, to Thee return.

Dear city of Zeus, shall we not say,

Home to which none can lose the way!

Born in that city’s flaming bound,

We do not find her, but are found.

Within her wide and viewless wall

The Universe is girdled all.

All joys and pains, all wealth and dearth,

All things that travail on the earth,

God’s will they work, if God there be,

If not, what is my life to me?

Seek we no further, but abide

Within this city great and wide,

In her and for her living, we

Have no less joy than to be free;

Nor death nor grief can quite appal

The folk that dwell within her wall,

Nor aught but with our will befall!

Vain is the dream!  However Hope may rave,

He perished with the folk he could not save,

And though none surely told us he is dead,

And though perchance another in his stead,

Another, not less brave, when all was done,

Had fled unto the southward and the sun,

Had urged a way by force, or won by guile

To streams remotest of the secret Nile,

Had raised an army of the Desert men,

And, waiting for his hour, had turned again

And fallen on that False Prophet, yet we know

Gordon is dead, and these things are not so!

Nay, not for England’s cause, nor to restore

Her trampled flag – for he loved Honour more —

Nay, not for Life, Revenge, or Victory,

Would he have fled, whose hour had dawned to die.

He will not come again, whate’er our need,

He will not come, who is happy, being freed

From the deathly flesh and perishable things,

And lies of statesmen and rewards of kings.

Nay, somewhere by the sacred River’s shore

He sleeps like those who shall return no more,

No more return for all the prayers of men —

Arthur and Charles – they never come again!

They shall not wake, though fair the vision seem:

Whate’er sick Hope may whisper, vain the dream!

To-morrow is a year since Gordon died!

   A year ago to-night, the Desert still

   Crouched on the spring, and panted for its fill

Of lust and blood.  Their old art statesmen plied,

And paltered, and evaded, and denied;

   Guiltless as yet, except for feeble will,

   And craven heart, and calculated skill

In long delays, of their great homicide.

A year ago to-night ’twas not too late.

   The thought comes through our mirth, again, again;

Methinks I hear the halting foot of Fate

   Approaching and approaching us; and then

Comes cackle of the House, and the Debate!

   Enough; he is forgotten amongst men.

Sons of the giant Ocean isle

   In sport our friendly foes for long,

Well England loves you, and we smile

When you outmatch us many a while,

   So fleet you are, so keen and strong.

You, like that fairy people set

   Of old in their enchanted sea

Far off from men, might well forget

An elder nation’s toil and fret,

   Might heed not aught but game and glee.

But what your fathers were you are

   In lands the fathers never knew,

’Neath skies of alien sign and star

You rally to the English war;

   Your hearts are English, kind and true.

And now, when first on England falls

   The shadow of a darkening fate,

You hear the Mother ere she calls,

You leave your ocean-girdled walls,

   And face her foemen in the gate.

Thou that on every field of earth and sky

   Didst hunt for Death, who seemed to flee and fear,

How great and greatly fallen dost thou lie

   Slain in the Desert by some wandering spear:

‘Not here, alas!’ may England say, ‘not here

   Nor in this quarrel was it meet to die,

   But in that dreadful battle drawing nigh

To thunder through the Afghan passes sheer:

Like Aias by the ships shouldst thou have stood,

   And in some glen have stayed the stream of flight,

   The bulwark of thy people and their shield,

When Indus or when Helmund ran with blood,

   Till back into the Northland and the Night

   The smitten Eagles scattered from the field.’

Dead, with their eyes to the foe,

   Dead, with the foe at their feet,

Under the sky laid low

   Truly their slumber is sweet,

Though the wind from the Camp of the Slain Men blow,

   And the rain on the wilderness beat.

Dead, for they chose to die

   When that wild race was run;

Dead, for they would not fly,

   Deeming their work undone,

Nor cared to look on the face of the sky,

   Nor loved the light of the sun.

Honour we give them and tears,

   And the flag they died to save,

Rent from the rain of the spears,

   Wet from the war and the wave,

Shall waft men’s thoughts through the dust of the years,

   Back to their lonely grave!