The Donkey
When forests walked and fishes flew And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood, Then, surely, I was born. With monstrous head and sickening bray And ears like errant wings
The Great Minimum
It is something to have wept as we have wept, It is something to have done as we have done, It is something to have watched when all men slept, And seen the stars
The World State
Oh, how I love Humanity, With love so pure and pringlish, And how I hate the horrid French, Who never will be English! The International Idea, The largest and the clearest, Is welding all
The Holy of Holies
‘Elder father, though thine eyes Shine with hoary mysteries, Canst thou tell what in the heart Of a cowslip blossom lies? ‘Smaller than all lives that be, Secret as the deepest sea, Stands a
Lepanto
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, It stirs
The Wife of Flanders
Low and brown barns, thatched and repatched and tattered, Where I had seven sons until to-day, A little hill of hay your spur has scattered. . . . This is not Paris. You have
A Child of the Snows
There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim, And never before or again, When the nights are strong with a darkness long, And the dark is alive with rain. Never we know
The Song against Grocers
God made the wicked Grocer For a mystery and a sign, That men might shun the awful shops And go to inns to dine; Where the bacon’s on the rafter And the wine is
The New Omar
A Book of verses underneath the bough, Provided that the verses do not scan, A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and Thou, Short-haired, all angles, looking like a man. But let the
Femina Contra Mundum
The sun was black with judgment, and the moon Blood: but between I saw a man stand, saying: ‘To me at least The grass is green. ‘There was no star that I forgot to
The Ballad of the White Horse
DEDICATION Of great limbs gone to chaos, A great face turned to night Why bend above a shapeless shroud Seeking in such archaic cloud Sight of strong lords and light? Where seven sunken Englands
The Logical Vegetarian
“Why shouldn’t I have a purely vegetarian drink? Why shouldn’t I take vegetables in their highest form, so to speak? The modest vegetarians ought to stick to wine or beer, plain vegetable drinks, instead
Americanisation
Britannia needs no Boulevards, No spaces wide and gay: Her march was through the crooked streets Along the narrow way. Nor looks she where, New York’s seduction, The Broadway leadeth to destruction. Britannia needs
The Song of Education
III. For the Creche Form 8277059, Sub-Section K I remember my mother, the day that we met, A thing I shall never entirely forget; And I toy with the fancy that, young as I
The Towers of Time
Under what withering leprous light The very grass as hair is grey, Grass in the cracks of the paven courts Of gods we graved but yesterday. Senate, republic, empire, all We leaned our backs