Part 5 (1/2)

What shall harm the gentle heart In its purpose undefiled?

Even grief shall lose its smart In some way becoming part Of that nature, soothed and gentled, As a sorrow to a child.

Through the blackness and the sin Of the old world's wrongs and woes, And through the greater dark within, The gentle heart shall surely win, As some bright angel, armed with mercy, Swiftly on his errand goes.

All the body may have wrought, All the energies of mind That for its own purpose sought, Make at length a little nought Among the stars--the gentle heart Death itself will leave behind.

A BALLAD FOR HERMAN

This is the ballad for Herman, the ballad of humble things, The hedge-side thistles that flower, the small brown lark that sings, And the stumbling flight of a beetle, and the dust on a b.u.t.terfly's wings.

The snails are out in the suns.h.i.+ne after the morning rain, And the wasps are whirring and buzzing round the mulberry tree again, And the ants are busy of course, working with might and main.

While the crickets leap, and rustle, and play at being blades of gra.s.s, And humble-b.u.mble the bees go, lurching as they pa.s.s, And the flies are stupidly walking up the window-gla.s.s.

The sun is bright on the hedges, on thistle and bramble and briar, The columbine leaves are heart-shaped, and s.h.i.+ne as bright as fire --And oh! the smell of the bracken, that's straight as Salisbury spire!

Life of the woods, life of the rivers, life of the trees, Life of the rich plain-gra.s.ses that seed to the morning breeze, And the thymy mountain-gra.s.ses June makes loud with bees.

This does not age nor alter; the low sharp song of the reeds As the evening wind goes over, and the fis.h.i.+ng heron feeds On the still and shallow waters, salt with the floating weeds.

This does not change nor vanish; the mating calls of the springs, When April's green on the copses, and bright on the s.h.i.+ning wings Of birds going backwards and forwards, while the whole green forest sings.

All is our sister and brother, as once St. Francis said; The little stones in the river, the bright sun overhead, And newts, and the sp.a.w.n of fishes, and the unnamed mighty dead.

This is the ballad for Herman. O friend, may good befall!

There is never a star so distant, there is never a creature small, But living and knowing and loving in our brain we hold them all.

FRANCE

_April_ 1915

Great ever, with the hope that seeks the stars; The brain clear-cold, like ice; the soul like flame; The spirit beating at the physical bars; The reason guiding all--oh, there we name France!

A country that can think, and thinking, acts; A country that can act, and acting, dreams; That neither bears the tyranny of facts, Nor of its own dear hopes, nor of what seems,

But still, clear-visioned, treats with things that are; Yet--seer, prophet, priest of life-to-be-- Leaps to the visionary days afar, And all the splendour she will never see.

School of the spirit, chastening, yet a spur For all that men aspire to: as of old Athens held up the torch, and did incur Persia, with her fierce armies manifold,

So France against the evil strikes and strives For liberty, and we of island race, --Humbled a little by our careless lives-- Glory to stand beside her in our place,

Glory that we are one in hope and aim With her from whom in blood and agony The second gift of human freedom came Through Terror and the red Gethsemane.