The Project Gutenberg eBook of Shylock reasons with Mr. Chesterton, and other poems

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Shylock reasons with Mr. Chesterton, and other poems

Author: Humbert Wolfe

Release date: February 18, 2020 [eBook #61440]

Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif, MWS and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

produced from images generously made available by The

Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHYLOCK REASONS WITH MR. CHESTERTON, AND OTHER POEMS ***

SHYLOCK REASONS WITH

MR. CHESTERTON

AND OTHER POEMS

BY

HUMBERT WOLFE

Author of

“LONDON SONNETS.”

OXFORD

BASIL BLACKWELL

MDCCCCXX

DEDICATION.

ONLY this—that when I’ve done with wearing

Gold words upon my heart and reaching after

My immortality, I shall be hearing

Then, and long afterwards (be sure!) your laughter.

Only this—that when I come to sleeping

And later men appraise me in the quarrels

Of poets and the bays, tell them I’m keeping

No bays, but at my heart a lover’s laurels.

SOME of these poems have appeared in “The Saturday Review,” “The Westminster Gazette,” and “The Saturday Westminster Gazette.” They are republished by the courtesy of the editors of those journals.

CONTENTS.

Page

PERSONALITIES.

Shylock reasons with Mr. Chesterton

7

The Unknown God:

I. Pheidias

12

II. Paul

16

Cassio hears Othello

22

The First Airman

23

Mary

24

The Sicilian Expedition

27

Caesar and Anthony

30

The Dancers

31

Battersea

32

The Woodcutters of Hütteldorf

33

Heine’s Last Song

37

IMPERSONALITIES.

The Satyr

39

Balder’s Song

40

Mary the Mother

42

Apples

43

The Skies

44

I. Flecker

45

II. Edith Cavell

45

III. The Little Sleeper

45

To him whom the cap fits

46

France

47

Alchemy

48

Orpheus

49

The Wind

50

Gabriel

51

Opals and Amber

52

After Battle

53

Mademoiselle de Maupin

54

Du Bist wie eine Blume

54

Cambridge

55

A Room in Bohemia

55

Victory

56

Cleopatra

56

Medusa

57

The Jungle

58

The Pencil

59

Columbine

60

The Crowder’s Tune

61

ENVOI

63

PERSONALITIES.

SHYLOCK REASONS WITH MR. CHESTERTON.

JEW-BAITING still! Two thousand years are run

And still, it seems, good Master Chesterton,

Nothing’s abated of the old offence.

Changing its shape, it never changes tense.

Other things were, this only was and is.

And whether Judas murder with a kiss,

Or Shylock catch a Christian with a gin,

All all’s the same—the first enormous sin

Traps Judas in the moneylender’s mesh

And cuts from Jesus’ side the pound of flesh.

Nor is this all the punishment. For still

Through centuries to suffer were no ill

If we in human axes and the rod

Discerned the high pro-consulate of God

Chastening his people. But we are not chastened.

Age after age upon our hearts is fastened

The same cold malice, and for all they bleed

They burn for ever with unchanging greed.

Grosser with suffering we grow, and one

Calls to another “If in Babylon

Are gold and silver, be content with them,

Better found gold than lost Jerusalem.”

They forget Zion; in the market place

Rebuild the Temple for the Jewish race,

And thus from age to age do Jews like me

Have their revenge on Christianity,

Since thus from age to age Christians like you

Unchristian grow in hounding down the Jew.

And thus from age to age His will is done,

And Shylock’s sins produce a Chesterton.

But since we both must suffer and both are

Bound in the orb of one outrageous star,

Hater and hated, for a little while

Let us together watch how mile on mile

The heavenly moon, all milky white, regains

Her gentle empery, and smooths the stains

Of red our star left in her heaven, thus

Bringing a respite even unto us

Before the red star strikes again. The riot

Of the heart for a moment sinks, and in the quiet

Like a cool bandage on the forehead be

Content a second with tranquillity.

And from your lips the secular taunt of dog

Banish, to hear what in the synagogue

We heard once at Barmitzvah (as we call

The confirmation, when the praying shawl

Is for the first time worn, and the boy waits

For law and manhood at the altar gates).

Whether ’tis true or no, it shall be true

just long enough to build a bridge to you,

That hangs a shining second till your laughter

Reminds me of my ducats and my daughter.

It happened thus. When the last “adonoi”

Had faltered into silence of some boy

Whose voice was all a silver miracle

Of water, a voice echoed “Israel,”

A sweeter voice than even his, but broken

With a sorrowful thrill, as though the heart had spoken

Of countless generations doomed to pain

And none to ease them found. It cried again,

Or so we thought who listened, “Ye do well

To let the children come, O Israel,

But even these are lost and unforgiven,

Since not of these His kingdom and His heaven

Who at their fathers’ fathers’ hands was sold

In Calvary; and not their voice, though gold,

Nor innocent eyes, nor ways that children have

Of magic in their reaching hands, can save.

For, though ye offer these as sacrifice,

A nation’s childhood is too small a price

To pay the interest upon the debt

That all your sorrows cannot liquidate.

O what a usury our God has made

On thirty pieces that the high priest paid!

Profit was none, but from the first the loss

That grew of the fourth ghost upon the Cross.

Two on the Cross were seen at Jesus’ side,

The fourth, the fourth unseen and crucified

With piercéd hands and feet, and heart as well,

The ghost betrayed of traitor Israel.

Yourselves ye bought and sold, yourselves decreed

To the end of the world your doom. For who will heed

The prayer or utter mercy on a child,

However sweet he call? The heart is wild

Of your own ghost, and not the softest lamb

Of God escapes his sentence. For I am

The wraith of all your children from the first

Long ere their birth inexorably cursed.”

None saw the ghost. Some said it was the boy

That spoke. Yet someone answered “adonoi,

Thy will be done” and it was finished. All

Closer about their foreheads drew the shawl

Fearing to see, and as the darkness grows

Deeper save where above the altar glows

One lamp, in hearts that Pharoah would unharden

For pity rises not a cry for pardon,

But to the Mills of God a bitter call

“Grind quickly, since ye grind exceeding small!”

That is the tale. But mark, the moon in heaven

Is hid with clouds. This little time was given

To peace and to remembering one another

Who might have been (God knows) brother with brother.

But since ’tis over and the peace is done

Shylock returns and with him Chesterton.

THE UNKNOWN GOD.

“Whom you ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you.”

I. PHEIDIAS.

PHEIDIAS, the sculptor, dying bade them set

His last-cut marble near lest he forget,

Travelling, where beauty ends, what beauty is

In the world and the light no longer his.

And while they brought it, women, as they use,

Sang in the house the litany of Zeus

That is the god of gods, yet could not save

His own beloved lady from the grave.

“The dearest head” they sung, “yea even her’s,

Whose hair was like a harp, when the wind stirs

Upon the strings and wakes them, golden hair,

Must droop upon the ground and perish there—

Even her hair (the women sung), alas

For loveliness! wherein Olympus was

Lost for a god and found, when he, with mist

About him of its glory twist on twist,

Found on her mouth, more passionate for this,

Mortality, that trembled in the kiss

—Even that hair, for all a high god’s art,

Long since is dust, and dust that was her heart.”

This song of ending in the darkness came

To Pheidias in the courtyard, where the flame

Of torches threw a final light and shewed

Two pillars of the house, a turn of road

That led (he thought) beyond all sight, and he

Must walk it with a quiet company

—The cold imagined gods, no prayer might cozen

To help him on the way, immortal, frozen

Glimpses of deity his hand, creating

In marble out of his heart where they were waiting

For life, had carved, and given them instead

Of life the eternal gesture of the dead.

He with those gods must walk, since he had grown

Into their silence, and had made his own

Their longings thus imprisoned, and their heart

On one beat fixed for ever. He must start

To follow, but before his striving spirit

Steps out upon the road or falters near it,

One god, that guards the passage, waiting stands—

His latest marble, made like those, with hands,

Fashioned, like those, of a man’s dreams, but overstepping

His maker’s mind, and into a glory sweeping

No man might share. For the great forehead lifted

Out of the shade of life, and light had shifted

Her quality, whose radiant indecision

Found, though the eyes were closed, consummate vision.

This was the god that dying Pheidias

Had beaten out of marble. This he was,

And would not share with other gods their death

In beauty, but was living with the breath

Of his creator, who with death at strife

Laid down his own to give his creature life.

This god they brought to Pheidias, for whom

The whole great world had been a little room,

Which he had used, as others use, but he

Looked through the window on eternity.

And seeing his god, upon his mind the cloud

Faded an instant, and he cried aloud,

As though all Hellas heard him, “O be proud

Of beauty, Hellas, nor be curious

Of what the secret is that haunted us

Your poets, who had strained to it, and after

Lay down to sleep, sealing their lips with laughter.

For laughter is the judgment of the wise,

Who measure equally with level eyes

What the world is, what gods, and what are men,

And twixt too great a joy, too sharp a pain,

Strikes on a balance, so that tears are shot

With laughter, laughter with tears, and these are not

Themselves, but greater than themselves, and each

From other learns and doth to other teach.

We are content with beauty thus, who find

That when all’s done—sculpture or song—behind

What we have carved or sung, a greater thing

Startles the heart with movement of a wing

We neither see nor dare see. For our thought

Is larger than we know, and what we sought

Passes and has forgotten; what we do,

The truth we did not guess at pierces through,

If what was done was well done. This last bust

Of mine not as I willed but as I must

I carved, and now, at the end of all, I can

See that the dream he does not dream is man.

The earlier gods I carved and knew, they wait

My coming as their master at the gate

Of death, for what I knew is mine to have,

Live with my life, and wither in my grave.

Thus beauty known is fading, known love fades,

And the truth we know a shadow in the shades,

And only that which lies beyond our hands,

Beauty, no earth-bound spirit understands,

But guesses at and faints for in desire;

And love, that does not burn, because the fire

Is lit beyond the world, and truth that dies

Beyond our thoughts in unimagined lies

That are the truth beyond truth, only these

Are lasting and outwit our memories.

But the familiar gods that I have made—

With those I will not walk. O be afraid

Of beauty attainable and love attained

And limited immortality. Unchained

The greatest soul must walk and walk alone

With what it has not seen and has not known!”

Thus Pheidias spoke and presently the flame

Of torches died, his god that had no name

—His latest statue—watched his spirit pass

And the dawn came that knew not Pheidias.

II. PAUL.

PAUL the apostle, on the sacred hill

Of Mars at Athens, felt a hidden will

Working against his gospel. That was old

(It seemed), yet had the thrust of boyhood cold,

Yet tempered in wild fires, and sensing this

He prayed in silence. The Acropolis,

Making a final bid for beauty, took

The dying sun to her heart with the wild look

As of a woman yielding to her lover;

And he in flame confederate leaning over

With armfuls of clouded roses, blossom on blossom,

Rifled the sweets of evening, and for her bosom

Dismantling heaven’s high pavilion

With tumbled beauties wooed her thus and won.

This Paul from prayer rising saw, nor cared,

Watching a Cross in the East, if these had snared

The West with meshes trailing from the wrist

Of Venus, also an Evangelist.

“So little is the conquest of the flesh,

So like a spinner, weaving her small mesh

—And a boy tears it as he passes by—

Embroiders fruitlessly her tapestry

The Paphian woman, and the threads are thin

And ghostly as the new light enters in—

The tapestry that was the world and all

The curtain Jesus tears aside” says Paul:

“What is there worshipful here? These skies are fleeting,

This beauty made by hands of the sun is beating

Into the night that swallows her, and none

Is warm, when night has fallen, with the sun;

And the whole frame of the celestial

Firmament, though dusted with the stars, must fall

As being under death, and change in Hell,

When death is conquered, her corruptible

Beauty, and at the trumpet’s sound put on,

As ye must also, incorruption.”

And while he spoke the curtain of the sky

Night fretted with the cool embroidery

Of stars, and the moon upon her silent spindle

Did all the velvet warp to silver kindle.

But a young man of the philosophers,

Who stood about him, said “The moonlight stirs

With beauty in the heart, and in the mind

The things that seem do such a glory find

Lit with this wonder of the moon and star,

As almost to persuade us that they are,

But these we know are broken images

Of patterns laid-up in heaven. Socrates,

A citizen of Athens, was betrayed

To death for teaching this, and smiling laid

His cup of hemlock down, because his heart

Already of eternity was part,

And death for such is freedom. Yet for this

He did surrender the Acropolis,

That had all Hellas for a coronet

About her forehead radiantly set,

Island on island, and for this forsook

The friendship of his friends, his dreams, the look

Of hesitating spring that dare not stay

Yet will not leave the hills of Attica.

For this all gifts, all memories, he gave

Freely believing that the narrow grave

Was the end of all. Thus he passed out alone,

Content to face the gods no man had known

Because they beggar knowledge, and persuaded

It was enough, that, when for him had faded

The light, for us his death a light had lit

Would shew a path and we might walk by it.

‘This is the spirit of man; in vain it reaches

Beyond the limits ordained and vainly stretches

To where truth, beauty, goodness, three in one,

Find each in all supreme communion.

For what is greater than we know,’ he said

‘It is well to die,’ and smiling he was dead.

This he believed, all this he sacrificed.

Did he teach better, Jew, whom you call Christ?”

A cloud passed by the moon, and no one spoke,

Till suddenly her silver spear-head broke

The cloudy targe, and leaning from the place

She has in heaven struck with light the face

Of Pheidias’ god. And Paul cried “Even thus

Ye have your answer, superstitious

Who set this idol up, and worshipped it

In darkness, and behold the face is lit

With fire from on high. A period

Is set to ignorance and to the god

Ye ignorantly worship, and the stone

Or marble of the god ye have not known,

Changes beneath my hand and in my speech

Unto the living god I know and preach.

Do you rejoice because that Socrates

Died facing death and dark? I tell you these

In Christ are conquered. Death has lost her sting,

The dark her victory, and angels sing

At the empty mouth of the grave, because my king

Has made the grave a refuge and protection

From the pain of living by His resurrection.

Socrates sleeps; the god he did not know

Sleeps with him, and long since the grasses grow

Above their resting place, but flowers reach

In vain their roots to find Him whom I preach.

He is not there, but though we darkly see,

As in a glass, his immortality

Waits for us all, and beckons in the place

Where we who find Him see Him face to face.

Socrates, to death a prisoner, did well,

But death was all; Christ by the miracle

Of the open grave, his deity forsaken,

For all the world has death a prisoner taken.

Nor Socrates in vain all sacrificed

If here his fruitless death has pled for Christ.”

Dionysius the Areopagite

Cried loudly unto Paul “Were it not right

To shatter on his marble pedestal

This idol that has stood for death?” and Paul

Answered “What say ye brethren, for His sake

Who vanquished death shall we the idol break?”

But even as Paul raised his hand the light

Faded upon the sculptured face. The night

Cloaked it, and, though Paul pressed, the threatened blow

Hung in the air and fell not. For a low

Strange glory changed upon the face, and seemed

A face that Paul had seen before or dreamed

To see when near Damascus, and instead

Of Pheidias’ god unknown another Head

Sorrowful-sweet on Paul astonished shone

And, ere his threatening hand could fall, was gone.

But a voice whispered “Art thou after all

Thine unknown God still persecuting, Saul?”

CASSIO HEARS OTHELLO.

THUS for the last last time with the first kiss!

O my white bird, here is the precipice!

I throw you like a homing carrier

Into the footless spaces of the air!

And your spread wings, set free, beat up and out

In mounting circles, storming death’s redoubt

And the cloudy fortress of Avilion.

Gone, my white bird, beyond all dreaming, gone!

And my hands warm that held her. Cassio

It was well done! Always to let her go

In the grave they shall be open thus, and yet

Feeling the half-poised wings—poor hands! Forget

My madness, Cassio, and think of me

As of a man who set his sea-bird free

From the prison of his heart to see her win

The deep blue floors of heaven and enter in.

O I am glad, I am glad, I dared this thing.

Even now my bird is home, awakening

Among her shining sisters, far—so far,

Not even the thoughts I have can trouble her.

So carve upon the stone that marks my grave:

“All that he had to death Othello gave,

And has kept nothing back but the sweet wound

Of life, that grew so dear, because he found

The mortal knife, that stabbed him, slit the strings

That gave his bird the guerdon of her wings.”

THE FIRST AIRMAN.

GIVE me the wings, magician. I will know

What blooms on airy precipices grow

That no hand plucks, large unexpected blossoms,

Scentless, with cry of curlews in their bosoms,

And the great winds like grasses where their stems

Spangle the universe with diadems.

I will pluck those flowers and those grasses, I,

Icarus, drowning upwards through the sky

With air that closes underneath my feet

As water above the diver. I will meet

Life with the dawn in heaven, and my fingers

Dipped in the golden floss of hair that lingers

Across the unveiled spaces and makes them colder,

As a woman’s hair across her naked shoulder.

Death with the powdered stars will walk and pass

Like a man’s breath upon a looking-glass,

For a suspended heart-beat making dim

Heaven brighter afterwards because of him.

Give me the wings, magician. So their tune

Mix with the silver trumpets of the moon

And, beyond music mounting, clean outrun

The golden diapason of the sun.

There is a secret that the birds are learning

Where the long lanes in heaven have a turning

And no man yet has followed; therefore these

Laugh hauntingly across our usual seas.

I’ll not be mocked by curlews in the sky;

Give me the wings magician, or I die.

His call for wings or death was heard and thus

Came both to the first airman, Icarus.

MARY.

(Sister of Martha.)

THERE was no star in the East the night I came

With spikenard in hushed Jerusalem—

But a light in an upper chamber dimly lit

Was star enough—I would have followed it

Through lonelier streets unto the smaller room

Where afterwards it blossomed in the tomb.

Light of the world, but how much more to me

The light that other women also see!

No choiring angels in gold groups adored

Their king that night, but searching for my Lord

Unchoired, uncrowned, whose Kingdom had not come,

I heard none call, but dumb, as death is dumb,

The night misled his angels, or may be

Night and the angels made a way for me.

My footfalls in the street rang very clear

As I drew on. It seemed that all must hear

My coming, eyes that peered behind the grating,

Cloaked hands to hold me at each corner waiting.

But nothing stirred till suddenly there ran

The flame of the moon in heaven for a span

Less than a heart-beat, and I saw a man

Steal out of Simon’s house, and pass me by

With such a horror on his lips that I,

Also a traitor, shrunk and knew him not—

Him that was Judas called Iscariot.

Also a traitor I, because I came

Not worshipping the Master in that Name

That his disciples called him, not the Christ

Of God for me that night. I sought a tryst

With a man of men, and if my heart had won

The Son of God had died in Mary’s son,

And he, who, knowing the appointed evil,

Sent forth Iscariot to his task, a devil,

Also accepted, though this was more hard,

The sweet betrayal of the spikenard.

He knew me what I meant and in his eyes,

That for a moment smiled, was Paradise

Lost unto love, that for the greater sin

Than even Judas’ might not enter in.

And when the disciples would have stayed my hands,

“She does but good” He said “she understands.”

And I who poured the unguent understood,

But good it was not, as a man means good.

For I forget the Master, I but see

(A woman taken in adultery

With a dream and a dream) his human face

I would have saved from God, and in the place

Of Gospel and of resurrection I

Hear him say “Mary” and behold him die.

Judas, to death who sold him for a kiss,

Sinned less than I, who’d buy him back for this.

And Christ forgave me—How shall I forgive

Jesus, my love, the man who would not live?

THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION.

TO-DAY the Triremes sailed for Sicily

With no wind stirring on a soundless sea;

But a great crying of birds beat up and filled

The empty caverns of the air and stilled

The thrashing of the oars. The level sun

Unto himself, it seemed, drew one by one

With strings of gold the ships that no one heard

Move on the waters, till at last one bird

(Of all the wings past knowledge and past counting)

Wheeled upwards on the air and mounting, mounting,

Rose out of human sight, but all the rest

Passed with the passing fleet into the West.

To-day the Triremes sailed—and will their sailing

Prosper or fail because a gull was wailing

For crumbs about the prows? Who but a fool

Would find a message in a screaming gull?

For if gods use such messengers as these

The less gods they (or so says Socrates).

They are not gods (he says) of fear and hate,

A swollen type of man degenerate,

Catching at flattery, at sorrow fleering

And every spiteful whisper overhearing;

But largely on their mountain they attend

Unflinchingly the one appointed end,

When what was nobly done and finely striven

Will find the archetype laid up in heaven.

Not these by gulls pronounce or suffer doom,

Nor cries among the ships (and yet the gloom

Settles about Athene’s temple. If

An injured god used his prerogative

Of anger, might not Hermes?)—that’s the gull

Stirring the superstition of a fool!

What if a week ago we, waking, found

The Hermae spoiled or fallen to the ground?

Shall Fate be altered or a doom be spoken

Because an image was in malice broken?

Or Athens, that remembers Marathon,

Rock in her empire for a splintered stone?

How dear she is—was never city else

So loved, or lovely in her strength; like bells

Pealed in the brain her beauty. This is she,

Athens, whose sweeter name is liberty.

To-day the Triremes sailed—as Zeus decrees

All shall be done; but hardly Socrates,

As Westward in the dark our captains wear,

Would frown if an Athenian spoke a prayer

Even to Hermes, (even though it seem

We fear the flight of birds and cries in him),

Thus saying simply for the love of her—

Athens—“O Hermes, called the Messenger,

God of the wings, since now the sails are set,

If aught was evil, evil now forget!

If aught was left undone, think not of this

But her remember, Hermes, what she is,

A city leaning to the sea, and shod

With freedom on her feet, as thou a god

With wings art poised for flight—O, if the gull

Were bird of thine, Hermes, be merciful.”

CAESAR AND ANTHONY.

AUGUSTUS CAESAR, aging by the sea,

Remembered, musingly, dead Anthony,

And wondered as he thought upon his days

Which had been better, laurel leaves or bays.

“Bays for the victor, when his fight is over,

But laurels” thought Augustus “for the lover.

That brown Egyptian woman, the fierce queen

Who with a serpent died—she came between

Him and the world’s dominion, whispering

‘Does empire burn so, has thy crown the sting

These lips have when they touch thee—thus and thus?

Choose then!’ ‘I choose!’ replied Antonius.”

“I wonder” thought Augustus as he lay

Watching the menial clouds of conquered day

Applaud with vehement reflection

The cold triumphant ending of the sun.

“The sun’s an emperor, and all the sky

Burns to a flame for his nativity,

And not less beautiful nor unattended

By conquered flocks of cloud he passes splendid,

Throwing his slaves this laminated gold.

Master in death, but in his death how cold!

But to have died astonished on a kiss

Had heat to the end and Anthony had this.”

THE DANCERS.

THIS was the way of it, or I forget

How visions end. The flaming sun was set

Or setting in a sky as green as grass,

Stained here and there like a window, where there was

A martyr-cloud with halo dipped in gold

Or red as the Sacred Heart is. From the old

Low house—a country house not built with hands

And of that country where the poplar stands

Whose leaves have shivered in our dreams—there came

With the rising moon the dancers to the same

Tune we have heard we scarce remember when,

Nor care so only that it sound again.

Each dancer wears a fancy for a dress,

This one with starlike tears is gemmed no less

Than that is crowned with roses as of lips

That kissed and do not kiss. There also trips

Pierrot, because we all have lost, and thin,

Cruelly swift, victorious Harlequin,

Because some find and keep, but both entwine,

Because she needs them both, with Columbine.

Then lanterns on the trees to radiant fruit

Burn till dawn plucks them, and the light pursuit

Of dancers on the lawn is done, and laughter

Of those who fled and those who followed after

Dies; to a little wind the darkened trees

Bend gravely and resume their silences.

BATTERSEA.

I HAVE always known just where the river ends

(Or seems to end) that I shall find my friends,

Who are my friends no longer, being dead,

And hear the ordinary things they said,

That now seem wonderful, some evening when

I take the Number Nineteen bus again

To Battersea. It will, I think, be clear

With stars behind the four great chimneys. Dear

In the moon, young and unchanging, they

Will cry me welcome in the boyish way

They had before they went to France, but I,

A boy no more, will greet them silently.

THE WOODCUTTERS OF HÜTTELDORF.

“The plan by which individual Viennese are allowed to obtain their own wood supplies has already been described by more than one observer. It will, however, in time to come appear so incredible, and it so completely sums up the misery of the people and the breakdown of civilization and administration, that no excuse is needed for placing it once more formally and definitely on record.

In the immediate neighbourhood of Vienna lies a forest known as the Wienerwald, the nearest point being on hills to the north, two or three miles from the centre of the city.

The two chief centres of wood collection are the suburbs of Hütteldorf and Dorhbach.

The prevalence of women and children among the collectors is the most painful feature of the proceedings.”

From “Peace in Austria,” by Sir W. Beveridge.

NOUS n’irons plus au bois: the woods are shut:

Les lauriers sont coupés: the laurels cut.

Thus love, when still his pitiful sweet cry

For youth and spring, his play-boys, sensibly

Touched at the heart. But now he does not care

What woods, what trees are standing anywhere.

For there’s no wood in the world to be found

That does not stab his feet, and the trees wound

His eyes with thorns—the eyes which did not see

In joy, but find their sight in misery.

There is a wood they named the Wienerwald.

There when the spring was new the throstle called

Spring to her ball-room, and the Viennese

Heard her light foot provoking the grave trees,

Half willingly at first, young leaves to stir,

That later passionately danced with her.

And here the cannon-fodder used to feed

The altar-fire of the older need,

And sweeter than the need of death. In spring

The Austrian boys saw love awakening

Here, and as English boys in English wood

Have given all to love, all that they could

These gave—their childhood, dawn’s relentless star

That is put out with kisses. These they gave

And buried childhood lightly in her grave

So that a man might hear her calling yet,

“Primrose farewell, good-morrow violet!”—

Might yet have heard her, but the woods are shut

To those who would return: the laurels cut.

There are many go to-day to Wienerwald,

But love does not go with them. He has failed

In the Great War, who had so little skill

In the Will to Murder, love who was the Will

To live and make live, but the War has shewn

His Will is treachery, and love’s alone

In a great wilderness. For if he cries

Aloud, they mock him in their Paradise—

The Angels of Armageddon. “This is he

Who ruled us, being blind, now let him see”

They say, “a prisoner, what we have done,

The priests of mankind’s last religion.

Let him look deep and celebrate in Hell

How we reverse the Christian miracle,

Stealing their spirits from the sullen swine

And consecrating them as yours and mine,

So that we rush together suddenly

Down a steep place, where by an empty sea

Our worshippers pile on a flaming wharf

The trees that were the woods at Hütteldorf.”

Ares, the god of battles, has prevailed.

At Hütteldorf, deep in the Wienerwald,

They go to the woods for fuel, and one sees

A child that beats upon the laurel trees

With starved small hands that hold an axe, and how

The spring returns to find a hooded crow

Waiting and waiting, as the thrush once waited

For childhood’s end. But this, it seems, was fated

That all should change, save only that these seem

Still unsubstantial as the lover’s dream,

As unsubstantial, but with blossoms set

That have no traffic with the violet

And primrose. Here the purple flowers of Dis

Burn their young foreheads and they fade with this,

Who find a different end and different haven,

Where the hooded crow is waiting with the raven.

In Wienerwald the starving Viennese

Have spoiled the woods and cut the laurel trees,

Nous n’irons plus au bois: oh love, oh love!

Will you not go the more because they prove

So shattered, the poor woods? and will you shut

Your heart, O love, because the trees are cut?

Les lauriers sont coupés, but you can heal

Even the broken laurel, and reveal

Where in the valley of death the children falter

That, though all else doth change, love does not alter,

And, though the woods were dead, there is a tree

You know of, love, planted in Calvary.

Go back to the woods; replant the laurel trees.

Still love than war hath greater victories,

And while the devils beat the warlike drum

Into their kingdom of peace the children come.

HEINE’S LAST SONG.

LIFE’S a blonde of whom I’m tired

(Being fair is just a knack

Women learn to be desired

By a Jew—who answers back).

Blonde, oh blonde, ye lost princesses

With the shadow in your eyes

As of bodiless caresses

Known ere birth in Paradise.

Little ears of alabaster,

Where like ocean in a shell

Gentle murmurs drown the vaster

Voice of rapture or of Hell.

Tender bodies—ah too tender

To be given or be lent

Unto love the money-lender

Who demands his cent per cent.

Thus you took a man and tricked him,

Life and ladies, to a will

In your favour, but the victim

Cheats you with a codicil.

All I had, you thought, was given—

Life and ladies, you were wrong:

In a poet’s secret heaven

There is always one last song.

Even he is half afraid of,

Even he but hears in part,

For the stuff that it is made of,

Ladies, is the poet’s heart.

Not for you, oh blonde princesses

Is that final tune, but I

Sing it drowning in the tresses

Of a darker Lorelei.

For her hair than yours is stranger;

Wilder lights are lost in hers

Where the heart’s immortal danger,

That you cannot know of, stirs.

Life and ladies, it is over:

Blonde asks all, gives nothing back;

You must find another lover,

For the poet chooses black.

Where death’s raven marriage blossom

Falls in clouds about her breast,

On his dark beloved’s bosom

Heinrick Heine is at rest.

IMPERSONALITIES.

THE SATYR.

“HOLLOW” he cries and “hollow, hollow.”

Mark how the creeping moon is yellow

On the cold stones, enmeshing feet

That are not soft, with blood not sweet.

Though in the night one cry his Name

The shuddering air shrinks from the aim;

And failing eddies will not stir

To let him through to Lucifer.

What answers where no echoes fly?

None where the moon looks balefully.

Unheard, far-off “O hollow, hollow”

The satyr crieth to his fellow.

BALDER’S SONG.

IT may be raining now, that first warm rain

That melts the heart of earth beneath the snows,

Our Northland snows (she feels the swimmer’s pain

Who catches breath, half-drowned, when the blood flows

Shuddering back into the frozen vein).

And did ye think I should not come again

At the long last in spring-time with the rain?

Or may be there is singing in the air

At building-time where the tall windy trees,

By sap and young leaves hurt, can hardly bear

The spring’s reiterated urgencies

That at the woods with actual fingers tear.

And did ye, when these songs are everywhere,

Of Balder, who first taught them song, despair?

Or it may be where once my altar stood

And where my worshipped name in prayer ascended,

Blue, like a trumpet, in the solitude

Harebells, that ring before the winter’s ended,

Have with the wind my litanies renewed.

Did ye forget (alas! that any could)

That I, the god of flowers, found these good?

And may be where the dog-rose remedies

With her wild flush the hedge, and spring begins,

Born of all these there trembles the first kiss

That from Valhalla brings the Paladins

And ladies, who for all the immortal bliss

Of heaven, have no joy as sharp as this.

Did ye not know in your own memories

That where are love and spring there Balder is?

It may be raining now, that first warm rain

That melts the heart of earth beneath the snows,

Our Northland snows (she feels the swimmer’s pain

Who catches breath, half-drowned, when the blood flows

Shuddering back into the frozen vein).

And did ye think I should not come again

At the long last in spring-time with the rain?

MARY THE MOTHER.

(Cradle Song.)

SO great a lady, so dear is she,

Princess in heaven, but mother to me!

When little Jesus lay in her arm

It was enough for him that he was warm.

When the small head at her bosom did nod

Did she remember that He was the God?

Or when she sang to Him low in His ear,

Did she say “Master” or did she sob “Dear”?

Was it the star on the manger that shone

Crowned her an empress, or was it her Son?

So great a lady to lie in a stall—

But only a mother (she thought) after all.

So great a lady, so dear is she,

Princess in heaven! but who does not see

How against Godhead, in spite of the Cross,

She holds to her bosom her Jesus that was?

APPLES.

WHEN there is no more sea and no more sailing

Will God go vintaging the wine-dark seas,

Reaping gold apples of the storm and trailing

To harvest home the lost Hesperides?

Will God, the gates that guard the river breaking,

Annul the blinding gesture of the sword,

And find the Tree, all other dreams forsaking,

Whose apples are the knowledge of the Lord?

Forsaking dreams—forgiveness and salvation,

Sins that were needless needlessly forgiven,

Hell where he knew vicarious damnation

And ghosts of rapture in a ghost of heaven?

No longer from self-knowledge then exempted

Shall God the apple tasting Eve repeat

Thus altered, saying, “By the devil tempted

Through all these years I could and did not eat.”

Thus at the last shall Man and Maker pardon

Eve’s ancient wrong, seeing that, though He cursed,

Knowledge, alone of those who used the Garden

God was afraid of apples from the first.

Thereafter as it was in the beginning,

Before the spirit moved upon the deep,

There shall be no more sea and no more sinning

And God will share with his beloved sleep.

THE SKIES.

THOUGH the world tumble tier by tier,

Down, down the broken galleries,

By day the sun would shine as clear

By night the moon would ride her seas.

Though man and all was meant by men

Upon the empty air were spent,

Irrevocably Charles’s Wain

Would swing across the firmament.

So large they are and cool the skies;

God’s frozen breath in dreams, or worse:

Beautiful unsupported lies

That simulate a universe.

THREE EPITAPHS.

I. FLECKER.

YOU have made the golden journey. Samarkand

Is all about you, Flecker, and where you lie

How youth and her beauty perish in the sand

They are singing in the caravanserai.

II. EDITH CAVELL.

WHO died for love, we use to nourish hate:

Who was all tenderness, our hearts to harden;

And who of mercy had the high estate

By us escheated of her right of pardon.

III. THE LITTLE SLEEPER.

THIS little sleeper, who was overtaken

By death, as one child overtakes another,

Dreams by his side all night and will not waken

Till the dawn comes in heaven with his mother.

TO HIM WHOM THE CAP FITS.

“What sword is left?” sighs England. Answer her

(For you must answer) “This—Excalibur.”

I.

THAT is the sword of England. Arthur drew

The blade at that last battle when he failed,

(Shadow among the shadows, who prevailed

Victorious in disaster). Harold knew

Its point in his heart at Hastings, and it flew

Out of the scabbard when King Richard sailed

And did not reach Jerusalem. It wailed

In the false hand that on the scaffold slew

Charles, and proud Balliol saw the light on it

Shining for Ridley through the flame; was seen

When Mary, Queen of Scotland, was a queen

On earth no longer, and when William Pitt

“England! O how I leave thee,” failing cried,

The sword, the sword, was with him when he died.

II.

THE line at Mons were privy to the blade,

When God and England seemed together lost,

And riding by the far Pacific coast

Admiral Cradock took its accolade.

These are its victories—to be afraid,

To hear thin bugles sounding “The Last Post,”

Until the blood creeps noiseless as a ghost

And cold, and all we cherished is betrayed.

That is the sword’s way. Those who lose shall have;

And only those who in defeat have known

The bitterness of death, and stood alone

In darkness, shall have worship in the grave.

Swordsman, go into battle, and record

How one more English knight has found his sword!

FRANCE.

TO-DAY you’ll find by field and ditch

The small invasion of the vetch:

And where they sleep rest-harrow will

Follow upon the daffodil.

These in their soft disordered ranks

Withstand and overcome the Tanks;

And the small unconsidered grass

Cries to the gunner “On ne passe.”

The corn outlasts the bayonet,

Whose blades no blood nor rust can fret,

Or only the immortal rust

Of poppies failing in their thrust.

The line these hold no force can break,

Nor their platoons advancing shake,

Whose wide offensive wave on wave

Doth make a garden of a grave.

These with the singing lark conspire

To veil with loveliness the wire,

While he ascending cleans the stain

In heaven of the aeroplane.

These in the fields and open sky

Reverse the errors of Versailles,

Who with a natural increase

From year to year establish peace.

For all the living these will cloak

The things they spoiled, the hearts they broke;

And where these heal the earth will be

For all the dead indemnity.

ALCHEMY.

WHEN Kew found spring, and we found Kew,

Gold was the London that we knew—

The gold of gold whose metal is

As yellow as the primroses.

London’s Lord Mayor, Dick Whittington,

In heaven heard the carillon

“Turn again;” London after all

Is paved with gold by Chiswick Mall.

But afterwards the town was sold

To a mad alchemist for gold,

Who used his art to change, instead

Of lead to gold, the gold to lead.

If where the streets to Hampstead twist

You meet a doting alchemist

Seeking lost gold, refuse him pity;

He changed us when he changed the city!

ORPHEUS.

WHAT Orpheus whistled for Eurydice

(While all the shades were silent, achingly

Holding out hands, and hands stretched evermore

In a vain longing for the further shore).

The blue smoke floats

Lazily in the dawn above the white

Flat roof you knew, and somewhere out of sight

A child is singing the old Linus song,

Sweeter because the baby voice goes wrong

—The little goatherd calling to her goats.

There’s a small hill

On which the olive trees you used to call

Athene’s little sisters, now grown tall,

Watch all day long the coming of the child,

And you’ll remember how the brook, else wild,

About these pastures suddenly grows still.

There’s such a peace,

Save where a wandering beast shakes on its bell,

You’d almost think the trees had learned a spell

From their wise sister (or from you) to bless

A baby frightened of the loneliness,

Tending her herd and waiting by the trees.

Ah! certainly

There are two things are stronger than the fates—

A lover’s song in Hell, a child that waits.

The shadows lengthen. Ere the night descend

On earth, O sweetheart, Mother, friend

Win out of Hell! Return Eurydice!

THE WIND.

WHAT is there left? The wind makes answer

“I saw the green leaves grow brown and fall;

I danced with the shadows, I the dancer

Among bare branches. For I,” he saith,

“Hear the thin music whistle and call,

Music, horn-music, the music of death.”

“There stands at the edge of the wood the player

Dark in the darkness, but I have seen,

Ere my feet were lifted, the branches stir.

Darker than dark, than light more fair,

Before I have come he slips between;

But I, the dancer,” wind saith, “do not care.”

“The leaves have fallen and who shall discover

What there is left in the blackened tree?

And who will know when the years are over,

Among bare branches if I,” wind saith,

“Dance where the shadows and music be,

Music, horn-music, the music of death?”

GABRIEL.

SUPPOSE I gave you what my heart has given—

A door to dreams, a little road to heaven.

Would you pass through the door, my dreams forgetting,

And turn the corner when my sun is setting?

So I should only have (as I have only)

Your hair remembered, eyes that left me lonely,

A mouth as cold as roses, and the kiss

Of Gabriel, sealing love’s defeat with this!

OPALS AND AMBER.

CALL it an age, call it a day,

What’s in the world with love away?

The sun a round and golden ghost,

The moon the shadow he has lost;

And spring herself for all her green

The bare and brown a pause between.

Call it an age, call it a day,

When love is gone, what’s there to say?

Opal or gold, amber or gray,

What’s in the world with love away?

Opal a pool of changeling fires,

Where the gold angel stirs desires

That do not heal Bethesda way

But only turn the amber gray.

Call it an age, call it a day,

When love is gone, what’s there to say?

Call it a dream, call it a play,

What’s in the world with love away?

With love away can a man clamber

To heaven by a rope of amber?

Or can an opal stretch a wire

To lead a girl to her desire?

Amber and opal—but I remember

Love that was better than opal or amber.

Call it an age, call it a day,

What’s in the world with love away?

AFTER BATTLE.

AFTER the fighting

Comes not sudden peace, but weariness;

A gloom no lighting

Of little lamps of jest or speech unravels,

But for the brain and body endless travels,

Twisting and turning like the lovers hurled

For punishment athwart the underworld,

Twisting and turning and no respite sighting.

After the living

Comes not relief, but a grey level gloom,

When the heart beats as in a padded room

With wild shapes moving—

Silence imploring and from silence flying,

Praying to life and all athirst for dying.

Tearing lost dreams and for the torn dreams weeping,

Fearing to wake, tumultuously sleeping.

. . . . . .

Death’s a poor leech with worn-out simples striving

To heal in vain the malady of living.

MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN.

WHEN the stir and the movement are over,

When you that had the lightness of a wind

Or the poise of some swift bird

Burn no longer in any man’s mind,

And your voice in no man’s heart is heard,

Who in the world will dare to be a lover?

Would any being hurt in the night be crying

“O God! her little mouth that with a kiss

Drank all a man; and—God! her weaving fingers!”

Would any of another dare say this?

Will there be other women, other singers?

I wish with you and me love might be dying.

DU BIST WIE EINE BLUME.

(Version.)

YOU have the way of a blossom,

Cold petal with April green,

And you melt the heart in the bosom

As your beauty enters in.

I will fold my hands together,

Asking of God for you

Always in April weather

Cold petal and colder dew.

CAMBRIDGE.

ALL that I know of Cambridge—

The colleges and that indulgent air

Of a great gentleman who is content

That lesser men should make experiment

With life, for which he does not vastly care—

Is that you tell me you were happy there.

All that I’ll say of Cambridge—

Though in her courts Apollo lose the art

Of immortality to find it where

Rupert was used to walk at Grantchester—

Is that for me Cambridge is but a part

Of greater beauties than inform your heart.

A ROOM IN BOHEMIA.

THE sun is shining in the August weather

In the little room and, I suppose,

Gilding the painted parrot on the wall,

The truckle-bed, the table and the rose

Of the poor carpet that we bought together.

And from the street the muted voices call

As though we saw, as though we heard it all.

VICTORY.

LET it be written down, while still the wound

Festers and there is horror in the world

At what was done and suffered, while unfurled

The wings of death are dark upon the ground.

Let it be written “Death we have not found

The worst, though death is evil, nor the curled

Fangs of disease, nor yet to ruin hurled

The tracery of old cities, when no sound

Is in their broken streets. But there’s an ape

Out of the slime into the spirit creeping,

That twists mankind back, back into the shape

That mumbles carrion. Here’s the cause for weeping.

Prognathous chin, slant forehead, eyes that rust

As their flame dies and smoulders into lust.”

CLEOPATRA.

WHY should I care for love? The urgent rose—

What does she promise the heart and what fulfill?

“Delight, delight” she whispers, and she goes ...

But love the rose outbidding is falser still.

Why should I care for love? But hush, oh hush!

What bird is singing in the dawn “Forget

The spring,” and, you,—have you forgotten, thrush?...

But love the thrush outsinging is falser yet.

Why should I care for love? Love does not care

Whether you care or do not care, says she!

But ask your lips how the rose smells in my hair,

If the thrush beats at my heart—here—Anthony!

MEDUSA.

IN your black hair are there not nightingales

Singing in the dark, and when you let it down

Is there no stir in the air of tiniest sails

That ever on lost seas of song were blown?

In your black hair the heart of Hyacinth

Laments the daylight he shall see no more,

And flowers are red as in the labyrinth

The red eyes of the crazy Minotaur.

In your black hair, Medusa, there are snakes

That twine themselves about Laocoon,

How soft, how warm! and how the poor heart breaks

Before they strike and turn it into stone.

THE JUNGLE.

TRUTH is the fourth dimension. By her grace

Motion, the idiot of time and space,

Grows reasonable, so that the spirit sees

Behind the aimless drag of categories

The moving centuries, whose gestures mirror

And dissipate the cloudy shapes of error.

O there’s the long way back, the dawns that scatter

Like startled birds about the spirit, and chatter

Of animal voices seeking lucid speech

In colonies of darkness. Truth can stretch,

Though motionless, and set a hatchet blazing

A path through the jungle where an ape is gazing

At the edge of a little light, with dripping muzzle,

Black writhing palms, and eyes a drowsy puzzle

Of fears and beastlike hopes. Then the light reaches

His pelt and holds him fast. In vain he snatches

At the sheltering trees, in vain the leafy dance

Down the long avenues of ignorance.

Knowledge and the pain of knowledge fly beside him,

And, where the leaves are darkest, clutch and ride him

Until he sloughs the shape of beast and can

Stand in the dawn upon his feet a man.

But the jungle is not cleared, and still the shapes

Of time and space and error move like apes.

THE PENCIL.

WITH this golden pencil—write

“Written words must serve for sight.

For the broken lights that stirred

Wedded eyes the complete word.

Written words the trembling nerve

Of the lover’s ear must serve.

Laughter’s done and tears are over—

Written words, instead, my lover.

Words that have no scent must tell

How the secret jonquils smell

In your hair, and words protest

There are jonquils at your breast.

Written words the gift must waste,

When the very air hath taste

Of your lip, the sweets that part

Love’s soft mouth and reach the heart.

Separable these await

For the fifth to consummate,

That are nothing, each alone,

But all heaven joined in one.

This, being lost, had hurt too much,

Here are words instead of touch.”

Therefore write and break the lead

“Love that was alive is dead.”

COLUMBINE.

IF any ask, O tell them that the moon

Was lit in heaven when Queen Ashtaroth

Beat at her lamp and fell upon the swoon

Of love that soars in fire to fall a moth.

If any ask, O tell them that for this

Priam’s great city of Troy was sacrificed,

For love that is as bitter as the kiss

Of Judas the Iscariot, slaying Christ.

If any ask, O tell them it is well,

Though love comes like the swallow and flies as soon:

Who has not found his heaven in the Hell

Of love unsatisfied beneath the moon?

THE CROWDER’S TUNE.

THE crowder’s tune

Down a street in Babylon—

His fiddle to the moon

With notes like stars that one by one

Glittered upon the empty street,

Glittered and laughed and went

(But there was a lisp of ghostly feet)

To build a firmament.

“Who walks by night in Babylon?

‘I,’ said a lady, ‘because

Of the wonderful thing I was,

And the beautiful things all done,

I walk in Babylon.’

Who seeks for a lady by night?

‘I,’ said a king, ‘My throne

Is empty in Babylon.

She fled from the light to the light,

I seek for a lady by night.’

Who calls by night in Babylon?

‘They,’ answered love, ‘Yes over and over

She calls to her God, but he to his lover,

And each of them walks by night alone,

And they will not meet in Babylon.’ ”

The crowder played

His little tune, almost

As though he were afraid

Of some forgotten ghost

Awakening,

And crying on the string

Of what was lost

And would not come

Again.

He feared in vain.

For the ghost, the ghost is dumb

Of love that is past over,

And the merciless laughter of the moon

Pursues the ghostly lover,

Till in the empty street

There’s an end of the lisp of feet,

And the crowder breaks his fiddle and the tune,

And all the stars are gone

In Babylon.

ENVOI.

PAST Buckhurst Hill the motor-bus

Takes and shakes the three of us.

When first we went, there were but two

In Epping Forest, I and you.

That summer as I understand

A forester from fairyland

Set a notice up, “No road,”

By the ways our feet had trod.

No one came and no one knew,

When the spring returned and blue

Flowers burned, how deep behind

Burned the blossoms of the mind.

No one guessed and no one heard

How beyond the singing bird,

Some one sang in solitude

In the wood within the wood.

No one watched the years go by

(Not even you, not even I),

In the wood alone apart

Green and waiting in the heart.

Till last week the forester

Heard a little footstep stir,

Took his notice down and smiled

At the coming of a child.

Conquering the solitude

A child is laughing in the wood.

Past Buckhurst Hill the motor-bus

Takes us back the three of us.

Printed at The Vincent Works, Oxford.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHYLOCK REASONS WITH MR. CHESTERTON, AND OTHER POEMS ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works provided that:

- • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

- • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

- • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

- • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

SHYLOCK REASONS WITH MR. CHESTERTON AND OTHER POEMS

DEDICATION.

CONTENTS.

PERSONALITIES.

SHYLOCK REASONS WITH MR. CHESTERTON.

THE UNKNOWN GOD.

I. Pheidias.

II. Paul.

CASSIO HEARS OTHELLO.

THE FIRST AIRMAN.

MARY. (Sister of Martha.)

THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION.

CAESAR AND ANTHONY.

THE DANCERS.

BATTERSEA.

THE WOODCUTTERS OF HÜTTELDORF.

HEINE’S LAST SONG.

IMPERSONALITIES.

THE SATYR.

BALDER’S SONG.

MARY THE MOTHER. (Cradle Song.)

APPLES.

THE SKIES.

THREE EPITAPHS.

I. FLECKER.

II. EDITH CAVELL.

III. THE LITTLE SLEEPER.

TO HIM WHOM THE CAP FITS.

I.

II.

FRANCE.

ALCHEMY.

ORPHEUS.

THE WIND.

GABRIEL.

OPALS AND AMBER.

AFTER BATTLE.

MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN.

DU BIST WIE EINE BLUME. (Version.)

CAMBRIDGE.

A ROOM IN BOHEMIA.

VICTORY.

CLEOPATRA.

MEDUSA.

THE JUNGLE.

THE PENCIL.

COLUMBINE.

THE CROWDER’S TUNE.

ENVOI.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE