Poems New and Old - John Freeman

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Forgot aside all lesser wrongs, and rose

       Against the spiritual evil of that threat

       That made them of dishonour slaves or foes.

       And who may but with pride remember how

       Not by ten righteous justice might be saved,

       But by unsaintly millions moving all

       As the tide moves when myriad tossed waves flow

       One way, and on the crumbling bastions fall;

       Then sinking backwards unopposed and slow

       Over the ruined towers where those vain angers raved.

       VI

      Creep tarnished gilded figures to their holes

       Who once walked like great men upon the earth

       Flickering their false shadows. Fear, like a hound,

       Hunts them, and there's a death in every sound;

       And had they souls sorrow would prick their souls

       At every heavy sigh the wind waved forth.

       … Into their holes they've crept, and they will die.

       Of them no more and never any more.

       Their leper-gilt is gone, and they will lie

       Poisoning a little earth and nothing more.

       VII

      —That justice has been saved and wrong been slain,

       That the slow fever-darkness ends in day,

       Nor madness shakes the pillared world again

       With the same blind proud fury; that in vain

       Whispers the Tempter now, "So pass away

       Strength, honesty and hope, and nothing left but pain!"

       That the many-voiced confusion of the night

       Clears in the winging of a spirit bright

       With new-recovered joy;—for this, O Light,

       Light Giver, Night Dispeller, praise should be.

       But praise is dumb from burning hearts to Thee.

       VIII

      But as a forest bending in the wind

       Murmurs in all its boughs after the wind,

       Sounds uninterpreted and untaught airs;

       So now when Thy wind over England stirs,

       The proud and untranslating sounds of praise

       Mingle tumultuous over our human ways;

       And magnifying echoes of Thy wind

       Rouse in the profoundest forests of the mind.

       IX

      And in the secret thicket where Thy light

       Is dimmed with starry shining of the night,

       Hearing these mingled airs from every wood

       Thou'lt smile serenely down, murmuring, "'Tis good."

       While Angels in the thicket borders curled

       Amid the farthest gold beams of Thy hair,

       Seeing on one drooped beam this distant world

       Floating illumined, cry, "Bright Lord, how fair!"

       Table of Contents

      When man first walked upright and soberly

       Reflecting as he paced to and fro,

       And no more swinging from wide tree to tree,

       Or sheltered by vast boles from sheltered foe,

       Or crouched within some deep cave by the sea

       Stared at the noisy waste of water's woe

       Where the earth ended, and far lightning died

       Splintered upon the rigid tideless tide;

      When man above Time's cloud lifted his head

       And speech knew, and the company of speech,

       And from his alien presence wild beasts fled

       And birds flew wary from his arrow's reach,

       And cattle trampling the long meadow weed

       Did sentry in the wind's path set; when each

       Horn, hoof, claw, sting and sinew against man

       Was turned, and the old enmity began;

      When, following, beneath the hand of kings

       Moved men their parting ways, and some passed on

       To forest refuge, some by dark-browed springs,

       And some to high remoter pastures won,

       And some o'er yellow deserts spread their wings,

       Thinning with time and thirst and so were gone

       Forgotten; when between each wandered host

       The seldom travellers faltered and were lost;—

      In those old days, upon the soft dew'd sward

       That held its green between the thicket's cloud,

       Walked two men musing ere the wide moon poured

       Her full-girthed weightless flood. And one was bowed

       With years past knowledge, and his face was scored

       Where light or deep had every long year ploughed—

       Pain, labour, present peril, distant dread

       Scored in his brow and bending his shagged head.

      Palsy his frame shook as a harsh wind shakes

       Complaining reeds fringing a frozen river;

       His eye the aspect had of frozen lakes

       Whereunder the foiled waters swirl and quiver;

       His voice the deep note that the north wind takes

       Drawn through bare beechwoods where forlorn birds shiver—

       Deep and unfaltering. A younger man

       Listened, while warmer currents in him ran.

      "Was not my son even as myself to me,

       As you to him showed his own life again?

       Now he is dead, and all I looked to see

       In him removes to you—less near and plain,

       Confused with other blood; and what will be

       I groping cannot tell, and grope in vain.

       For men have turned to other ways than mine:

       Yourself are less fulfilment than a sign,

      "Sign of a changing world. And change I fear.

       I have seen old and young like brief gnats die,

       And have faced death by plague and flood and spear:

       I have seen mine own familiar people lie

       In generations reaped; and near and near

       Age leads on Death—I hear his husky sigh.

       Yet Death I fear not, but these clouds of change

       Sweeping the old firm world with new and strange.

      "Son of my son, to whom the world shines new,

       You are strange to me for whom the world is old.

      

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