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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 9241 05271 1 46 
 
SONNETS FROM A PRISON CAMP 
 
SONNETS 
 
 FROM A PRISON CAMP 
 
 BY ARCHIBALD ALLAN BOWMAN 
 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, W. 
 NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXIX 
 

 Printed in Grtai Britam 
 iji Turnbull^ Sptart, Edinlmrgk 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Fob allowing this slight volume to see the light 
 of day I have but one excuse to offer. The situa- 
 tion to which these verses are the emotional 
 reaction represents a very real and serious piece of 
 experience. It is no mere poetical exaggeration 
 to say that in the first days of captivity at least, 
 the writing of the sonnets was a labour that " stood 
 between my soul and madness," and I cannot help 
 feeling that what, under one of the heaviest blows 
 that can befall a soldier, has meant so much to me, 
 may have in it something that will raise it at times 
 above the personal to the level of general human 
 interest. 
 
 It ought to be a pleasure to acknowledge gener- 
 osity in an enemy ; and I wish to express my 
 
vi Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 indebtedness to Captain Hohnholz, Commandant 
 of the Prison-Camp at Hesepe, to whose kind- 
 ness I owe it that I am able to offer the sonnets 
 as they stand for publication. 
 
 Offizier — Gefangenenlager 
 
 Heskpe, VJth August 191 8 
 
PROEM 
 
 He who hath never from behind toothed wire 
 
 Glimpsed, helpless, freedom's waiting amplitude, 
 
 Hath never watched, fast rooted where he stood 
 
 The embers of another day expire 
 
 In glory welling westward, like the pyre 
 
 Of some spent viking whom the Atlantic flood 
 
 Bears dwindling into that infinitude 
 
 That great souls end in ; then around the fire 
 
 Of his own musings, lodering through the bars 
 
 Of a shrunk life, hath sought awhile to limn 
 
 His lost felicity — can ne'er divine 
 
 The vastness of the common things that line 
 
 Life's banked horizon, nor hath learned to rim 
 
 Infinity with galaxies of stars. 
 
 Rastatt, 26th April 1918 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 In the Field . 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 The Nadib 
 
 
 
 
 19 
 
 On the March . 
 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 Eastatt .... 
 
 
 
 
 33 
 
 Hesepb .... 
 
 
 
 
 45 
 
 Thoughts op Home . 
 
 
 
 
 55 
 
 Influences 
 
 
 
 
 63 
 
 Watchwords and Maxims 
 
 
 
 
 91 
 
 England and Oxford 
 
 
 
 
 107 
 
 Home Thoughts Once More 
 
 
 
 
 117 
 
 Interlude . . . . 
 
 
 
 
 123 
 
 England 
 
 
 
 
 129 
 
SONNETS FROM A PRISON CAMP 
 
IN THE FIELD 
 
In the Field 
 
 Two hours before the mist of morning paled 
 Beneath a sun that never showed his flame, 
 And spectral day stole on the world with shame, 
 Into the night unsentinelled there sailed 
 The whistling inurder, sudden. Sudden wailed 
 Shrapnel, and breaking cloud, began to claim 
 Window and tile down clattering from the frame 
 Into the littered causeway. Dreamers quailed, 
 And propped themselves to listen, or rising, crept 
 From corridors by fitful candle ; then 
 Gathered scared children down the winding stair, 
 And only whispers passed where no one slept. 
 And thought drew rein, surmising wildly, when 
 The guns spoke murder over doomed Estaires. 
 
 Rastatt, 11th April 
 
Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 II 
 
 " Stand to ! " The warning word was hardly said, 
 
 And had not moved a man, when roimd and roimd 
 
 Forthwith the steaming kettles came to groiuid. 
 
 And the men swarmed to dip their hasty bread, 
 
 A soldier's morning bite. Still overhead 
 
 Murder flew hurtling, shell by shell, and found 
 
 Earth in some rearward purlieu, quenched in sound. 
 
 Breakfast began, but not a man was fed 
 
 Ere the growled " Fall in " menacingly proved 
 
 The dog's bone kinsman to a soldier's meal. 
 
 We mustered, lowering, hungry. The ranks grew ; 
 
 And it was seen the world again had moved. 
 
 As at the impulse of a groaning wheel. 
 
 Unto some issue, from that first " Stand to ! " 
 
 Rastatt, 27<A Aipril 
 
In the Field 
 
 III 
 
 Unto some issue, Whither ? No one dreamed 
 What menace crouched behind that banked mist, 
 Massing to bear down on us. No one wist 
 What power that shrapnel covered as it screamed 
 Futilely overhead. Scarce more it seemed 
 Than many a day had happed, of trials the least, 
 Vexatious interruption of a feast, 
 A broken night, a day spoiled ere it gleamed. 
 But still the thickening barrage combed the air ; 
 Still whistling shrapnel sputtered into smoke ; 
 And momently the cobbled roadway shook 
 With sickening thud where freighted monsters took 
 The earth with double thunder. Here and there 
 Elood trickled into hollows. No one spoke. 
 
 Rastatt, 27<A Aipril 
 
Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 IV 
 
 The bridge across the Lys ! A slender thread 
 
 To bind or bar thy holders to their own ; 
 
 But one span, small and narrow, lightly thrown 
 
 Over these sullen waters, lightly shed. 
 
 Upon thy planks the heavy-booted tread 
 
 Of men who seemed with sudden trouble grown 
 
 Haggard. "What are you?" "Durhams." 
 
 " What is known ? " 
 " Our billet down, our officers are dead. 
 We seek a new position further on." 
 Position ! Little recked they then how steep 
 The way, how sure the ending. They were gone, 
 And the keen harvester prepared to reap 
 In fresh fields. The mourne blanket of the dawn 
 Gathered the Durhams to eternal sleep. 
 
 Rastatt, 2&th April 
 
In the Field 
 
 The Church of Nouveau Monde ! Lead on. 'Tis 
 
 there 
 We concentrate. There hung in the void street 
 A local silence, which our suddeh feet 
 With lesser clangour startled in its lair, 
 While, strangely, not the brood that racked the air 
 Could break the boding hush of that retreat. 
 So in a thunder-storm the quickened beat 
 Of one's own startled pulses may impair 
 The silence of a room which the onfall 
 Of shafted noise o'erhead left deadly still. 
 Perchance the mind doth place as on some plan 
 The figured sounds which figured space do fill, 
 Far or more near. 'Tis sure the hodding van 
 Broke forward into silence virginal. 
 
 Rastatt, 29<A April 
 
Sonnets front a Prison Camp 
 
 VI 
 
 Waiting ! A soldier's sacrament of strain, 
 The eager cup of poising destiny. 
 That may not pass from him till it is dry, 
 And Death with peace, or Life unveils with pain. 
 Full many in this demented play must drain 
 That cup but once. Full many a soul must try 
 Its sharpness, till numbed sense hath lost the lie 
 Of a life's landscape, smitten from the brain. 
 Then in a falling twilight of the mind 
 Their way into that temple oft they grope. 
 Where from the true, strong human hand doth slip 
 Life's vesture of live colours, meaning, hope. 
 Purpose and fear, leaving dumb wont behind. 
 While the word " Fate " drops dreaming from the 
 lip. 
 
 Rastatt, 29<A April 
 
In the Field 
 
 VII 
 
 What of our comrades in the forward post ? 
 The fog of war but deepened with the day. 
 We knew that in that troubled ocean lay 
 Uncharted shoals, blind rocks, and treacherous 
 
 coast. 
 And what of yonder never-ending host 
 Of wan, unwounded Portuguese ? Ah, stay. 
 Pale sergeant. Do you bleed ? You came that 
 
 way ? 
 What is the tidings ? Is the front line lost ? 
 " Nothing is known of posts that lie before 
 Laventie. At the cross-roads hellish fire 
 Has cut them off who shouldered the first load." 
 Can they live through it ? " They can not retire, 
 Nor can you reinforce. I know no more 
 But this. No living thing comes down that road." 
 
 Rastatt, ZQth April 
 
lo Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VIII 
 
 Still waiting ! And the oozing hours have crept 
 The morning out in vapour shot with fire, 
 That struck now here now there in random ire 
 Bloodily something human down, yet kept 
 Alone stagnation at arm's length. Men leapt 
 Suddenly to their feet, smit with a dire 
 Surmise, collapsed, and huddled in the mire. 
 No whisper passed. Some seemed as though they 
 
 slept. 
 Only the stolid bearers wound about, 
 Shouldering their still and dabbled burdens white ; 
 Or sharply a famOiar voice rang out. 
 Comfortingly peremptory : " All right ? 
 Then keep together. Lie low. Do not doubt. 
 The hour will surely come when we shall fight." 
 
 Rastatt, 29fA April 
 
In the Field 1 1 
 
 IX 
 
 Does the first softening of the season break 
 The winter of Glenogle ? Do the sighs 
 Of wooing spring bid curling brackens rise 
 On hillsides out of nothing for love's sake ? 
 How sweet it is to think that harebells shake 
 Over Green Lowther, where the shadow lies 
 Far in the Enterkin, beneath blue skies ; 
 In trance to see the catkined willows quake. 
 Where April stirs along Loch Lomond side ; 
 To watch the sands of Morar gently take 
 The Atlantic swell that softly combs the Isles ; 
 And through the gorgeous portals of the Clyde 
 To hear at dawn the thudding paddle wake 
 The ever-brooding silence of the Kyles. 
 
 Rastatt, 1%th April 
 
12 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 X 
 
 There is a stfllness in the heart of sound, 
 
 How dire soever, if unloosed too long. 
 
 There is a time for pause in every song, 
 
 And in the whirling cyclone's heady round 
 
 A core of peace. So the taut soul is bound 
 
 With iron girdle, and with leathern thong 
 
 To the acute wheel of the sense's wrong 
 
 Only until the creaking spring is wound. 
 
 Then softening come sweet phantoms of far things, 
 
 Peopling the vacancy with joys imspent, 
 
 And visions of fair spaces left behind, 
 
 As if the genius of the place had wings. 
 
 And in the migratory hour were sent 
 
 To haunt awhile the silence of the mind. 
 
 Rastatt, 30^ Aptil 
 
In the Field 1 3 
 
 XI 
 
 Back from it, back ! The quelling mandate rang, 
 As the mad moment swooped upon the dream. 
 Straight heathered hillside, mountain, loch, and 
 
 stream 
 Flashed out of sight, and but the shrapnel sang. 
 And ^eater guns with stunning double clang 
 Rocked the earth under us. It well might seem 
 All hell was in the air — ^not without gleam 
 Of hope, the worst might prove the final pang. 
 Men crouched together, shaken as they took 
 That presence far too massive for their fear, 
 A quivering sense that something tidal welled 
 Over their perfect helplessness, and shook 
 The core of being ; yet that being held. 
 We knew a limber clattered to the rear. 
 
 Rastatt, SOfA A'pril 
 
14 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XII 
 
 'Twixt Nouveau Monde and Laventie there lies 
 A breastwork, where the clearing tempest found 
 Tossed remnants of the cydone come to ground, 
 Part English, Portuguese in part. The skies 
 Brightened, the housing spirit to entice 
 Into the air ; the string its length unwound. 
 And nightmare, having pinioned, now unbound 
 Our helplessness. The hour had come to rise. 
 Alas, the lifting battle-fog proclaimed 
 The line was gone, with those who bore the brunt. 
 Our comrades, whom the fierce Valkyries claimed, 
 Closing upon them in the bloody himt ; 
 And Verey lights at hand too well explained 
 The long and boding silence of the front. 
 
 Rastatt, 302A April 
 
In the Field 1 5 
 
 xin 
 
 Gray figures stealing, and a headlong dash 
 
 From hedge to house, from house again to hedge, 
 
 And fifty rifles levelled on the ledge ! 
 
 One instant on the aim, and then, the crash ! 
 
 He went to earth, and vanished in a flash. 
 
 And there once more was house, and there was 
 
 hedge. 
 With sprouting field, and farm, and ditch with 
 
 sedge, 
 And crop-head pollard row and leafless ash — 
 A cheerless landscape gray, and the profound 
 Loneliness of the battlefield. The next 
 Moment trench-mortar shells were on our head ; 
 Another, and the day was sealed and fixed 
 On front and flank. Among the stricken dead, 
 One in the skull, behind, his summons found. 
 
 Rastatt, \st May 
 
1 6 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XIV 
 
 — ^Found it behind, while yet his soul was set 
 
 And his eyes eager with the death he planned 
 
 For his foe forward, where he stood and manned 
 
 His gun upon the roaring parapet. 
 
 We knew the sign, the closing of the net. 
 
 The baying of the pack on every hand, 
 
 Terror of isolation. Still it fanned 
 
 Some flame within. We were not conquered yet. 
 
 Circled with unseen fire, we only heard 
 
 The bullets whistle round us, only saw 
 
 The solitude of battle. Nothing stirred. 
 
 And yet, unseen, we felt his forces draw 
 
 Upon us, earthed at length where earth had lured 
 
 Treacherously to cover. We endured. 
 
 Rastatt, \st May 
 
In the Field 17 
 
 XV 
 
 A man dashed in among us and caught breath. 
 
 A sergeant, resolute and silent, one 
 
 That we who knew him trusted. He had run 
 
 As men run only in the face of death. 
 
 Yet had not fled. What is it that he saith ? 
 
 " The game is all but up, the end begun. 
 
 Live men we shall not see another sun. 
 
 Laventie North has fallen, a feast of death. 
 
 'Tis your turn, sir. Your left is in the air, 
 
 And through the breach, five hundred yards away. 
 
 His fours have marched on SaUly and Estaires." 
 
 Column of fours ? No ! Then God save the day I 
 
 These breastwork trenches ! — 'Twas as if there 
 
 snapped 
 Some devilish mechanism on us— trapped ! 
 
 Rastatt, SOife April 
 
1 8 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XVI 
 
 How it befel ? — ^The overreaching arm, 
 
 Bombs ; and he was among us. In his plan 
 
 Surprise completed what surprise began. 
 
 The treacherous shelter of a too-near farm, 
 
 A ditch along a road, a false alarm. 
 
 Thirty yards of the open ; in the van 
 
 A desperado running — ^How he ran ! — 
 
 And the pack had us. Hands up and disarm ! 
 
 — It is the end of all, the bitter end. 
 
 The unpardonable, though ineluctable, 
 
 A breach in life no living now will mend ; 
 
 The sin that sinned not ; fell not, yet a fall. 
 
 One thought burned in the brain : How dear it 
 
 cost 
 England to gain what I this day have lost ! 
 
 Rastatt, \st May 
 
THE NADIR 
 
 18 
 
The Nadir 2 1 
 
 There is no moment in the life of man 
 More potent to subdue the stuff that binds 
 His manhood into one than that which finds 
 The work the founders of his race began, 
 And centuries enlarged, untU its span 
 Encompasses a nation, bodies, minds 
 And institutions, scattered to the winds 
 Out of his life, of which it held the plan. 
 And with the sense of something sacred sold, 
 His heritage, and branded with the crime 
 Against the ages, from the lowest pit, 
 Gathered for judgment meet, his eyes behold, 
 Tier after tier upon the banks of time. 
 The generations of his fathers sit. 
 
 Rastatt, \st May 
 
22 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 II 
 
 One moment and his reeling world has rolled 
 
 Back into ages now no longer fit 
 
 For human dwelling. Here exalted sit 
 
 The cruel strong, and, with the cunning bold, 
 
 Possess the meek's inheritance, and hold 
 
 The good man in subjection — ages knit 
 
 With blood and iron, and with arson lit, 
 
 Crusted with murder, wanton, fierce and cold. 
 
 And England, who so mightily championeth 
 
 That freedom forced from us (our guards were met, 
 
 And we went, speechless — ^to a living death) 
 
 — ^England — a new light breaking on me, set 
 
 My brain aworking — ^England lives ! The breath 
 
 That moment spared I hold for England yet ! 
 
 Rastatt, \st May 
 
ON THE MARCH 
 
 a 
 
On the March 25 
 
 Never wound cortege more exceeding slow, 
 Nor mourners to more melancholy tones, 
 Than that wan wending, musicked by the moans 
 Of wounded men, whom pity bade us show 
 That much of tenderness. Nor friend nor foe 
 Spoke in the heavy language of these groans, 
 But stark mankind, whose utter anguish owns 
 A common nature, in a common woe. 
 Ftdl many a mile of weary footing sore, 
 By miry side tracks, not unkindly led ; 
 And each unwounded man his burden bore 
 On stretcher or in blanket, ransacked bed. 
 Duck-board uprooted, hand-cart, unhinged door. 
 We left behind the dying and the dead. 
 
 Rastatt, 2nd May 
 
26 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 II 
 
 Hour followed hour, and slowly on we wound. 
 Till wan day turned to front the gradual west % 
 And with day's waning waned the dream of rest 
 For the worn bearers, whom the twilight found 
 Voyaging no-man's gray, wide-watered ground. 
 Their shoulders bowed and aching backs distressed ; 
 Isthmused between deep pools, and sorely pressed 
 To foot the flanks of many a slippery mound ; 
 While floundering convoys, till the light was gone. 
 Across the perilous space their drivers nurse, 
 Limber and gun, by frighted horses drawn. 
 Whose plunging swerve that bogged their burdens 
 
 worse. 
 Provoked Teutonic fury, well laid on 
 With sounding whipcord and sonorous curse. 
 
 Rastatt, 2nd May 
 
On the March 27 
 
 III 
 
 And darkness fell, and a great void of space, 
 
 As if to bar our further going on, 
 
 Unfeatured, huge, gloomed o'er us. No light 
 
 shone. 
 Strength, too, scarce held sufficient now to trace 
 The squalid reaches of this dismal place ; 
 And silence settled near and far upon 
 That vacancy at length — ^our last guide gone. 
 Night hid each from his comrade, face from face. 
 As is a voyage through the uncharted waste 
 Of seas, unpiloted by any star, 
 Alone, unmooned, uncomforted, unplanned ; 
 So forward still in silent pain we paced. 
 Nor light of moon nor pharos gleamed from far 
 Across the boding gloom of that lost land. 
 
 Rastatt, 3rd May 
 
28 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 IV 
 
 We came to Aubers at the dead of night, 
 
 And found the semblance of that circled hell. 
 
 Which Dante once, damnation's pains to tell, 
 
 Paced out in darkness, agony and fright. 
 
 In that blank lazarette no kindly light 
 
 On bending form of nurse or surgeon fell. 
 
 But darkness and barred doors proclaimed too well 
 
 The piteous end of long-endured plight. 
 
 No room was there in stable or in stall, 
 
 Nor roof to shelter cattle while they eat, 
 
 Where wounded men could shelter from the blight 
 
 Of the foul dew that drizzling covered all. 
 
 But in the open and the squelching street 
 
 We left them to endure the drenching night. 
 
 Rastatt, 3rd May 
 
On the March 29 
 
 There is a garden where the whispering breeze 
 Perchance has wooed the lilacs in the spring. 
 Where still perchance at dawn a few birds sing, 
 And love goes nesting in the willow-trees. 
 But night's ear now caught other sounds than these, 
 And darkness, bending, shrouded with his wing 
 What from an iceberg scalding tears might wring. 
 The glowing core of any furnace freeze. 
 Thick as the crimsoned leaves of autumn fall, 
 And crimsoned, too, and torn, and crushed as they 
 ('Twas the wet hand that told it) over all, 
 Moaning and writhing in their pain they lay ; 
 And none to turn their faces to the wall. 
 And none to close their eyes, and none to pray. 
 
 Rastatt, Uh May 
 
30 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VI 
 
 So where the wide and shallow beaches bound 
 The ceaseless moiling of the North Sea hoar. 
 And on the sands the rounding billows pour 
 Their majesty of waters to the ground ; 
 As one by one the rising breakers pound 
 The beaten salt sands of the yeasty shore, 
 Their bursting charges' momentary roar 
 Dies in a background of prevailing sound — 
 Thus hour by hour the moaning did prevail 
 Over night's stillness, rose, and swelled, and died 
 In the sad level of a murmuring wail. 
 Like ocean's moan with voices multiplied 
 Along the reaches of the soimding graile. 
 The west wind wrestling with the flowing tide. 
 
 Rastaxt, 5^ May 
 
On the March 3 1 
 
 VII 
 
 The last march opened with the sudden blaze 
 
 Of howitzers upon the face of night. 
 
 Waving us onward ere the laggard light 
 
 Of morning broke down transport-crowded ways. 
 
 Next to the first was this the bitterest phase 
 
 Of our humiliation. Yet 'tis right 
 
 To chronicle some kindness, and requite 
 
 Our armed custodians with this word of praise. 
 
 By Fournes, by Haubourdin, the endless reel 
 
 Of marching men ran out its windings slow. 
 
 Till near day's end, nigh broken on the wheel 
 
 Of hunger, and scarce longer fit to go. 
 
 Within the moated Citadel of Lille 
 
 The sharper pang gave place to deeper woe. 
 
 Rastatt, 5ih May 
 
32 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 vni 
 
 — ^The deep woe of the mind when prison walls 
 First darken it with shadow, throbbing hot 
 To meet the outrage, as the bolts are shot, 
 The locks ground home, and the long silence falls. 
 And next a settling helplessness appals 
 The sinking soul, as if that hour should blot 
 One's name out of the Book, as if one caught 
 Of life's retreat the hurrying last footfalls. 
 Where once a vision smiled of ranked days 
 Drawn on life's vista'd curtain rich and vast, 
 Only a gulf now yawns. Of all the plays 
 Played out in visions, we have played the last. 
 The future bankrupt, 'tis the present pays ; 
 And of life's triple span, remains — ^the Past. 
 
 Rastatt, 5<A May 
 
RASTATT 
 
Rastatt 35 
 
 Yet morning comes with pageantry of fire. 
 
 And evening falls with majesty of flame, 
 
 And every hour hath something to reclaim 
 
 The waste of life, slow wilting behind wire. 
 
 It were a doleful dungeon that could tire 
 
 Nature's incessant carefulness to shame 
 
 Sheer stalemate from each thing that lives, and 
 
 claim 
 All motion for her universaljchoir. 
 Thus day by dreary day the chargM hours 
 Pass influence from the sweetness of the hills 
 Across these cages, and the scent of flowers 
 Is wafted, and the fragrant dew distils. 
 And unimaginable stir of powers 
 From the deep sense of woods divinely thrills. 
 
 Rastatt, Ith May 
 
36 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 II 
 
 Two silent influences mainly move 
 The captive's mind, not wholly sunk in sloth. 
 Nor lost in carnal craving — dangers both 
 That to the core the sterling manhood prove. 
 One is the sense of shrinkage, of the groove 
 In which the soul enshuttled — O how loth ! — 
 Feels stoppage of life's pulse, arrested growth. 
 Heart-sickness which no medicine can remove. 
 The other wakens when departing night 
 Throws up the windows of the spacious morn 
 Upon a new day pulsing with new light ; 
 And from the hill the hrniter with his horn 
 Sends down imagined valleys strains that smite 
 The spirit with the sense of something bom, 
 
 Rastatt, ttk May 
 
Rastatt 37 
 
 III 
 
 Within these cages day by day we pace 
 The bitter shortness of the meted span ; 
 And this and that way variously we plan 
 Our poor excursions over the poor place, 
 Cribbed to extinction. Yet remains one grace. 
 For neither bars nor tented wire can ban 
 Full many a roving glance that dares to scan 
 The roomy hill, and wanders into space. 
 Yea, and remains for ever unrepealed 
 And imimpaired the free impetuous quest 
 Of the mind's soaring eye, at length unsealed 
 To the full measure of a life possessed 
 Awhile, but never counted, now revealed 
 Inestimable, wonderful, unguessed. 
 
 Rastatt, tth May 
 
38 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 IV 
 
 The long day waned beneath refulgent skies, 
 And evening sunshine bathed the hilltops round, 
 Where on the sudden frona the level ground 
 Pine-vestured, solemn, summit by summit rise 
 The tops of the Black Forest. Wistful eyes 
 Wandered from peak to peak, as if to soimd 
 Their mystery, if perchance there might be foimd 
 Some healing essence there, some glad surprise. 
 Long strove the puzzled spirit, vainly yearned 
 Into that alien soul to force its way ; 
 When suddenly — ^the mystic rune was learned ! 
 And in an upland glen remote and gray 
 There moved a presence known and last discerned 
 In Glendaruel on a morn of May. 
 
 Rastatt, tth May 
 
Rastatt 39 
 
 O May ! O month of months divinely dear, 
 Which severest, amidst the toil and strife 
 Of Nature's round, as with a glittering knife, 
 A perfect segment from the varying year ! 
 Month of entrancing spaces, wide and clear. 
 Calling us to the open, thick with life. 
 All leaf and lamb and freshness, welling, rife 
 With blossom — can it be that thou art here ? 
 O that it were in some sweet Scottish strath, 
 Backed by the mountains, watered, green and wide, 
 Where the Tay laves in shallow crystal bath 
 His pebbles, or the Forth's meandering tide 
 Receives Dumyat's shadow o'er his path. 
 And young light breaks down Ochill's mottled side. 
 
 Rastatt, %lh, May 
 
40 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VI 
 
 As the lone searcher, crouching o'er his glass. 
 Beside the window while the light is high, 
 Doth moved therein the forms of things descry 
 Invisible else to conmion Aasion crass ; 
 Spirilla, the amoeba's sprawling mass, 
 With gliding infusoria sailing by — 
 And marks each vestige with entranced eye. 
 Glimmer, emerge and clear, dissolve and pass ; 
 So in that optic lens, where never yet 
 The sun prevailed, beneath my prison wall. 
 One-windowed to the past, but brightly lit 
 By the eye's own pure light, a swarm of small 
 And fleeting memories, else forgotten, flit. 
 Trivial, yet entrancing to recall. 
 
 Rastatt, 9iA May 
 
Rastatt 41 
 
 VII 
 
 Oft at the hour when night's aerial spring 
 Raters with dew the beauty of the morn, 
 What time another rosy day is born, 
 Along these lanes the echoing footsteps ring 
 Of marching men, who to their marching sing. 
 Deep-voiced, light-hearted. Yet they do not scorn 
 Due pause and measure, and the theme well-worn 
 From the full heart of Germany they bring. 
 But we, whose fathers once in songs as fine 
 Unburdened hearts as full, and with the power 
 Of our dear country pulsing in each line. 
 Scorn to remember England, and to our 
 Incomparable heritage of song 
 Prefer the tinkle of some mean ding-dong. 
 
 Rastatt, Qth May 
 
42 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VIII 
 
 All is not well with England. Her great heart 
 Beats faultily and to no music set. 
 She hath her moods, suspicions, and doth fret 
 The daylong hour, by night doth toss and start. 
 Oft she stands dreaming in the crowded mart. 
 'Tis true that this distemper doth not yet 
 The deeper functions of her life beset, 
 And mightily she plays her mighty part. 
 Yet sometimes in this tempest the heart fears 
 Whether, so faulted, the old anchor grips. 
 And shall we find, we ask, when the sky clears, 
 England still mightier than England's slips ? 
 Let our own past proclaim it. Ifet the years 
 Advance and set their trumpets to their lips. 
 
 Rastatt, %th, May 
 
Rastatt 43 
 
 IX 
 
 The root of our infirmity is found 
 
 In English liberty, grandly achieved, 
 
 Yet little understood and ill conceived. 
 
 And sprouting rank from the uncultured ground. 
 
 Too much the thought prevails that man unbound 
 
 Is man made free, a life oft unretrieved 
 
 From chaos by a content ; undeceived 
 
 Only when licence runs the ship aground. 
 
 O England ! Mother ! whom thine every child 
 
 Loves, surely, to the last, forgive that some 
 
 Must fear the loss of thy benignant strength 
 
 Through the mind's error — ^lest, too freely wild, 
 
 Thy liberty of indifference become 
 
 A liberty of impotence at length. 
 
 Rastatt, ^th May 
 
44 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 X 
 
 There is no single foot of English soil, 
 Howe'er defaced, that is not holy ground. 
 There is no spot where great souls more abound, 
 Or where man's greatness is more truly royal. 
 Who hath o'ertopped our Shakespeare ? Who by 
 
 toil 
 Of kingly thought more lofty, more profoimd. 
 Than Newton e'er from heaven's majestic round 
 Brought home at night a more stupendous spoil ? 
 One thing I find not well. In our reserve 
 We oft-times cloak our excellence, ashamed 
 Not of our imperfections, but our Best ; 
 And what is finest, most our own, we serve 
 In some mean dish, or pass it by unclaimed, 
 Leaving the noble in us unexpressed. 
 
 Rastatt, %ih May 
 
HESEPE 
 
 46 
 
Hesepe 47 
 
 A lonely camp and small amidst the miles 
 
 Of the WestphaJian plain, where islanded 
 
 In the green waste our simple lives are led 
 
 Out of the troubled world. Here morning smiles 
 
 Splendidly, and the mustering twilight wUes 
 
 To a strange sense of peace consummated 
 
 Over these low-hung woods, where setting red 
 
 And oval the sun the yearning eye beguUes. 
 
 Then as the white and sheeted vapour steals 
 
 Along the flats lagoon-like, comes a breath 
 
 Of anguish from the void, where still is hurled 
 
 Nation on nation ; and the spirit feels 
 
 A tidal presence of o'erwhelming death 
 
 Stir through this weird backwater of the world. 
 
 Hesepe, 19^A May 
 
48. Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 II 
 
 How hard it is to think upon this shoal 
 Of Inanition that the world's ablaze. 
 How hard to link these lazy summer days 
 With ends and issues that will not unroll 
 Their length in aeons — mankind's fittthest goal. 
 Perpending in the thick and murderous haze 
 Of yonder battle-hurricane that lays 
 Legions to rest till the last tattoo roll. 
 On sun-beat sand the busy ants deploy ; 
 Industrious spiders ply their little looms ; 
 With brush and pencil or with book we toy. 
 The quiet evening nears ; the beetle booms. 
 God blazes at the world. Hell gapes for joy. 
 And Europe whitens with those nameless tombs. 
 
 Hesefe, 30^A May 
 
Hesepe 49 
 
 III 
 
 Scanted of life and vented on this shore, 
 
 Where but the salt and sailless ocean plies 
 
 His tide of time with soulless fall and rise, 
 
 We conn the unfeatured waste ftom pole to pole. 
 
 Daily the gray remorseless waters roll 
 
 Out of the blank of gray remorseless skies. 
 
 And nothing happens. Then we close sick eyes, 
 
 And sadly the soul communes with the soid — 
 
 When often o'er night's face a sudden glow 
 
 Of Boreal splendour palpitating plays. 
 
 And the long runners, shaking tfess-like, show 
 
 Our life's plan in a vision which betrays 
 
 Our secrets to our pillows ; and we know 
 
 Our selves more clearly than in happier days. 
 
 Hesepe, Uh June 
 
50 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 IV 
 
 When in this deep Re-entrant's stillen shade, 
 What hour night's middle watches change reliefs, 
 The mind compiles the roster of its griefs. 
 Before the inward eye there oft parade 
 Life's serried loves, appointed and arrayed 
 For high inspection, potentates and chiefs. 
 And armed retainers whom some bond enfeoffs. 
 And all precisely marshalled grade by grade. 
 Then we discern at length where each doth stand, 
 In front or rear, and what the rank they bear ; 
 The acquainted Mass, the Intimates, the band 
 Of such as do the forward stations share. 
 And last the One with none on either hand. 
 And thou art She, whose ring and seal I wear. 
 
 Hesepe, Uh June 
 
Hesepe 5 1 
 
 V 
 
 What time in empty hour awhile relaxed, 
 
 Around my cage's circuit I have paced, 
 
 Sunk in myself, and broodingly have traced 
 
 These late appalling issues, I have taxed 
 
 My country with a weakening will : " Thou 
 
 slack'st 
 Thy effort, England." Then some sight hath braced 
 My soul, and from my mind the doubt effaced. 
 England, it is not energy thou lack'st ! 
 I felt it when one morn there sudden fiew 
 Around the camp new life and boisterous cheer, 
 Unlike the mood of those who hitherto 
 Our wants supplied, and something did endear 
 The noise of labour to us, and we knew 
 That English orderlies at length were here. 
 
 Hesepe, 20/A June 
 
52 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VI 
 
 My Countrymen I The years that have gone by 
 Since Hengist came with Horsa from the sea, 
 Find the same substance in you, fiercely free, 
 Yet of that fundamental liberty, 
 The soul's state, oft unable to descry 
 The deeper import, your simplicity, 
 Your limit, only natural chivalry 
 Redeeming what your insight doth deny. 
 Unskilled to conn the inwardness of things. 
 There is a health about you keeps you clean. 
 Derisive of all high pretence that chimes 
 Not with your plainness, sound. Your laughter 
 
 rings 
 Over hard toil, and all things grandly mean 
 Your humour shatters, punctures, or sublimes. 
 
 Heskpe, 22nd June 
 
Hesepe 53 
 
 VII 
 
 With little tasks we wile the hours away. 
 
 Each bringing shyly forth his piteous store 
 
 Of erudition, oft-times dubious lore, 
 
 Since memory cupboards all we dare to say. 
 
 One tells us how to mine, one how to lay 
 
 A crop of good Rhodesian maize. Nay more. 
 
 The skirts of metaphysics we explore. 
 
 And touch the dread fringe of psychology. 
 
 O to be hidden here amongst the seams 
 
 Of History's garment, while the whole world rocks 
 
 Upon its base ! When every day that gleams 
 
 Tells us that England still against all shocks 
 
 Raises her front ; and starting from our dreams, 
 
 Each morning Hesepe the lonely mocks ! 
 
 Hesepe, 30<A May 
 
THOUGHTS OF HOME 
 
 65 
 
7 houghts of Home 5 7 
 
 As are the features of some well-loved face, 
 On which a life's prolixity is writ 
 In moving characters much conned and fit 
 Across a single soulful ground to trace 
 Feeling and thought and purpose, like the grace 
 Which motion adds to loveliness (there flit 
 The spirit's shades, and there the lamp is lit 
 That lights twin souls to a lifelong embrace) ; 
 So to the city-dweller hath the town, 
 Much conned, its moving physiognomy. 
 Which oft in exile, as the sun goes down, 
 Teams in the caverned dusk of memory 
 With haunting visions of dear streets, that crown 
 Night's sorrow with entrancing imagery. 
 
 Hesefe, 19^A May 
 
 H 
 
58 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 Does the slant touch of early light awake 
 
 The sirens on the Clyde, and fling the door 
 
 Wide on the city's rousing all-day roar ? 
 
 Are the streets well a-clatter ? Do they break 
 
 From tram and train, that travelling host, and take 
 
 The town by storm ? Does gathering traffic pour 
 
 Over the tide-line! of night's silent shore, 
 
 Into the spaces, till the cobbles quake ? 
 
 While down the river, crowded to the brink 
 
 With huddled shipyards, many a loaded quay, 
 
 Ten hundred thousand volleying hammers dink ; 
 
 And the slow homing liner booms to see 
 
 The ever-coiling waters still a-wink 
 
 With mirrored shipping freighted for the sea. 
 
 Hesepe, \%th May 
 
Thoughts of Home 59 
 
 III 
 
 Ah me, I dream of what they do at home 
 
 This Sabbath sunrise of the early prime ! 
 
 The slumbering city waking to the chime 
 
 Of opening church-bells, when the sun hath clomb 
 
 Full half-way up the hollow of heaven's dome ; 
 
 The leisured family muster, the sublime 
 
 Jollity and the uplift of the time 
 
 That sets the week- worn spirit free to roam ; 
 
 The walking to the kirk, the solemn hour 
 
 With the Creator, lapsing at the close 
 
 Into the sweet expansiveness that plays 
 
 Round the church door, when from the too tense 
 
 power 
 Of prayer and praise the natural spirit flows 
 Back to its level, — ^That was in past days. 
 
 Heskpe, 19<A May 
 
6o Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 IV 
 
 What do they do io-day ? What form of fear 
 Haunts the now voided chambers of their life, 
 Troubling its ancient tenor, parent, wife, 
 Survivors of the broken circle dear 
 In the old home enisled, as in some drear 
 Interspace of existence, tUl the strife 
 Is overblown, and but the echoes rife 
 Volley adown the days stUl left them here ? 
 How they must suffer ! — Yet these later shocks 
 Displace not from my brain the life it knew 
 Before the Power that our planned journey mocks. 
 Over our faring war's dark glory drew ; 
 And when my miser mind its store unlocks. 
 It takes out treasures rather old than new. 
 
 Hesefe, 20^A May 
 
Thoughts of Home 6i 
 
 So thus I picture it, not as life lies 
 Now writhing, but as when the days and nights 
 Followed each other in unmarked delights ; 
 Nor noted we the measure of the prize 
 Till all was over. Now the spirit cries. 
 What time encroaching Inanition blights, 
 For but the phantom of its past, and fights 
 Extinction with its memories. Let them rise ! 
 Let me dissemble that as in past days 
 The crystal fountain with delicious flow 
 Of bursting social joy unconscious plays 
 Over the garden close, where row by row 
 The flowers of life in such profusion blaze 
 That their own loveliness they do not know. 
 
 Hesepe, IQth May 
 
62 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VI 
 
 Day follows night, and night returns to day 
 Through all the enchanting stages of the spring ; 
 And exile lengthens out to months that fling 
 Their shadow further, and my life grows gray ; 
 Grays even with the sun's increasing ray ; 
 While forward still the heading heats do wing 
 Into the year, that softly rounds his ring 
 To midsummer, and Jime is on the way : 
 The perfect season, when the hawthorn blows 
 Down cream-white Scottish hedges, and the spent 
 Airs of the evening gently swaying dose 
 Tired eyes upon it, heavy with its scent ; 
 While on the Downs the beating sunlight glows. 
 And sends the wildering roses over Kent. 
 
 Hesepe, 21$^ May 
 
INFLUENCES 
 
 «3 
 
Influences 65 
 
 When in the waking visions of the night 
 
 I travel back the miles my feet have worn 
 
 Since with a cry my spirit was reborn, 
 
 There stirs again the anguish and delight 
 
 Felt first as each new vista on the sight 
 
 Swam in the luminous duskiness of morn, 
 
 And the soul quested down the long leagues, torn 
 
 With its own thirst for vision and more light. 
 
 One realm in thought I near with awe profound, 
 
 Where hangs the Slav for ever on his tree. 
 
 Bedewed with sorrow, with contrition crowned, 
 
 And thorns of perfected humility, 
 
 The holy flowering of that cursed ground ; 
 
 And at the mighty portals Titans three. 
 
 Hesepe, 21«/ May 
 
66 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 II 
 
 Russia, thy bitter sorrows partly spring 
 From the deep cleavage which, as with a knife, 
 Severs what is most native in thy life 
 From what thy troubled history doth bring 
 Out of dark days that threatened once to wring 
 That life itself from thee. The very strife 
 That heals our Europe through thy pains, is rife 
 With thine own Tragedy, still on the wing. 
 Here stand thine institutes, designed to sway 
 A local life within thee, Zemstvo, Mir, 
 And Duma, people's parliaments ; and here 
 The iron empire with the feet of clay. 
 That froward issue of the Olden day 
 When Ivan's legions laid the Tartar spear. 
 
 Hesepe, 22nd May 
 
Influences 67 
 
 III 
 
 The other cause behind the ages lies, 
 
 A-swelter in the elemental yeast, 
 
 Where yet thou lay'st fermenting for the feast 
 
 Of nationality, thine opening eyes 
 
 Turned longingly to where the sun doth rise, 
 
 And thy great spirit, when the ferment ceased. 
 
 For ever oriented to the East, 
 
 Mysterious, helpless, beautiful and wise. 
 
 Thence while the bitter ages onward run. 
 
 And the fierce West doth rend a path through time, 
 
 Thou for the nations from the healing sun 
 
 Draw'st healing still, and in the teeth of crime 
 
 Provest by many a bloodless victory won. 
 
 Than this world's pride of power Love more sublime. 
 
 Hesepe, 22nd May 
 
68 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 IV 
 
 Who is it loometh o'er the Steppes at e'en, 
 
 A giant from the sunrise of man's race, 
 
 Statured of eld, that immemorial face 
 
 Hewn out of Ararat, in which we glean, 
 
 And in the froward, patriarchal mien, 
 
 An old tale told in many a fm-rowed trace, 
 
 Moulded before the Sphynx crouched in her place, 
 
 By passion uncontrollable and clean. 
 
 For he hath sat with Abram in the tent. 
 
 And gazed on Hebron, till the blue heaven broke 
 
 Over them into stars. Then he went on 
 
 Down, all the ages ageless and unbent, 
 
 Till in this later world of lesser folk 
 
 'Mongst men he towers the eternal Mastodon. 
 
 Hesefe, 23rd May 
 
Influences 69 
 
 And all that man hath felt since man hath known 
 
 Life first within him, aye, and woman too. 
 
 Conceived and manifolded in him, drew 
 
 To limitless creation, widely sown 
 
 On teaming soil o'er which his breath had blown. 
 
 Magnificently carnal, through and through. 
 
 Each taste of the green earth, the brown, he knew. 
 
 And tasted deep, and Joyed, and made his own : 
 
 The boundless steppe, to which the Sky bends down, 
 
 The forest where the eternal shadows sleep. 
 
 The sowing and the mowing and the frost ; 
 
 The village and the pleasures of the town. 
 
 And birth and death and love, and the starred deep 
 
 Of heaven by night ; and here his soul was lost ! 
 
 Hesefe, 28rd May 
 
yo Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VI 
 
 Tolstoy is great in art, in thought not great. 
 
 Yet his thought troubles, oft-times shivering 
 
 through 
 With icy barb the best that thought can do. 
 And when we ponder o'er his latter state. 
 And note its argument, backed by the fate 
 That marked his greatness down, we feel here too 
 That Something elemental, vast and true 
 To which all things at length capitulate. 
 And ye who sadly ponder to behold 
 The ruin of such greatness, grieved to see 
 How the child in him acted, thought and spoke, 
 Perchance will wonder, when the tale is told. 
 Whether 'twas not a mightier Thing than he 
 On which the Titan stumbled when he broke. 
 
 Hesefe, 24^ May 
 
Influences 7 1 
 
 VII 
 
 So Tolstoy passed, and passing left behind 
 Not great themes only, but himself a great 
 And tragic Theme. Another shares his state, 
 Supreme within the kingdom of the mind. 
 As he where soul and body meet, combined 
 In lovely earth-forms. Dostoievsky, late 
 Thou cam'st into thine own, thy bitter fate 
 To be an exile ; for the world is blind. 
 But in thy mantic cavern, undismayed 
 Amongst thy spirits, named and known so well, 
 Each a familiar, and thyself a shade, 
 By whitest light of heaven, by reddest hell, 
 Unscorched, unblinded, wrapt yet unafraid, 
 And true to thine own Passion, thou dost dwell. 
 
 Heskpe, 26fA May 
 
72 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VIII 
 
 Deep-sounding, subtle, pitiful, profound, 
 Dredger of human nature, versed in crime. 
 Mated with every grief, who in the slime 
 Divinest well where purest pearls aboimd ; 
 Where darkness mostly reigneth thou dost found 
 A kingdom of the light, O soul sublinie. 
 Most pure, most Christ-like spirit of thy time ; 
 And where thy feet have trod is holy ground^ — 
 Holy, yet haimted, and a realm of fright. 
 Not to be traversed but with flying feet. 
 And beating heart and racing brain alight 
 With fire from hell, and heated with hell's heat. 
 Till in the cooler spaces of the night 
 The o'erwrought spirit finds a safe retreat. 
 
 Hesepe, 27^A May 
 
Influences 73 
 
 IX 
 
 Here is thy limit, mightiest of thine age 
 
 An under- and an over-world to paint, 
 
 Peopled with epileptic and with saint, 
 
 The murderer's, ogre's, and the gambler's rage ; 
 
 Too much of fever in thee to assuage 
 
 Our average human restlessness, the taint 
 
 Of a charmed subtlety oft rendering faint 
 
 The sense of man's salvation in thy page. 
 
 Perchance in thy heroic spirit, fraught 
 
 With too much tragedy, the causes lie ; 
 
 That spirit unembittered, overwrought, 
 
 In which a something fitful we descry, 
 
 A fretfulness, as in thine image caught 
 
 By Sonia Kovalevsky's soulful eye, 
 
 Hesepe, 28<A May 
 
74 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 Turgenev, gentlest of the sons of pain. 
 Who in a line, as Homer wont, distillest 
 The essence of all pathos, thou who fillest 
 A human place 'twixt the Cyclopean twain, 
 'Tis not with hell-fire driven o'er the brain, 
 Nor stretched titanic canvas that thou thrillest. 
 But by the plotted garden-space thou tfllest. 
 Making man's middle courses thy domain. 
 Here once more we discern how still great art 
 Meets nature greatly. Elemental powers 
 Pulse in thy perfect pages. Souls depart 
 With awe upon them to the silent bowers. 
 The world is ever with thee, its great heart 
 Laid to thy beating own, as thine to ours. 
 
 Hesefe, 2\si May 
 
Influences 75 
 
 XI 
 
 Wordsworth, above all poets in thee I find 
 What in the greatest we too seldom see, 
 The crowning virtue of tranquillity. 
 Effectual o'er the sorrows of the mind. 
 Others to gain such peace have left behind 
 This hard world for the realm of fantasie. 
 Or in a past remote found sanctuary. 
 Or in the end thought's burden have resigned. 
 One above all by daily struggle rose 
 Into a blue empyrean of the brain. 
 Self -mastering might, yet such as never knows 
 The deeper calm that masters. There remain 
 Nature's anointed dynasts. Only those 
 Whose peace is fundamental truly reign. 
 
 Hesefe, 302A May 
 
y6 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 xn 
 
 Of these thou art. And, Wordsworth, it is not 
 
 That thou hast missed man's feverish heritage. 
 
 Strange passions thou hast known, and noble rage, 
 
 Nor in Romance an anodyne hast sought. 
 
 And if to souls in trouble thou hast brought 
 
 Strength and relief, 'tis not thy sauntering page. 
 
 Nor oft-times common theme that doth assuage 
 
 The anguish of the spirit overwrought. 
 
 Rather it is that, deeply moved, thou sink'st 
 
 Deeply in nature's homeliness, thy rime 
 
 Plain as her face ; but, stooping as thou drink'st, 
 
 The eternal from beyond the hills of Time 
 
 Is on thee ere thou know'st it, and thou link'st 
 
 Thy being with it, suddenly sublime. 
 
 Heskpk, %\sl May 
 
Influences f] 
 
 XIII 
 
 Herein is thy celestial wisdom shown, 
 That thou, divining Godhead scarce concealed 
 In nature's plain immediacy, dost yield 
 To her the soul of poetry and thine own. 
 Until thou cam'st no son of time had known 
 The measure of the glory now revealed 
 In common things, the beauty of the field, 
 The moving grace of planet and of stone. 
 What bliss it was to feel as at the first, 
 But with that insight now supremely thine, 
 The trailing clouds upon a world accurst 
 In all their fresh and pristine splendour shine ; 
 While into that familiar face there burst 
 The expression of the Countenance divine. 
 
 Hesepe, Z\st May 
 
78 Sonnets from a Prison Cami> 
 
 XIV 
 
 Sweetly at length, like faithful love abused 
 
 By cold neglect, in this domed interval 
 
 Of silent time returns with soft footfall 
 
 The echo of a music long disused. 
 
 Ah me, before such strains I stand accused, 
 
 So early known, and then my all in all, 
 
 And with the magic of the morning's call 
 
 And ethos of my children interfused — 
 
 A nameless sense of youth that will not die, 
 
 While Homer's volleying dactyls surging send 
 
 The music of the wind-entangled seas 
 
 Around the world, and as the billows fly, 
 
 Shouldering each other shorewards, metdy blend 
 
 His harping with the thunderous centuries. 
 
 Hesepe, 8ffe Jvme 
 
Influences 79 
 
 XV 
 
 Oft have I risen before the night hath flown, 
 
 To catch the hour of deepest silence sweet, 
 
 And through that hush to list in my retreat 
 
 The solemn voice of iEschylus intone. 
 
 His great Iambic, till the tale hath grown 
 
 Into a passion over me, where meet 
 
 Huge forms archaic, and on stately feet 
 
 Move to swift doom in .Eginetan stone. 
 
 High over all in simple grandeur bold, 
 
 With crest on crest against the morning skies, 
 
 Yet in eternal shadow, I behold 
 
 The massif of the Agamemnon rise. 
 
 And through its marble caverns shuddering hear 
 
 The haunting voice of Clytsemnestra's fear. 
 
 Hesefe, 9th June 
 
8o Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XVI 
 
 — Infatuate queen, who oft as lingering day 
 Rounds to his dose, and passion's hour is nigh, 
 Through Atreus' haJls on soundless foot doth hie, 
 And from the tower the purpling east survey — 
 Lest in the still and fearful night's thick play. 
 While by her beating side doth sweltering lie 
 Sallow jEgisthus with the hawking eye. 
 Swift Fate prepare a swifter stroke than they ; 
 And while loye's maddening vintage they partake, 
 A sudden flame should redden all the land. 
 And beacon call to beacon, where they break 
 From the lone watchman on the jEgean strand. 
 " The ship ! the ship ! His ship comes tossing o'er 
 The wine-dark sea. The King is at the door." 
 
 Hessfe, ^ih June 
 
Influences 8i 
 
 XVII 
 
 I paced entranced the mourne, melodious shore 
 Where Sophocles unwinds with matchless art 
 Life's tangled error, pondering in my heart 
 The tragic theme that middle diction bore-^- 
 The end not hopeless, when, all wanderings o'er, 
 By still Colonus in that place apart 
 The thunder rolled, and while the earth did start, 
 The old man of the sorrows was no more. 
 And I have felt the moving of the strings 
 Beneath the fingers of that troubled soul. 
 Third in the triple dynasty of kings, 
 Whose tenderness, beyond his art's control. 
 Over life's mutilated torso wrings 
 Fierce protest, agonizing for the Whole. 
 
 Hesepe, 10<A June 
 
82 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XVIII 
 
 One scene, Euripides, throughout the years 
 
 Clings to the moving skirts of memory. 
 
 Among the images of things that lie 
 
 In beauty perfected, too deep for tears. 
 
 'Tis where, to stDl his faithful matron's fears 
 
 Through lonely days and nights of agony, 
 
 Having fulfilled his roving chivalry. 
 
 At length the Paladin of eld appears. 
 
 Thy Herakles ; and wife and children stand 
 
 'Neath that majestic manhood pure from blame ; 
 
 The basket circulates from hand to hand. 
 
 When of a sudden — He was not the same. 
 
 There could no more, but with the dripping sword. 
 
 And all that ruth impounded in a word ! 
 
 Hesefe, 10th June 
 
Influences 83 
 
 XIX 
 
 While still that music pealed an alien strain 
 Broke boisterous into sudden interplay, 
 Troubling the soul with laughter and dismay ; 
 And chattering drolls appearfed, expressly plain, 
 And tingling to the immemorial vein 
 Of the obscene in all things formed of clay. 
 There pausing on the tm-moiled scene that lay 
 Before my eyes, a light broke on my brain. 
 And vast Aristophanic laughter shook 
 Each nerve within me, and a hand did part 
 Some far-back curtain of the soul, and took 
 A portion of my years ; and I did start. 
 Divining art's new purport, to rebuke 
 And humanize the stiffly pure of heart. 
 
 Hesepe, lliA June 
 
84 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XX 
 
 It were not well with man did he not feel 
 
 At home with his own nature, all we are 
 
 Conspiring with our angel and our star 
 
 To keep our being whole, or, broken, heal, 
 
 Lest in some faulted mould the soul congeal. 
 
 And oft-times 'tis the Highest that doth mar 
 
 The Perfect in us, straining us too far. 
 
 And overreaching Justice. Hence the peal 
 
 Of that great cacinnation echoing woke 
 
 Appreciation of the lofty use 
 
 Of comedy, to shake the settling soul 
 
 Out of itself. The Elemental spoke, 
 
 And something broadened in me. The recluse 
 
 Unstiffened, and I felt my nature whole. 
 
 Hesepe, 11th June 
 
Influences 85 
 
 XXI 
 
 Justice J the very sound brings back the throes 
 Of that tremendous season when Youth sees 
 His world collapse, and beaten to his knees 
 He takes the bolt of doubt, all that he knows, 
 That he knows nothing. Underneath the blows 
 Of thought I laboured long in labouring seas. 
 Pledging my soul to martjrred Socrates ; 
 And o'er night's face the star of Plato rose. 
 This much of truth I still divined, that here 
 Was internecine conflict ; only doubt 
 Strained to the uttermost a path could dear 
 To that last Deep where wind and tide give out, 
 And freighted Time drops softly out to sea, 
 A moving image of Eternity. 
 
 Hesefe, \2th June 
 
86 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XXII 
 
 Who to the visions of immortal Thought, 
 Engendered by the music of the mind — 
 First in that place where our poor human kind 
 Sit in the cave and watch the shadows wrought 
 By firelight on the wall, obscurely caught ; 
 Then luring on to where the soul, half blind, 
 Turns from the Splendour which itself divined — 
 With kinglier toil a loftier art hath brought. 
 Than Plato ? Who more haunted by the light 
 Hath ever yet gone coasting with the sun. 
 Or in the deep and constellated night, 
 Claimed from the spheres their voices as they rim ? 
 Or soaring where the Eternal Glories shine 
 Hath stretched to earth a more majestic line ? 
 
 Hesepe, \%th June 
 
Influences 87 
 
 XXIII 
 
 As deeply versed in that infinitude 
 
 Where man his doom within himself doth find 
 
 By no strait pedagogy, but divined 
 
 Through some more massive sense of True and 
 
 Good, 
 A kind of Inspiration, the soul's food, 
 Derived from far, and working still behind 
 All conscious reason, till the labouring mind 
 'Neath that profounder suasion sinks subdued. 
 So Plato's thought grows cosmic, by its own 
 Illumination led and mystified. 
 And haunted by a voice of purer tone 
 Than reason's groping motion e'er supplied ; 
 The beam refracted by the Forms and shown 
 As coloured light wherein the soul is dyed. 
 
 Hesepe, \Uh June 
 
88 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XXIV 
 
 Thus do the greatest ever by sheer might 
 Of natural penetration find their way 
 Into the Innermost, where Being's ray 
 Burns unendiu-able, and in that light 
 Their own with nature's majesty unite 
 To one high rhjrthm, stupendous interplay 
 Of Thought and Being, perioded, gray 
 With shadow, with serenest sunshine bright. 
 So that old man of Koenigsberg profound, 
 By night revolving two infinities. 
 And so Spinoza, when his spirit found 
 Intellect into Intuition rise. 
 Envisaging creation from above. 
 Where knowledge takes the perfect form of 
 Love.i 
 
 Hesepe, 14iA June 
 ' The " Amor Dei intelleotualis." 
 
Influences 89 
 
 XXV 
 
 But thy peculiar greatness more than these. 
 By thinking pregnant with creative art, 
 Subduing chance and moulding part to part, 
 Hath Cosmic in it, Plato, harmonies 
 That wake the dim immortal memories 
 We bring from the Eternal, whence we start 
 The round of Being, bearing in our heart 
 The echoes of the everlasting seas. 
 Here stands no accidental word. And so. 
 While theme with theme grows twisted and en- 
 twined, 
 Is freedom perfected. We gaze, and lo. 
 The argument is off before the wind. 
 Like some great trireme tacking endlessly, 
 Yet ever headed for Eternity. 
 
 Hesefe, \Wh June 
 
WATCHWORDS AND MAXIMS 
 
 »i 
 
Watchwords and Maxims 93 
 
 " Live dangerously." No braver mandate yet, 
 Nietzsche, nor charged with finer lightning ran 
 Around the world. And true it is the man 
 Who hath no menace in him, nor hath met 
 A threatening Universe with counter-threat 
 Is caitiff still. In those who lead the van 
 The Headlong is the guide to each new plan. 
 While lances leap, spears break, the ground is wet. 
 One prayer I prayed : " Lord, if Thou hast dis- 
 cerned 
 Within me ought of manliness, enroll 
 Thy servant with the fighters, who have earned 
 Their manhood's charter where the thunders roll 
 Over the field, that so I may have learned 
 To taste this Element, and know my soul." 
 
 Hesepe, Qth June 
 
94 Sonnets from a Prison Camt 
 
 II 
 
 There comes to me a memorable thought 
 
 Borne on that voice, which like some wandering 
 
 gleam 
 Brings freshness into Hegel's well-worn theme 
 From Naples lately, Croce, he who taught 
 That Art's true nature is not to be sought 
 In what is fitted only to redeem 
 By strict initiation souls who dream 
 Of beauty in some crafty pattern wrought. 
 But in the apt Expression, wheresoe'er 
 Expression apt is foimd, the Inward still 
 Externalizing till the soul declare 
 The thing within it, and divinely fill 
 With soimd or sign the habitable air — 
 A language universal as man's will. 
 
 Hesepe, \%ih June 
 
Watchwords and Maxims 95 
 
 III 
 
 Thus language is the type wherein revealed 
 
 Art's univetsal function we behold, 
 
 In sensuous forms appropriate to unfold 
 
 Whate'er of meaning Individuals yield : 
 
 A doctrine this which doth enlarge the field 
 
 To every man who in himself doth hold 
 
 But speech enough a simple thought to mould 
 
 In words well wedded to the sense concealed. 
 
 — ^Doubtless a truth, though strained beyond the 
 
 Norm, 
 If still the theme, with varying purport fraught, 
 Loses itself entirely in the Form, 
 And ugliness and beauty count for naught ; 
 And yet a truth, although a truth in part. 
 All art expression, not all expression art. 
 
 Hesepe, \%th Jtme 
 
96 Sonnets from a Prison CaTnp 
 
 IV 
 
 The Import counts. All great art greatly deals 
 
 With themes not insignificant. The less 
 
 Gives lesser art, howe'er the form express 
 
 The sense of that the artist thinks or feels. 
 
 And wonderful it is how life reveals 
 
 The great theme near at hand, did we but press 
 
 Our lives less fiercely, and our souls possess, 
 
 When stirred, until the fitting word congeals. 
 
 Art should not fail among us. All have eyes 
 
 Which bring the star-sown heavens nightly home. 
 
 And there are ever winds about the world. 
 
 And no man but hath felt the mysteries 
 
 Of birth and wedlock and death's solemn gloam, 
 
 Or seen the petals of a rose uncurled. 
 
 Hesepe, 19<A June 
 
Watchwords and Maxims gy 
 
 Of Tragedy the essence and the goal 
 
 Is Vindication. Fear and pity dose 
 
 The tale with mourning, but the issue shows 
 
 The moral order master of man's soul. 
 
 And as its slow and solemn waters roll 
 
 Thunderingly through the scenes, a sense there 
 
 grows 
 Of some high Presence working in these throes, 
 Whose Being is the topic and the whole. 
 Thus not these personal griefs alone comprise 
 The theme of Tragedy, that theme more vast 
 Than its own content, deeper than the sighs 
 Of the doomed Titan hounded home at last — 
 The Universe in action, and the cries 
 Of Cosmic Vengeance closing with the Past. 
 
 Hesepe, 25th May 
 
98 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VI 
 
 " Gehorsam." It is seldom that one hears 
 
 The German tongue commended. Yet I find 
 
 No spell more swift, more potent to unbind 
 
 The spirit's shades in some fine phrase that clears 
 
 An entrance to the import of the years, 
 
 Where speech, unwinding as thought's coils unwind, 
 
 Makes landfall, and companioning man's mind. 
 
 Ends in the Innermost, whereto he steers. 
 
 And many a haunting solitary sound 
 
 In that strange tongue, with doubling content 
 
 fraught. 
 Booms at the ear of conscience, whose profound 
 Responses in that energy are caught, 
 And Teuton loyalty, that holds its ground. 
 Sweeps Europe still, and sets a world at naught. 
 
 Hesepe, Uh July 
 
Watchwords and Maxims 99 
 
 VII 
 
 Two other words contrasting well distil 
 
 In two clear drops of sound significant, 
 
 And flavoured to the thought, the crowning want 
 
 That mars our enterprise — the English will, 
 
 Steadfast of purpose, but unsteady still 
 
 In the particular. Strange humours haunt 
 
 The earnestness of battle, and we flaunt 
 
 The eccentric in us even as we kill. 
 
 A nobly erring pride is here, disdain 
 
 Of death — and duty, when that duty chimes 
 
 Not with our liking ; and our stubbornness 
 
 Wants sternness in it to perfect the grain. 
 
 Of late to tragic heights the contrast climbs, 
 
 Which " Ernst " and " Eigensinnigkeit " express. 
 
 Hesepe, 5th July 
 
lOO Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VIII 
 
 Compel them to be free ! A true word there 
 Thou minted'st, Rousseau — ^half the human race 
 Still unaspiring to that crowning grace, 
 Still disinclined the easy yoke to wear. 
 Oh, that at length our people would but dare 
 To look their cancer fiercely in the face, 
 Consenting on the foul and rotting place 
 The short sharp anguish of the knife to bear. 
 For there are powers upon us that still sap 
 Our liberty and drain our manhood dry. 
 Which if we dear not speedily, mayhap 
 Our twilight follows and the end is nigh ; 
 Or else there rise a Strong One who will clap 
 The Teuton iron on us, and we die. 
 
 Hesepe, lih July 
 
Watchwords and Maxims loi 
 
 IX 
 
 As when along a level land we pace, 
 
 The scene, from where our forward-moving feet 
 
 Touch ground, to where the earth and heaven greet, 
 
 Seems to revolve in some vast wheel's embrace, 
 
 Whose spoke- wise turning slow the eye can trace 
 
 From near-by hedges, wayside trees, that fleet 
 
 With rick and steading by, till all lines meet 
 
 And motion dwindles in far distant space — 
 
 There haply some majestic moimtain mass 
 
 By contrast travels with us as we go, 
 
 And doth across the spirit, as we pass, 
 
 The feeling of its omnipresence throw — 
 
 So o'er man's fleeting and particular fate 
 
 For ever onmipresent broods the State. 
 
 Heskfe, 30/A June 
 
I02 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 Unto man's spirit thou art closely bound 
 By natural drift and consanguinity, 
 But more by long companionship, the tie 
 That holds you twain together tightly wound 
 First in his infancy, where thou art found 
 Like some great watchdog that doth panting lie 
 Stretched by his infant master, his dull eye 
 Wakeful, his sharp ear cocked at every sound. 
 Nay, for the bond is closer, 'twas thy face 
 Bent over him at birth ; thy kindly pains 
 Steadied his childish feet. Nor can we trace 
 What in his blood derives not from thy veins 
 By long transfusion unprecipitate, 
 Alive, organically intimate. 
 
 Hesepe, \^th July 
 
Watchwords and Maxims 103 
 
 XI 
 
 Suppose a race (the vision first I saw 
 
 Among the dark stern reasonings of Kant) 
 
 Resolved its past for ever to recant, 
 
 And from its island borders to withdraw : 
 
 No man shall move — I heard that doom with awe — 
 
 Until the wretched, last, lorn miscreant 
 
 By shameful death full reparation grant 
 
 To the offended majesty of Law. 
 
 So as man's coming race prepares to leave 
 
 The Island of its Present, where to-day 
 
 Europe in crime lies sweltering, and to cleave 
 
 A fresh path through the portals of the Day, 
 
 At History's bar the nations duly lined 
 
 Await their judgment. Some remain behind. 
 
 Hesefe, Ith July 
 
I04 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XII 
 
 One thing upon the tablet of the mind 
 
 By fire should be imprinted. Nations stand 
 
 Only as to the touch of that great Hand 
 
 Their substance answers, which when it outlined 
 
 A cosmos on the waters, and designed 
 
 Earth's granite frame, and sundered sea and land. 
 
 Laid in man's heart a Law, more deeply planned 
 
 Than that of nations, compassing his kind. 
 
 And in that Law eternal stands revealed 
 
 How by self-abnegation man at length 
 
 Comes to himself, how to the meek is sealed 
 
 The habitable earth, how human strength 
 
 Is perfected in weakness, into dross 
 
 Earth's glory sinks confronted with Christ's cross. 
 
 Hesepe, 2,Uh July 
 
Watchwords and Maxims 105 
 
 XIII 
 
 Protector of the spirit, who by night 
 
 With hands bent round it lanthorn-like dost frame 
 
 Against the wind a shelter for its flame, 
 
 Thyself a thing of spirit and a light. 
 
 The Commonwealth ! Yet in thy sovereign right 
 
 Thou may'st not unrebuked, unchallenged claim 
 
 To be the First and Last, a holier Name 
 
 Than thine intoning from a higher height. 
 
 For blood is on thy hand and on thy head. 
 
 And war's black cloud upon thy deep dark brow ; 
 
 And in thy shadow Socrates lies dead. 
 
 And though awhile it needs must be that thou 
 
 For man's unrighteousness shalt legislate, 
 
 Man's righteousness will yet become thy Fate. 
 
 Hesepe, nth July 
 
ENGLAND AND OXFORD 
 
 107 
 
England and Oxford 109 
 
 Line after line the tale beneath the pen 
 Moves on, and rodent Time with tireless tooth 
 Works o'er our portion, till one day forsooth 
 We tread the cool gray shadow, ageing men. 
 This change I mark, and sadly pondering then 
 Catch the soul's murmur, accented with ruth : 
 " Oh, let me hear upon the lips of youth 
 ' Eothen ' and ' Eothen ' once again ! " 
 And Oxford, oh, do thou with soulful toil, 
 While o'er our folk tumultuous ages throng. 
 Mounted at night as o'er some priceless spoil. 
 For us the fineness of this cult prolong. 
 Still nurturing in our sweet English soil 
 That glory from the Momingland of song. 
 
 Hesepe, %i}i Jwne 
 
I lo Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 n 
 
 Yet, Oxford, it is better thou should'st know 
 That eyes which love thee in thy culture see 
 The withering curse of long sterility. 
 Rooted in England, thou hast ceased to grow 
 Together with her growth. Thy waters flow 
 Not with her broadening current to the sea. 
 But murmuring their delicious melody 
 They wander forth and wist not where they go. 
 And thus thy fine-edged spirit, which in high 
 Disdain hath never paltered with the pelf 
 Of modern rapine, doth too often fly 
 To endless crochets, wayward as an elf. 
 Self-humouring and posturing and shy, 
 And broods apart and lives unto itself.^ 
 
 Hksepe, %th, June 
 
 ^ It is hoped that it may not be thought too much of a libeity in 
 an outsider to criticize anything so esoteric as the Oxford culture ; 
 but if so I should reply that it is just this esoteric quality which I 
 wish to criticize. Admiration for Oxford and love of England alike 
 compel me to deplore the fact that so typical a prodAust of our national 
 life should be so little rapreaenUitive, 
 
England and Oxford 1 1 1 
 
 III 
 
 None than thyself more royally to-day 
 Hath given to England in her hour of need. 
 In every field where England's children bleed 
 Thine own have there more richly bled than they. 
 And Oxford still incarnadines the clay 
 To such a sanctity as doth o'erplead 
 The voice of censure, silenced by the deed 
 Of the great heart that laid them where they lay, 
 'Tis their's, that murmur fluttering from the marge 
 Of thither Acheron, where their cares they ply 
 In deathless death : " O Mother mine, enlarge 
 Thy life to England's. Thou hast learned to die. 
 But while thy life thou dost so grandly give, 
 One thing thou lackest, Oxford : learn to live ! " 
 
 Hesepe, %th June 
 
112 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 IV 
 
 There is one source alone which can supply 
 
 New life and impulse. 'Tis a voice that rolls 
 
 Half inarticulate in English souls, 
 
 From field and mine and factory, where they ply 
 
 The single talent Fate did not deny. 
 
 Their labour. Now they hear upon the shoals 
 
 Of a sad life that there are other goals 
 
 To man's existence than they yet descry ; 
 
 And, scarcely yet discerned, they deeply feel 
 
 A presence over them, a haimting sense 
 
 Of music in the world, whose echoes steal 
 
 Unto them from the spheres, where in the immense 
 
 Circle of night and day the planets keep 
 
 Measure and watch, while mortals toil and weep. 
 
 Heskpe, XUh June 
 
England and Oxford 1 1 3 
 
 Thine be it to direct their steps aright 
 
 Unto that bourne which doth not cease to haunt. 
 
 They cry for it, not knowing what they want, 
 
 Or what for man is best — the use of sight ; 
 
 Some inkling of the precious power of light. 
 
 To glorify a mean existence gaunt. 
 
 And check the bitter self-inflicted taunt 
 
 That nothing worthy calls them home at night. 
 
 And thou can'st set them questing, make them feel 
 
 The nearness of true knowledge, where it lies 
 
 In common things with which they daily deal. 
 
 Yet ending in the Splendour of the skies ; 
 
 Or teach them in shunned volumes to detect 
 
 The simplicity of letters unsuspect. 
 
 Hesepe, \Qth June 
 
114 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VI 
 
 Yet — ^for the kindly Mother may not quit 
 Her cloistered sanctuary, where from the height 
 Of scholarship's remoteness day and night 
 She strains truth's fabric — ^it is those who sit 
 A season at her feet, and learn to fit 
 Their spirits to her own, who must requite 
 These lofty cares, and carry out the light, 
 And serve it round, and tend its burning, lit. 
 But thine, O Kindly Mother, first to prove 
 Thy ministers, and having chosen, tune. 
 Bringing thy spirit o'er them, till they move 
 Like one at thy behest — as to the moon, 
 Passing soft influence from the quiet skies, 
 The oceans with their weight of waters rise. 
 
 Hesepe, \Qfh June 
 
England and Oxford 115 
 
 VII 
 
 One thing must be thine instant, anxious care, 
 
 Which on thine honour thou dar'st not refuse. 
 
 Long time our people now the habit lose 
 
 Of speech consecutive (which man should wear 
 
 Upon him like a garment, fit and fair) 
 
 And through some faulting of the brain abuse 
 
 Thought's flowing vesture of a thousand hues, 
 
 Oft shorn to shreds, all fluttering in the air, 
 
 I mark and grieve ; for in this lost control 
 
 We trace the weakness of these breathless times. 
 
 When man no longer keeps his nature whole. 
 
 Nor governs his spirit ; and it chimes 
 
 With the unruly in us, deadliest threat 
 
 Our English liberty hath fronted yet. 
 
 Hesepe, Vlth June 
 
1 1 6 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VIII 
 
 It is not for art's sake this precious dower 
 Of speech must be renewed, but for the sake 
 Of life within. The expression doth not break 
 Silence in vain, but with reflexive power 
 To vitalize its source, and parting shower 
 New riches on the donor. Thus we take 
 Life's counterthrust upon our souls, and shake 
 The vessel, lest by standing Being sour. 
 All life's a language ; but 'tis not enough 
 To laimch forth with it wildly into space. 
 Adding one atom to the blinding drain, 
 A pitiable froth-bell in the trough 
 Of each new cause, wherein the striving race 
 Tries issue with stern time — perchance in vain. 
 
 Hesepe, 20fA June 
 
HOME THOUGHTS ONCE MORE 
 
 117 
 
Home Thoughts Once More 119 
 
 A week of nights and days once more brings round 
 The Sabbath tide ; and once again the heart 
 Sets yearningly to homewards. Do they part 
 At the church door to-day, as when the stound 
 Of disillusioned fancy last unbound 
 Memory's deep wound, and in the bitter smart 
 The vision vanished ? Ah, the shadows start 
 To life again across the haunted ground ; 
 The kindly farewells said, the saimtering walk 
 Home through the sun-baked streets, by twos and 
 
 twos, 
 The friendly flow of pleasant secular talk, 
 And personalities and trivial news. 
 And the long winding prospect of the day. 
 The feast of children yet shall wile away. 
 
 Hesepe, 26-27th May 
 
I20 Sonnets from a Prison Cami> 
 
 II 
 
 'Tis July, and a sunny stillness broods 
 On our magnificent England. Misty skies 
 Break into blue, and ripening harvests rise 
 Over her bosom. Her majestic woods 
 Ripple and sway before the varying moods 
 Of the west wind. The roses sacrifice 
 In every garden to the sun. There lies 
 Deep peace o'er all : no sound profane intrudes. 
 Far in the north the solemn mountains keep 
 A sanctuary amongst the shades that dwell 
 In the deep gloom of haunted Highland glens. 
 Where silence awes, and where for ever sleep 
 In lochs unfathomed and inscrutable 
 The shadows of the everlasting Bens. 
 
 Hesepe, 2nd July 
 
Home Thoughts Once More 121 
 
 III 
 
 There is another England, that which feeds 
 Our sinews where the champing engines chide 
 Beneath the settled darkness that doth hide 
 Earth's stricken face from Rotherham to Leeds. 
 De6p in that gloom the blinding furnace bleeds 
 A molten treasure : England is supplied ; 
 A million hammers roar along the Clyde ; 
 The transport of a million men proceeds. 
 And ill this horror of the work of man. 
 Effacing God, I magnify and bless — 
 The way that leads out leading also through, 
 While God goes round to compass His great plan, 
 And out of ashes and of hideousness 
 By curse of toil Creation blooms anew. 
 
 Hesepe, 3rd July 
 
INTERLUDE 
 
 123 
 
Interlude 125 
 
 My hundredth sonnet ! Here I pause to brood 
 A little by myself upon the theme 
 Ere once again with the meandering stream 
 Of my own thoughts I move. And it were good 
 To give thanks for the labour that hath stood 
 Between my soul and madness, like a gleam 
 Of sunlight in the darkness of the dream 
 Which passes over me, else scarce withstood. 
 Wonderful is it how the heart o'erwrought 
 Unloads in song, life's passionate rebound 
 'Gainst agonies whose barb alone hath brought 
 This bird of sorrows fluttering to the ground, 
 And with these wild and wandering flowers of 
 
 thought 
 The portion of a prisoner metely crowned. 
 
 Hesepe, 23rd June 
 
126 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 II 
 
 I ponder on the form, and truth to tell, 
 
 'Twere scarcely to be deemed a sonnet chain 
 
 Which did not in its forged length contain 
 
 Some turn contemplative, where for a spell 
 
 The smith might lay his hammer by, to dwell 
 
 Upon the pattern, lest the octet strain 
 
 The content, or the sextet court in vain 
 
 A bigger thought than it can compass well. 
 
 And oft when to the varying interplay 
 
 Of partnered sounds I strive thought's flower to 
 
 train 
 Upon this trellis, the perplexing way 
 By lucky chance of rime lies sudden plain. 
 And I cry out with Agathon : r^yyq 
 Txryj]v ecrrep^e Koi t6)(7} rixy^v. 
 
 Hesepe, 23rd Jvme 
 
Interlude 127 
 
 III 
 
 Yet the sport wind that doubling oft blows home 
 
 Some welcome unforeseen felicity, 
 
 Is but, within the dreams of poesie, 
 
 Life's average accident, which all who roam 
 
 The spacious earth, or try the beckoning foam 
 
 Of some unvisited soul-haunting sea, 
 
 May count on as their portion — even as we 
 
 Who chance a star or two in this weird gloam. 
 
 Hence as in all high toil which must be traced 
 
 In long-drawn sequence, linking part to part. 
 
 Not chance nor inspiration can fulfil 
 
 The welded whole, nor vanquish that distaste 
 
 Which ever comes with pause ; but sovereign Art 
 
 Herself must bow to man's more sovereign Will. 
 
 Hesepe, 24<A June 
 
128 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 IV 
 
 So forward still, might but my strength avail 
 Out of the brooding darkness of my plight, 
 Each day to bring one glimmering shaft of light, 
 Each night to add some fragment to the tale, 
 That so I sleep. Else o'er my dreams prevail 
 These sorrows, or within me hour-long smite 
 The hammers of the brain, and turn the night 
 Into a thing to make man's reason fail. 
 — ^A little further ; for the thoughts still rise 
 Over me like a soughing wind, that blows 
 From where the surges boom along the graile 
 Of the world's misery imder lowering skies, 
 — ^A little further and my task I dose. 
 Lest twilight overtake me and I stale. 
 
 Hesepe, Ihth June 
 
ENGLAND 
 
 129 
 
England 1 3 1 
 
 England, the strain of weakness in thee shows 
 Like to some fell distemper which doth threat 
 Thy noble life with blight, and doth beget 
 Many malignant sores. The evil flows 
 Not from one source, but gradually grows 
 With thine own growth of years, wherein are met 
 All the deep instincts that did ever fret 
 The soul of freedom against freedom's foes. 
 But whatsoe'er the form, the effect is one ; 
 Some great cause grandly tried and bravely lost, 
 Some work of beauty marred upon the loom, 
 And at the final reckoning, something done, 
 Yet at a bitter and a fearful cost — 
 In broken hearts and many a needless tomb. 
 
 Hesepe, 25<A June 
 
132 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 II 
 
 I heard it in the strife of other days ; 
 It reached me in my home across the sea, 
 That the great soul that made my England free, 
 And now must make her perfect, idly plays 
 With the tremendous issue ; that they raise 
 Sedition's banner with impunity. 
 And legislators, hot with laboured plea. 
 Pile law on law, while Law herself decays. 
 It is the everlasting cloud that dwells 
 Upon the summit, compassed in one word. 
 Disruption, whose deep thunder as it swells 
 Unnerves us, and arrests the falling sword, 
 Even to this hour, when but to differ spells 
 Lese-majesty, and loyalty means accord. 
 
 Hesepe, 25<A June 
 
England 133 
 
 III 
 
 Man lives by love. The state subsists by Law. 
 And in these sacred islands east and west, 
 Constant of late the Beast its scaly breast 
 Half rears from earth, and with its unclean paw 
 And bloody fang a-work, and dripping jaw. 
 Offers at England. It is time this pest 
 Were exorcised, and Unrest laid to rest. 
 With all that dares to hold thee not in awe. 
 So thou deal'st faithfully with God and man ; 
 With man, who prays thee, England, but to place 
 Thy heavy hand on all that doth immerse 
 The god-like in him, and distort his plan ; 
 With God, who made thee regent for a space 
 Over a portion of His Universe. 
 
 Hesepe, \st July 
 
134 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 IV 
 
 England, I trust thee. What thy soul hath planned 
 Will be performed ; and towards that last long end 
 Thou hast not wavered since thou first did'st send 
 Ship hot on ship, by freemen freely manned. 
 Over the sea to France's sacred strand. 
 Faithful thou art, and knowest well to blend 
 Patience with resolution, and to lend 
 To thy heart's aim thy gauntleted right hand. 
 This in the main. And yet the enterprise 
 Articulated, mocks the purposed whole 
 With fitful effort ; and the dread doth loom, 
 As each fresh crisis darkens all the skies, 
 That the Disruptive in thy restless soul, 
 Become habitual, is become thy doom. 
 
 Hbsefe, 28fA June 
 
England 135 
 
 Forget it, England, that this Tempest finds 
 
 Thy life at home with troubles overrun, 
 
 Issues imsettled, justice to be done, 
 
 And dark distrust corrupting all men's minds. 
 
 Trust England, all her sons. Her millstone grinds 
 
 Slowly perchance ; but while in heaven the sun 
 
 Endureth, while their rounds the planets run, 
 
 Her word is bond, and what she binds she binds. 
 
 And England, see thou that these debts are paid ! 
 
 Be firmly true to thine own children. Stand 
 
 For justice. Let these arms aside be laid. 
 
 And in our dear inviolable land 
 
 None but thyself go armed — ^the only blade 
 
 Out of its sheath, that flashing in thy hand. 
 
 Hesepe, 28th June 
 
136 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VI 
 
 Until the day that England's sons shall learn 
 
 Not in that instant only when there burst 
 
 Thunders upon her to place England first, 
 
 But steadily, and in her face discern 
 
 The hunger-look of one who still doth yearn 
 
 Over the children whom her breast hath nursed ; 
 
 The long look of a mother, and her thirst 
 
 To see her children's eyes that look return — 
 
 Not till the day when o'er our local strife 
 
 The feeling of our nationality 
 
 Shall rise spontaneous as our English Life, 
 
 Outsoaring every animosity 
 
 By sheer force of its grandeur — shall we see 
 
 The truth come home and our free England free. 
 
 Hesepe, 29iA June 
 
England 137 
 
 vn 
 
 Have you e'er thought, you people, have you 
 
 thought 
 How great a thing it is in these great days 
 But to belong to England ? The world stays 
 Upon the event. 'Twas English armies caught 
 The onfall of the Cyclone. While they fought, 
 The world forbore to breathe. Stern Fate delays 
 The issue ; but that service and its praise 
 While England lives will never be forgot. 
 There was an honour that the ages kept 
 For English arms from immemorial time, 
 While yet the chivalry of nations slept 
 With mastodon and mammoth in the slime. 
 The aeons rolled. Fate nodded. England woke. 
 The hour boomed forth. 'Twas England took the 
 
 stroke. 
 
 Hesepe, \st July 
 
138 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 VIII 
 
 Let every child of England every day, 
 
 While o'er the world these battle-thunders roll, 
 
 Enter into the silence of his soul, 
 
 And there communing with his conscience say : 
 
 " I am a child of England, and I pray 
 
 That with a single eye and one fixed goal. 
 
 Thou grant me, God, to give my being whole 
 
 To England in her hour of agony. 
 
 Chasten me to the greatness of my fate ; 
 
 And, self-divided, make me one again. 
 
 That, as to this last rally congregate 
 
 The last stern remnants of my countrymen. 
 
 Thou may'st behold Thy England move as one, 
 
 Swift, final, justified of every son." 
 
 Hesepe, 2nd July 
 
England 1 39 
 
 IX 
 
 There have been moments haunted by the sound 
 
 Of riot in our midst and foul rapine, 
 
 Which, with more wealth, still makes our lives more 
 
 mean. 
 When I have asked : " If one who strove to ground 
 Our life afresh should cast his eyes around 
 Amongst the people, one great class to glean 
 Out of the whole, that should keep England clean. 
 Where should this pure, effectual class be found ? " 
 No answer came from those who still divide 
 The old tradition of a worn-out past. 
 I asked the Church : the labouring lost replied ; 
 For these the Publican. And at the last 
 I looked into the honest eyes of youth. 
 And knew — ^the exceeding bitterness of truth. 
 
 Hessps, nth July 
 
140 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 X 
 
 My countrymen, if while upon the brink 
 
 Of this Penultimate of Destiny, 
 
 The world with gathered sinews, anxiously 
 
 Craning upon the plunge, awaits the wink 
 
 Of swithering Mars, I could but make you think 
 
 A wildish thought on purpose, it would be 
 
 That England in a night beneath the sea 
 
 Should like some greater Krakatoa sink. 
 
 Then while to water and oblivion 
 
 The great ship heels majestically down. 
 
 Ask ye what world it were in which the dawn 
 
 Sparkled no more on Ocean's jewelled crown, 
 
 But in that place where England used to be 
 
 Spouted and plashed the insufferable sea. 
 
 Hesepe, 92A July 
 
England 141 
 
 XI 
 
 Can it be thought, or can the thought be borne, 
 
 That for a single hour beneath the sun 
 
 Earth shall endure, when England's day is done ? 
 
 A world without an England ! Yea, but shorn 
 
 Of the divinest gem her breast hath worn. 
 
 What most she makes for — doomed thenceforth to 
 
 run 
 Blind, lost, and calling for that treasured One, 
 Through star-sown space, unfathomably mourne ! 
 Never again the liquid air to breathe 
 On a May morn among the Mendip Hills ; 
 Never to watch the green Atlantic seethe 
 Around the Lizard, while the Severn fills ; 
 Never to hear the quivering strings that hung 
 The speech of Chatham on the English tongue ! 
 
 Hesepe, XQth July 
 
142 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XII 
 
 'Tis not these Islands sundered from the Deep 
 By many a winding and melodious strand, 
 Lovely as when they issued from the Hand 
 That bade the Shannon from his cradle leap ; 
 That smoothed the Cotswolds to the wandering 
 
 sheep, 
 And spread the waters o'er the Solway sand, 
 And motioned where Ben Cruachan should stand, 
 And in his shadow laid Loch Awe to sleep ; 
 'Tis not these shimmering woods of oak and beech, 
 Nor these green shires, each in its golden frame, 
 Like pictures hanging side by side, and each 
 Entangled with the music of its name — 
 Not all this weight of glory passing speech 
 Full measure of the English soul can claim. 
 
 HssKPS, Wih July 
 
England 143 
 
 XIII 
 
 England is England's history, that great dome 
 Which ever us and our immortal dead 
 Draws shadow, while men's common lives are led, 
 Strange thought ! in that superb half-light, half- 
 
 gloam. 
 And all who dwell in England, all who roam 
 The seas on great emprise inherited, 
 Gazing into that fulness overhead, 
 Behold a sanctuary and a home. 
 England's a spirit that doth interfuse 
 Whate'er is of her, every form wherein 
 Herself she reincarnates, all that strews 
 Her bosom and her years, and works within, 
 And spreads, and wells, and sinks, and overflows ; 
 And how to know her only Spirit knows. 
 
 Hesepe, 12^ July 
 
144 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XIV 
 
 And in that spirit interpenetrate 
 
 The numberless appealing strains that bring 
 
 The look of England into everything 
 
 That she hath looked on till the night grew late ; 
 
 Where, as amongst the four gray seas she sate, 
 
 And mused upon it, she hath felt the ring 
 
 That bound her to her narrow island spring. 
 
 And something passed, and passing made her great. 
 
 And Empire mustered round her. Ere she knew 
 
 Her state, her hour was on her once again. 
 
 Herseemed that something winged from her flew. 
 
 Herseemed as though the feet of marching men 
 
 Bore past hej^ to a music never mute 
 
 WhUe England proudly takes that proud salute. 
 
 Hesepe, 12<A July. 
 
England 1 45 
 
 XV 
 
 It is her destiny. She seems to sleep. 
 
 She dreams ; and nodding, world on world is born. 
 
 For her the splendour of an eastern morn 
 
 The Coromandel sands profusely steep ; 
 
 The rocks of Aden sentind the deep. 
 
 Her paths are round the Cape and round the Horn. 
 
 And where the sun goes down in seas of corn 
 
 Across the West their way her children reap. 
 
 Thus ere she hath outdreamt herself, the wheels 
 
 Of her achievement on their axle-trees 
 
 Have turned without her ; and upon her steals 
 
 A sense of waking amidst unknown seas ; 
 
 And wondering at her motherhood, she feels 
 
 The greatness of the Thing upon her knees. 
 
 Hesepe, 13<A July 
 
1 46 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XVI 
 
 Soul of an empire that hath far outrun 
 
 Thy purpose, England ! thou who in the shade 
 
 Of thy maturing years thyself had'st laid 
 
 To rest amongst thy flocks — ^and lo ! the sun 
 
 Set never more upon thee ! One by one 
 
 The nations place them at those feet which strayed 
 
 Into the Innermost, where worlds are made. 
 
 And bless the Mother saw their race begim. 
 
 England, it must be that thou hast been sent 
 
 Some quest beyond thy vision to fulfil ; 
 
 That, Mother of the Mighty, thou art meant 
 
 To be the Organ of a Mightier still ; 
 
 And, while the final End we may not see. 
 
 We feel 'tis holier than or they or thee. 
 
 Hesepe, \^ih July 
 
England 147 
 
 XVII 
 
 My country ! To the height of this great thought, 
 With all that in thee is, with all the weight 
 Of thy self-consciousness, though bom full late. 
 Upon thee, and thy thronging memories fraught 
 With germinating dreams, still to be brought 
 Unto fruition — chastened, consecrate 
 To the high calling of the Perfect State, 
 Thou must arise, or, failing, come to naught. 
 The Organ of the Highest ! pre-ordained 
 To execute the fateful judgment, planned 
 From the Beginning by the Power that deigned 
 First to create in air and sea and land 
 Each thing that breathes and seeks its daily food, 
 And having formed, pronounced Creation good. 
 
 Hesepe, Yhth July 
 
148 Sonnets front a Prison Camp 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Not to prevail by measure of thy might 
 
 O'er might that measures scarcely less than thine, 
 
 Bathing the naked world in blood and brine, 
 
 Till nature turns and sickens at the sight 
 
 — ^All but her vultures, gloating o'er the fight ; 
 
 And the sun rages daily down the line 
 
 That doth compel his radiancy divine 
 
 So fair a world to such a doom to light — 
 
 Nay, be thy function rather to disperse 
 
 The shouldering elements, that so the core 
 
 Of pure light in this glimmering universe 
 
 May by its motion kindling more and more 
 
 The look and loveliness of Spirit bring 
 
 Into the face of every living thing. 
 
 Hesepe, \Uh July 
 
England 149 
 
 XIX 
 
 The Hittite is no longer. Babylon 
 
 Has gone into the silence of the sand. 
 
 Mirage-like in the Syrian desert stand 
 
 The pillars of Palmyra. Greece is gone. 
 
 And where for generations softly shone 
 
 The drowsy Pax Romana, sea and land 
 
 Mouth at the fragile landmarks Hadrian planned. 
 
 The State departs for ever : Man lives on. 
 
 And England, would'st thou live, it can but be 
 
 As thou, a spirit, in the restlessness 
 
 Of thine abundant strength on land and sea 
 
 Becom'st the spirit's vehicle and dress. 
 
 Attaining in the measure of thy span 
 
 The spirit's measure in the Perfect Man. 
 
 Hesepe, 2\st July 
 
150 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XX 
 
 Man, little man, whose sun hath not declined, 
 Pale man with spirit written on his face, 
 Punched out of clay, and pitched on some mean 
 
 place, 
 A breath of being battling with the wind, 
 A prisoner on Time's floating isle confined. 
 Yet in himself encompassing all space, 
 While with the regal gesture of his race 
 He sweeps Eternity into his mind ! 
 The Spirit ! The Encompasser ! O thou, 
 England my country, could I but behold 
 The steadiness of spirit on thy brow, 
 Could'st thou encompass spirit, I should hold 
 Thee master of the Future as the Past, 
 The immortal, perfect nation — and the last. 
 
 Hesefe, 21st July 
 
England 151 
 
 XXI 
 
 Thou hast vast life in thee, howe'er uncouth, 
 
 And, unenlightened, dost possess the art 
 
 To feel the fairway home without the chart. 
 
 And erring still, inclinest still to truth. 
 
 The sense of justice and the sense of ruth 
 
 Are not yet dead within thee, and thy part 
 
 It is to be magnanimous. Thy heart 
 
 Bounds to the fulness of perpetual youth. 
 
 And while the shadows deepen into gloam. 
 
 And while the long years whiten on thy head, 
 
 Thy freshness fails not. Thou bring'st nightly 
 
 home 
 The sense that thou hast earned a dreamless bed. 
 The solemn Abbey, and the whispering Dome 
 Open to-day to take thy Immortal Dead. 
 
 Hesefe, 22n(2 July 
 
152 Sonnets from a Prison Camp 
 
 XXII 
 
 — Our own Immortals ! Ours while we can keep 
 
 An isle of quiet for you 'neath the hoar 
 
 Shade of the Minster, where the Nation bore 
 
 Your mortal relics weeping. Rest you deep ! 
 
 Rest ! And while children's children softly weep 
 
 Over you, and the great rose windows pour 
 
 A glory roimd, at peac& for evermore 
 
 In marble and in alabaster sleep ! 
 
 — Knowing your England ! Knowing that while 
 
 Time 
 Tries men by fire, these men will not recede 
 From where their fathers of the early prime 
 Led them by generations great in deed 
 To deeds still greater, where on fields sublime 
 The freebom sons ©f England bled — and bleed ! 
 
 Hesepe, 25<A July