As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I have never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch out of my proper skin:
I talk of love- a scholar's parrot may talk Greek-
But, self-imprisoned, merely end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

-C.S. Lewis-

I Have a Rendezvous with Death

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air-
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath-
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear. . .
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

-Alan Seeger-
1888-1916

Rectius Vives

Licinius, stray thou not so high
That fear of heaven you forget,
But slip not down where cowards lie,
Not thus low yet;

Do thou the shining middle keep,
Not envying the envied throne,
Thou shalt not as a pauper sleep,
Nor woebegone.

The tallest pine is oft blown down,
The tower from its proud height drops,
And crashing lighting strikes upon
High mountain-tops.

The ready heart prepares for ill,
Braced to receive the evil lot;
But Jove blows back the same snow's chill
His winds have brought.

Though fortune favor thee not now,
Why must the future thee misuse?
Apollo oft unbends his bow
To court the muse.

Take spirit in the narrow strait,
But wisely navigate the gail,
And 'till the blasting wind abate,
Keep short thy sail.

-Translated from the Latin by Thomas Banks-

A Farewell to Arms

His golden locks time hath to silver turn'd;
O time too swift, of swiftness never ceasing!
His youth 'gainst time and age had ever spurn'd,
But spurn'd in vain; youth waineth by increasing:
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.

His helmet now shall make a hive for bees,
And lovers' sonnets turned to holy psalms,
A man-at-arms must serve now on his knees,
And feed on prayers, which are Age's alms:
But though from court to cottage he depart,
His saint is sure of his unspotted heart.

And when he saddest sits in homely cell,
He'll teach his swains this carol for a song-
'Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well,
Curst be the souls that wish her any wrong.'
Goddess, allow this aged man his right
To be your beadsman now that was your knight.

-George Peel-

Late Flowering Lust

My head is bald, my breath is bad,
Unshaven is my chin,
I have not now the joys I had
When I was young in sin.

I run my fingers down your dress
With brandy-certain aim,
And you respond to my caress
And maybe feel the same.

But I've a feeling of my own
On this reunion night,
Wherein two skeletons are shown
To hold each other tight.

Dark sockets look on emptiness
That once was loving-eyed,
The mouth that opens for a kiss
Has got no tongue inside.

I cling to you inflamed with fear
As now you cling to me;
I feel how frail you are, my dear,
And wonder what will be.

A week? Or twenty years remain?
And then- what kind of death?
A losing fight with frightful pain
Or a gasping fight for breath?

Too long we let our bodies cling,
We cannot hide disgust
At all the thoughts that in us spring
From this late flowering lust.

-Sir John Betjeman-

A Clock Striking Midnight

Hark to the echo of time's footsteps; gone
These moments are into the unseen grave
Of ages. They have vanished nameless. None,
While they are deep under the eddying wave
Of the chaotic past, shall place a stone
Sacred to these, the nurses of the brave,
The mighty, and the good. Futurity
Broods on the the ocean, hatching 'neath her wing
Invisible to man the century,
That on its hundred feet, a sluggish thing,
Gnawing away the world, shall totter by
And sweep dead mortals with it. As I sing
Time, the colossus of the world, that strides
With each foot plunged in darkness silent glides,

And puffs death's cloud upon us. It is vain
To struggle with the tide. We all must sink,
Still grasping the thin air, with frantic pain
Grappling with fame to buoy us. Can we think
Eternity by whom swift Time is slain,
And dragged along to dark destruction's brink,
Shall be the echo of man's puny words?
Or that our grovelling stars shall e'er be writ
In never fading stars; or like proud birds
Undazzled in their cloud built eyrie sit
Clutching the lightning, or in cloudy herds
Diving amid the sea's vast treasury flit?
Sink, painted clay back to thy parent earth
While the glad spirit seeks a brighter birth.

-T.L. Beddoes-

Dante

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverend feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his Paternoster o'er;
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an indistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.

-Longfellow-