Biography

When I am buried, all my thoughts and actsWill be reduced to lists of dates and facts,And long before this wandering flesh is rottenThe dates which made me will be all forgotten;And none will know the gleam there used to beAbout the feast days freshly kept by me,But men will call the golden hour of bliss"About this time," or "shortly after this."

Men do not heed the rungs by which men climbThose glittering steps, those milestones upon Time,Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth,Those moments of the soul in years of earthThey mark the height achieved, the main result,The power of freedom in the perished cult,The power of boredom in the dead man's deeds,Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.

By many waters and on many waysI have known golden instants and bright days;The day on which, beneath an arching sail,I saw the Cordilleras and gave hail;The summer day on which in heart's delightI saw the Swansea Mumbles bursting white,The glittering day when all the waves wore flagsAnd the ship Wanderer came with sails in rags;That curlew-calling time in Irish duskWhen life became more splendid than its husk,When the rent chapel on the brae at SlainsShone with a doorway opening beyond brains;The dawn when, with a brace-block's creaking cry,Out of the mist a little barque slipped by,Spilling the mist with changing gleams of red,Then gone, with one raised hand and one turned head;The howling evening when the spindrift's mistsBroke to display the four Evangelists,Snow-capped, divinely granite, lashed by breakers,Wind-beaten bones of long since buried acres;The night alone near water when I heardAll the sea's spirit spoken by a bird;The English dusk when I beheld once more(With eyes so changed) the ship, the citied shore,The lines of masts, the streets so cheerly trod(In happier seasons) and gave thanks to God.All had their beauty, then bright moments' gift,Their something caught from Time, the ever-swift.

All of those gleams were golden; but life's handsHave given more constant gifts in changing lands,And when I count those gifts, I think them suchAs no man's bounty could have bettered much:The gift of country life, near hills and woodsWhere happy waters sing in solitudes,The gift of being near ships, of seeing each dayA city of ships with great ships under weigh,The great street paved with water, filled with shipping,And all the world's flags flying and seagulls dipping.

Yet when I am dust my penman may not knowThose water-trampling ships which made me glow,But think my wonder mad and fail to findTheir glory, even dimly, from my mind,And yet they made me:not alone the shipsBut men hard-palmed from tallying-on to whips,The two close friends of nearly twenty years,Sea-followers both, sea-wrestlers and sea-peers,Whose feet with mine wore many a bolt-head brightTreading the decks beneath the riding light.Yet death will make that warmth of friendship coldAnd who'll know what one said and what one toldOur hearts' communion and the broken spellsWhen the loud call blew at the strike of bells?No one, I know, yet let me be believedA soul entirely known is life achieved.

Years blank with hardship never speak a wordLive in the soul to make the being stirred,Towns can be prisons where the spirit dullsAway from mates and ocean-wandering hulls,Away from all bright water and great hillsAnd sheep-walks where the curlews cry their fills,Away in towns, where eyes have nought to seeBut dead museums and miles of miseryAnd floating life unrooted from man's needAnd miles of fish-hooks baited to catch greedAnd life made wretched out of human kenAnd miles of shopping women served by men.So, if the penman sums my London daysLet him but say that there were holy ways,Dull Bloomsbury streets of dull brick mansions oldWith stinking doors where women stood to scoldAnd drunken waits at Christmas with their hornDroning the news, in snow, that Christ was born;And windy gas lamps and the wet roads shiningAnd that old carol of the midnight whining,And that old room (above the noisy slum)Where there was wine and fire and talk with someUnder strange pictures of the wakened soulTo whom this earth was but a burnt-out coal.

O Time, bring back those midnights and those friends,Those glittering moments that a spirit lendsThat all may be imagined from the flashThe cloud-hid god-game through the lightning gashThose hours of stricken sparks from which men tookLight to send out to men in song or book.Those friends who heard St. Pancras' bells strike twoYet stayed until the barber's cockerel crew.Talking of noble styles, the Frenchman's best,The thought beyond great poets not expressed,The glory of mood where human frailty failed,The forts of human light not yet assailed,Till the dim room had mind and seemed to broodBinding our wills to mental brotherhood,Till we became a college, and each nightWas discipline and manhood and delight,Till our farewells and winding down the stairsAt each grey dawn had meaning that Time spares,That we, so linked, should roam the whole world roundTeaching the ways our brooding minds had foundMaking that room our Chapter, our one mindWhere all that this world soiled should be refined.

Often at night I tread those streets againAnd see the alley glimmering in the rain,Yet now I miss that sign of earlier trampsA house with shadows of plane-boughs under lamps,The secret house where once a beggar stoodTrembling and blind to show his woe for food.And now I miss that friend who used to walkHome to my lodgings with me, deep in talk,Wearing the last of night out in still streetsTrodden by us and policemen on their beatsAnd cats, but else deserted; now I missThat lively mind and guttural laugh of hisAnd that strange way he had of making gleam,Like something real, the art we used to dream.

London has been my prison; but my booksHills and great waters, labouring men and brooks,Ships and deep friendships and remembered daysWhich even now set all my mind ablazeAs that June day when, in the red bricks' chinksI saw the old Roman ruins white with pinksAnd felt the hillside haunted even thenBy not dead memory of the Roman men.And felt the hillside thronged by souls unseenWho knew the interest in me and were keenThat man alive should understand man deadSo many centuries since the blood was shed.And quickened with strange hush because this comerSensed a strange soul alive behind the summer.That other day on Ercall when the stonesWere sunbleached white, like long unburied bones,While the bees droned and all the air was sweetFrom honey buried underneath my feet,Honey of purple heather and white cloverSealed in its gummy bags till summer's over.Then other days by water, by bright sea,Clear as clean glass and my bright friend with me,The cove clean bottomed where we saw the brownRed spotted plaice go skimming six feet downAnd saw the long fronds waving, white with shells,Waving, unfolding, drooping, to the swells;That sadder day when we beheld the greatAnd terrible beauty of a Lammas spateRoaring white-mouthed in all the great cliff's gapsHeadlong, tree-tumbling fury of collapse,While drenching clouds drove by and every senseWas water roaring or rushing or in offence,And mountain sheep stood huddled and blown gaps gleamedWhere torn white hair of torrents shook and streamed.That sadder day when we beheld againA spate going down in sunshine after rain,When the blue reach of water leaping brightWas one long ripple and clatter, flecked with white.And that far day, that never blotted pageWhen youth was bright like flowers about old ageFair generations bringing thanks for lifeTo that old kindly man and trembling wifeAfter their sixty years: Time never madeA better beauty since the Earth was laidThan that thanksgiving given to grey hairFor the great gift of life which brought them there.

Days of endeavour have been good: the daysRacing in cutters for the comrade's praise,The day they led my cutter at the turnYet could not keep the lead and dropped astern,The moment in the spurt when both boats' oarsDipped in each other's wash and throats grew hoarseAnd teeth ground into teeth and both strokes quickenedLashing the sea, and gasps came, and hearts sickenedAnd coxswains damned us, dancing, banking stroke,To put our weights on, though our hearts were brokeAnd both boats seemed to stick and sea seemed glue,The tide a mill race we were struggling throughAnd every quick recover gave us squintsOf them still there, and oar tossed water-glintsAnd cheering came, our friends, our foemen cheering,A long, wild, rallying murmur on the hearing--"Port Fore!" and "Starboard Fore!""Port Fore." "Port Fore.""Up with her, Starboard," and at that each oarLightened, though arms were bursting, and eyes shutAnd the oak stretchers grunted in the strutAnd the curse quickened from the cox, our bowsCrashed, and drove talking water, we made vowsChastity vows and temperance; in our painWe numbered things we'd never eat againIf we could only win; then came the yell"Starboard," "Port Fore," and then a beaten bellRung as for fire to cheer us. "Now." Oars bentSoul took the looms now body's bolt was spent,"Damn it, come on now," "On now," "On now," "Starboard."

"Port Fore." "Up with her, Port"; each cutter harbouredTen eye-shut painsick stragglers, "Heave, oh, heave,"Catcalls waked echoes like a shrieking sheave."Heave," and I saw a back, then two. "Port Fore.""Starboard." "Come on." I saw the midship oarAnd knew we had done them. "Port Fore." "Starboard." "Now."I saw bright water spurting at their bowTheir cox' full face an instant. They were done.The watchers' cheering almost drowned the gun.We had hardly strength to toss our oars; our cryCheering the losing cutter was a sigh.Other bright days of action have seemed great:Wild days in a pampero off the Plate;Good swimming days, at Hog Back or the CovesWhich the young gannet and the corbie loves;Surf-swimming between rollers, catching breathBetween the advancing grave and breaking death,Then shooting up into the sunbright smoothTo watch the advancing roller bare her tooth,And days of labour also, loading, hauling;Long days at winch or capstan, heaving, pawling;The days with oxen, dragging stone from blasting,And dusty days in mills, and hot days masting.

Trucking on dust-dry deckings smooth like ice,And hunts in mighty wool-racks after mice;Mornings with buckwheat when the fields did blanchWith White Leghorns come from the chicken ranch.Days near the spring upon the sunburnt hill,Plying the maul or gripping tight the drill.Delights of work most real, delights that changeThe headache life of towns to rapture strangeNot known by townsmen, nor imagined; healthThat puts new glory upon mental wealthAnd makes the poor man rich.But that ends, too,Health with its thoughts of life; and that bright viewThat sunny landscape from life's peak, that glory,And all a glad man's comments on life's storyAnd thoughts of marvellous towns and living menAnd what pens tell and all beyond the penEnd, and are summed in words so truly deadThey raise no image of the heart and head,The life, the man alive, the friend we knew,The mind ours argued with or listened to,None; but are dead, and all life's keenness, all,Is dead as print before the funeral,Even deader after, when the dates are sought,And cold minds disagree with what we thought.This many pictured world of many passionsWears out the nations as a woman fashions,And what life is is much to very few,Men being so strange, so mad, and what men doSo good to watch or share; but when men countThose hours of life that were a bursting fount,Sparkling the dusty heart with living springs,There seems a world, beyond our earthly things,Gated by golden moments, each bright timeOpening to show the city white like lime,High towered and many peopled. This made sure,Work that obscures those moments seems impure,Making our not-returning time of breathDull with the ritual and records of death,That frost of fact by which our wisdom givesCorrectly stated death to all that lives.

Best trust the happy moments. What they gaveMakes man less fearful of the certain grave,And gives his work compassion and new eyes.The days that make us happy make us wise.