Collected English Verse — Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. b. 1840, d. 1922 (Part 2 of 3)

is his conquest. Life, if it should fret,
Has paid him tribute. He can bear to die,
   He who has once been happy! When I set
The world before me and survey its range,
   Its mean ambitions, its scant fantasies,
The shreds of pleasure which for lack of change
   Men wrap around them and call happiness,
The poor delights which are the tale and sum
Of the world’s courage in its martyrdom;

When I hear laughter from a tavern door,
   When I see crowds agape and in the rain
Watching on tiptoe and with stifled roar
   To see a rocket fired or a bull slain,
When misers handle gold, when orators
   Touch strong men’s hearts with glory till they 0156
When cities deck their streets for barren wars
   Which have laid waste their youth, and when 0156
Calmly the count of my own life and see
   On what poor stuff my manhood’s dreams 0156
Till I too learn’d what dole of vanity
   Will serve a human soul for daily bread,
—Then I remember that I once was young
And lived with Esther the world’s gods among.

825   Gibraltar

SEVEN weeks of sea, and twice seven days of storm
Upon the huge Atlantic, and once more
We ride into still water and the calm
Of a sweet evening, screen’d by either shore
Of Spain and Barbary. Our toils are o’er,
Our exile is accomplish’d. Once again
We look on Europe, mistress as of yore
Of the fair earth and of the hearts of men.
  Ay, this is the famed rock which Hercules
And Goth and Moor bequeath’d us. At this door
England stands sentry. God! to hear the shrill
Sweet treble of her fifes upon the breeze,
And at the summons of the rock gun’s roar
To see her red coats marching from the hill!

826   The Old Squire

I LIKE the hunting of the hare
  Better than that of the fox;
I like the joyous morning air,
  And the crowing of the cocks.

I like the calm of the early fields,
  The ducks asleep by the lake,
The quiet hour which Nature yields,
  Before mankind is awake.

I like the pheasants and feeding things
  Of the unsuspicious morn;
I like the flap of the wood- pigeon’s wings
  As she rises from the corn.

I like the blackbird’s shriek, and his rush
  From the turnips as I pass by,
And the partridge hiding her head in a bush
  For her young ones cannot fly.

I like these things, and I like to ride
  When all the world is in bed,
To the top of the hill where the sky grows wide,
  And where the sun grows red.

The beagles at my horse heels trot
  In silence after me;
There’s Ruby, Roger, Diamond, Dot,
  Old Slut and Margery,—

A score of names well used, and dear,
  The names my childhood knew;
The horn, with which I rouse their cheer,
  Is the horn my father blew.

I like the hunting of the hare
  Better than that of the fox;
The new world still is all less fair
  Than the old world it mocks.

I covet not a wider range
  Than these dear manors give;
I take my pleasures without change,
  And as I lived I live.

I leave my neighbours to their thought;
  My choice it is, and pride,
On my own lands to find my sport,
  In my own fields to ride.

The hare herself no better loves
  The field where she was bred,
Than I the habit of these groves,
  My own iniherited.