No More Learning

E. M.

July, 1922





CONTENTS



LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

Ryton Firs


MARTIN ARMSTRONG

The Buzzards (from 'The Buzzards')
Honey Harvest
Miss Thompson Goes Shopping (from 'The Buzzards')


EDMUND BLUNDEN

The Poor Man's Pig (from 'The Shepherd')
Almswomen (from 'The Waggoner')
Perch-fishing " " "
The Giant Puffball (from 'The Shepherd')
The Child's Grave " " "
April Byeway " " "


WILLIAM H. DAVIES

The Captive Lion (from 'The Song of Life')
A Bird's Anger " " "
The Villain " " "
Love's Caution " " "
Wasted Hours (from 'The Hour of Magic')
The Truth (from 'The Song of Life')


WALTER DE LA MARE

The Moth (from 'The Veil')
'Sotto Voce' " "
Sephina (from 'Flora ')
Titmouse (from 'The Veil')
Suppose (from 'Flora')
The Corner Stone (from 'The Veil')


JOHN DRINKWATER

Persuasion (from 'Seeds of Time')


JOHN FREEMAN

I Will Ask (from 'Poems New and Old')
The Evening Sky " " "
The Caves " " "
Moon-Bathers (from 'Music')
In Those Old Days (from 'Poems New and Old')
Caterpillars (from 'Music')
Change " "


WILFRID GIBSON

Fire (from 'Neighbours')
Barbara Fell " "
Philip and Phoebe Ware " "
By the Weir " "
Worlds " "


ROBERT GRAVES

Lost Love (from 'The Pier-Glass')
Morning Phoenix " "
A Lover Since Childhood
Sullen Moods
The Pier-Glass (from 'The Pier-Glass')
The Troll's Nosegay " "
Fox's Dingle " "
The General Elliott (from 'On English Poetry')
The Patchwork Bonnet (from 'The Pier-Glass')


RICHARD HUGHES

The Singing Furies (from 'Gipsy-Night')
Moonstruck " "
Vagrancy " "
Poets, Painters, Puddings "


WILLIAM KERR

In Memoriam D. O. M.
Past and Present
The Audit
The Apple Tree
Her New-Year Posy
Counting Sheep
The Trees at Night
The Dead


D. H. LAWRENCE

Snake


HAROLD MONRO

Thistledown (from 'Real Property')
Real Property " " "
Unknown Country " " "


ROBERT NICHOLS

Night Rhapsody (from 'Aurelia')
November " "


J. D. C. FELLOW

After London
On a Friend who died suddenly upon the Seashore
Tenebræ
When All is Said


FRANK PREWETT

To my Mother in Canada
Voices of Women (from 'Poems')
The Somme Valley " "
Burial Stones " "
Snow-Buntings " "
The Kelso Road " "
Baldon Lane " "
Come Girl, and Embrace "


PETER QUENNELL

Procne
A Man to a Sunflower
Perception
Pursuit


V. SACKVILLE-WEST

A Saxon Song (from 'Orchard and Vineyard')
Mariana in the North " " "
Full Moon " " "
Sailing Ships " " "
Trio " " "
Bitterness " " "
Evening " " "


EDWARD SHANKS

The Rock Pool (from 'The Island of Youth')
The Glade " " "
Memory " " "
Woman's Song
The Wind
A Lonely Place


J. C. SQUIRE

Elegy (from 'Poems,' 2nd series)
Meditation in Lamplight " "
Late Snow " "


FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG

Seascape
Scirocco
The Quails
Song at Santa Cruz



BIBLIOGRAPHY





* * * * *





LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE



RYTON FIRS


'The Dream'

All round the knoll, on days of quietest air,
Secrets are being told; and if the trees
Speak out--let them make uproar loud as drums--
'Tis secrets still, shouted instead of whisper'd.
There must have been a warning given once:
No tree, on pain of withering and sawfly,
To reach the slimmest of his snaky toes
Into this mounded sward and rumple it;
All trees stand back: taboo is on this soil. --

The trees have always scrupulously obeyed.
The grass, that elsewhere grows as best it may
Under the larches, countable long nesh blades,
Here in clear sky pads the ground thick and close
As wool upon a Southdown wether's back;
And as in Southdown wool, your hand must sink
Up to the wrist before it find the roots.
A bed for summer afternoons, this grass;
But in the Spring, not too softly entangling
For lively feet to dance on, when the green
Flashes with daffodils. From Marcle way,
From Dymock, Kempley, Newent, Bromesberrow,
Redmarley, all the meadowland daffodils seem
Running in golden tides to Ryton Firs,
To make the knot of steep little wooded hills
Their brightest show: O bella età de l'oro!
Now I breathe you again, my woods of Ryton:
Not only golden with your daffodil-fires
Lying in pools on the loose dusky ground
Beneath the larches, tumbling in broad rivers
Down sloping grass under the cherry trees
And birches: but among your branches clinging
A mist of that Ferrara-gold I first
Loved in the easy hours then green with you;
And as I stroll about you now, I have
Accompanying me--like troops of lads and lasses
Chattering and dancing in a shining fortune--
Those mornings when your alleys of long light
And your brown rosin-scented shadows were
Enchanted with the laughter of my boys.


'The Voices in the Dream'

Follow my heart, my dancing feet,
Dance as blithe as my heart can beat.
Only can dancing understand
What a heavenly way we pass
Treading the green and golden land,
Daffodillies and grass.

I had a song, too, on my road,
But mine was in my eyes;
For Malvern Hills were with me all the way,
Singing loveliest visible melodies
Blue as a south-sea bay;
And ruddy as wine of France
Breadths of new-turn'd ploughland under them glowed.
'Twas my heart then must dance
To dwell in my delight;
No need to sing when all in song my sight
Moved over hills so musically made
And with such colour played. --
And only yesterday it was I saw
Veil'd in streamers of grey wavering smoke
My shapely Malvern Hills.
That was the last hail-storm to trouble spring:
He came in gloomy haste,
Pusht in front of the white clouds quietly basking,
In such a hurry he tript against the hills
And stumbling forward spilt over his shoulders
All his black baggage held,
Streaking downpour of hail.
Then fled dismayed, and the sun in golden glee
And the high white clouds laught down his dusky ghost.

For all that's left of winter
Is moisture in the ground.
When I came down the valley last, the sun
Just thawed the grass and made me gentle turf,
But still the frost was bony underneath.
Now moles take burrowing jaunts abroad, and ply
Their shovelling hands in earth
As nimbly as the strokes
Of a swimmer in a long dive under water.