Nothing is enough!

Nothing is enough!

No, though our all be spent--

Heart's extremest love,

Spirit's whole intent,

All that nerve can feel,

All that brain invent,--

Still beyond appeal

Will Divine Desire

Yet more excellent

Precious cost require

Of this mortal stuff,--

Never be content

Till ourselves be fire.

Nothing is enough!

Laurence Binyon

The rain was ending, and light

THE rain was ending, and light

Lifting the leaden skies.

It shone upon ceiling and floor

And dazzled a child's eyes.

Pale after fever, a captive

Apart from his schoolfellows,

He stood at the high room's window

With face to the pane pressed close,

And beheld an immense glory

Flooding with fire the drops

Spilled on miraculous leaves

Of the fresh green lime-tree tops.

Washed gravel glittered red

To a wall, and beyond it nine

Tall limes in the old inn yard

Rose over the tall inn sign.

And voices arose from beneath

Of boys from school set free,

Racing and chasing each other

With laughter and games and glee.

To the boy at the high room-window,

Gazing alone and apart,

There came a wish without reason,

A thought that shone through his heart.

I'll choose this moment and keep it,

He said to himself, for a vow,

To remember for ever and ever

As if it were always now.

Laurence Binyon

In the shadow of a broken house

IN the shadow of a broken house,

Down a deserted street,

Propt walls, cold hearths, and phantom stairs,

And the silence of dead feet--

Locked wildly in one another's arms

I saw two lovers meet.

And over that hearthless house aghast

Rose from the mind's abyss

Lost stars and ruined, peering moons,

Worlds overshadowing this,--

Time's stony palace crumbled down

Before that instant kiss.

Laurence Binyon

In the high leaves of a walnut

IN the high leaves of a walnut,

On the very topmost boughs,

A boy that climbed the branching bole

His cradled limbs would house.

On the airy bed that rocked him

Long, idle hours he'd lie

Alone with white clouds sailing

The warm blue of the sky.

I remember not what his dreams were;

But the scent of a leaf's enough

To house me higher than those high boughs

In a youth he knew not of,

In a light that no day brings now

But none can spoil or smutch,

A magic that I felt not then

And only now I touch.

Laurence Binyon

The House That Was

OF the old house, only a few, crumbled

Courses of brick, smothered in nettle and dock,

Or a shaped stone lying mossy where it tumbled!

Sprawling bramble and saucy thistle mock

What once was fire-lit floor and private charm,

Whence, seen in a windowed picture, were hills fading

At night, and all was memory-coloured and warm,

And voices talked, secure of the wind's invading.

Of the old garden, only a stray shining

Of daffodil flames among April's Cuckoo-flowers

Or clustered aconite, mixt with weeds entwining!

But, dark and lofty, a royal cedar towers

By homelier thorns; and whether the rain drifts

Or sun scortches, he holds the downs in ken,

The western vales; his branchy tiers he lifts,

Older than many a generation of men.

Laurence Binyon

The Wood's Entry

SO old is the wood, so old,

Old as Fear.

Wrinkled roots; great stems; hushed leaves;

No sound near.

Shadows retreat into shadow,

Deepening, crossed.

Burning light singles a low leaf, a bough,

Far within, lost.

Laurence Binyon

The Children Dancing

AWAY, sad thoughts, and teasing

Perplexities, away!

Let other blood go freezing,

We will be wise and gay.

For here is all heart-easing,

An ecstasy at play.

The children dancing, dancing,

Light upon happy feet,

Both eye and heart entrancing

Mingle, escape, and meet;

Come joyous-eyed and advancing

Or floatingly retreat.

Now slow, now swifter treading

Their paces timed and true,

An instant poised, then threading

A maze of printless clue,

Their motions smoothly wedding

To melody anew,

They sway in chime, and scatter

In looping circles; they

Are Music's airy matter,

And their feet move, the way

The raindrops shine and patter

On tossing flowers in May.

As if those flowers were singing

For joy of the clean air,

As if you saw them springing

To dance the breeze, so fair

The lissom bodies swinging,

So light the flung-back hair.

And through the mind enchanted

A happy river goes

By its own young carol haunted

And bringing where it flows

What all in the world has wanted

And who in this world knows?

Laurence Binyon

Commercial

GROSS, with protruding ears,

Sleek hair, brisk glance, fleshy and yet alert,

Red, full, and satisfied,

Cased in obtuseness confident not to be hurt,

He sits at a little table

In the crowded, congenial glare and noise, jingling

Coins in his pocket; sips

His glass, with hard eye impudently singling

A woman here and there:--

Women and men, they are all priced in his thought,

All commodities staked

In the market, sooner or later sold and bought.

"Were I he," you are thinking,

You with the dreamer's forehead and pure eyes,

"What should I lose?--All,

All that is worth the striving for, all my prize;

"All the truth of me, all

Life that is wonder, pity and fear, requiring

Utter joy, utter pain,

From the heart that the infinite hurts with deep desiring.

"Why is it I am not he?

Chance? The grace of God? The mystery's plan?

He, too, is human stuff,

A kneading of the old, brotherly slime of man.

"Am I a lover of men,

And turn abhorring as from fat slug or snake?

Lives obstinate in me too

Something the power of angels could not unmake?"

O self-questioner! None

Unlocks your answer. Steadily look, nor flinch.

This belongs to your kind,

And knows its aim, and fails not itself at a pinch.

It is here in the world and works,

Not done with yet.--Up, then, let the test be tried!

Dare your uttermost, be

Completely, and of your own, like him, be justified.

Laurence Binyon

The Tamarisk Hedge

I KNOW that there are slumbrous woods beyond

On islands of white marges, where the tide

Floods upward, blue as a kingfisher's wing,

And sails, like wishes of a reverie,

Shine to the wind that fills them, far inland.

I know that there are harbours in the hills

Amid those verdurous, smooth bosom-folds,

Found by the idle sunbeams for their sleep.

But it contents me to see nothing more

Than liquid blue of the invisible wind

Flowing and glowing through the tamarisk

That waves upon this wild deserted bank;

And I lie warm on the short, sandy turf

Lulled in bright noise of the returning sea.

O plumy Tamarisk, tossing your green hair

In the wind's radient stream, as if I had lent

Your fibres all my senses of delight,

Why does it so enchant me to have nothing,

And drink long draughts of sky where nothing is,

And tremble to the glory of an hour

That passes out of nothing into nothing?

Laurence Binyon