The Little Dancers-Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

Lonely, save for a few faint stars, the sky
Dreams; and lonely, below the little street
Into its gloom retires, secluded and shy.
Scarcely the dumb roar enters this soft retreat;
And all is dark, save where come flooding rays
From a tavern window; there, to the brisk measure
Of an organ that down in an alley merily plays,
Two children, all alone and no one by,
Holding their tattered frocks, through an airy maze
Of motion, lightly threaded with nimble feet,
Dance sedately: face to face they gaze,
Their eyes shining, grave with a perfect pleasure.

A Mothers Song-Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

A Mothers Song

Over fast-closed baby eyes

In the garden’s golden air

Blossom-white the butterflies

Hover, hurry, part and pair,

Sudden shinings, flown nowhere!

Blue, above, the unbounded skies!

Little one, O downy head,

O fingers clasping, shaped and small,

Laid in soft nest of your bed,

How the trees are Titan-tall

Over you that slumber, all

Ignorant of hope and dread!

O so small, and all around

Life so vast works wonders new.

Yet to you shall desire and do,

Find and fashion and hold true;

Deepens you hold no thought can sound:

You are sought by powers unknown;

On your trembling heart-strings play

Airs unheard, O little one! Whisperings of far away,

Music made of day and day—

Lands of promise, all your own!

Wide as heaven the secrecies

You enfold: ev’n now, ev’n here,

You presage infinities, While above in hope, in fear

My white wishes, far and near,

Hover like the butterflies.

For the Fallen- Remembering, Where it Came,From-Laurence Binyon (1869-1943

For the Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

                England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

                Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

                Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

There is music in the midst of desolation

                And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

                Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

                They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:

            Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

            We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

                They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

                As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

                Moving in marches upon the starry plain,

As the stars are starry in the time of our darkness,

                To the end, to the end, they remain.

The way Home-Lawrence Binyon (1869-1943)

Many dreams I have dreamed

That are all now gone.

The world, mirrored in a dark pool,

How unearthly it shone!

But now I have comfort

From the things that are,

Nor shrink too ashamed from the self

That to self is bare.

More than soft clouds of leaf

I like the stark form

Of the tree standing up without mask

In stillness and storm,

Poverty in the grain,

Warp, gnarl, exposed,

Nothing of nature's fault or the years'

Slowly injury glozed.

From the thing that is

My comfot is come.

Wind washes the plain road:

This is the way home.

--Laurence Binyon.

The Burning of the Leaves-Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

Now is the time for the burning of the leaves.
They go to the fire; the nostril pricks with smoke
Wandering slowly into the weeping mist.
Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
A flame seizes the smoldering ruin and bites
On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.

The last hollyhock's fallen tower is dust:
All the spices of June are a bitter reek,
All the extravagant riches spent and mean.
All burns! the reddest rose is a ghost.
Sparks whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild
Fingers of fire are making corruption clean.

Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare,
Time for burning of days ended and done,
Idle solace of things that have gone before.
Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there:
Let them go to the fire with never a look behind.
The world that was ours is a world that is ours
 no more.

They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise.
From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,
And magical scents to a wondering memory bring;
The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.
Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours.
 Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.
--Laurence Binyon