Moods, Songs, and Doggerels (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By John Galsworthy

This 1919 collection of Galsworthy’s poems is true to its title, splitting into three sections: moods, songs, and doggerels. The volume contains over fifty poems, including “A Dream,” “On a Soldier’s Funeral,” “Devon to Me!,” “When Love if Young,” “To My God,” “Life?,” and many others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Jun 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411461277

John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy was a Nobel-Prize (1932) winning English dramatist, novelist, and poet born to an upper-middle class family in Surrey, England. He attended Harrow and trained as a barrister at New College, Oxford. Although called to the bar in 1890, rather than practise law, Galsworthy travelled extensively and began to write. It was as a playwright Galsworthy had his first success. His plays—like his most famous work, the series of novels comprising The Forsyte Saga—dealt primarily with class and the social issues of the day, and he was especially harsh on the class from which he himself came.

Book preview

MOODS, SONGS, AND DOGGERELS

JOHN GALSWORTHY

This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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ISBN: 978-1-4114-6127-7

CONTENTS

MOODS

A Dream

Courage

Love

Errantry

Time

Acceptation

The Seeds of Light

I Ask

Highland Spring

The Downs

Old Year

The Moon at Dawn

Serenity

Nightmare

On a Soldier's Funeral

Let

Rhyme of the Land and Sea

Slum Cry

Autumn by the Sea

Magpie

Question

Silver Point

Deflowered

The Soul

Autumn

Street Lamps

Persia—Moritura

Gaulzery Moor

The Moor Grave

The Prayer

Dedication

SONGS

Devon to Me!

A Mood

Counting the Stars

Straw in the Street

Cuckoo Song: Dartmoor

Countryman's Song

Land Song of the West Country

Past

When Love is Young

Wind

Rose and Yew

The Cup

Village Sleep Song

DOGGERELS

Drake's Spirit

Plymouth

The Cliff Church

Promenade

Tittle-Tattle

The Robin

To My Dog

The Birth of Venus

To the Spirit of Our Times. [1899]

The Flowers

Hetaira

The Devon Sage

Rhyme after Rain

Life?

MOODS

A Dream

I dreamed. Now God appeared to me,

And beckoned. Forth, in night, we went

To where a tall and lonely tree

With ropes of yew-dark bough was bent.

And, crowned by fiery sky of stars,

God said: "O man! confess thy faith!

The word thou speakest saves or bars,

For here are gallows of thy death!"

Then, staring at that gallows yew,

And all the starry witness, I

With ague shuddered. Well I knew

That I must speak, and tell no lie;

For if in cowardice I fled

The clean confession of my hope,

God would not spare, but hang me dead

Within that twine of yew-dark rope.

Yet even while I strove to find

Breath for my words, to make them live,

There stabbed such pity thro' my mind

That I my happy life must give—

Give up my little day, my all,

With this my unrepentant breath,

And watch my choking body fall

Condemned by my own words to death.

For surely what I had to tell,