The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poems New and Old, by John Freeman

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Title: Poems New and Old

Author: John Freeman

Release Date: July 15, 2004 [EBook #12026]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Karen Dalrymple and PG Distributed Proofreaders

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ***

POEMS NEW AND OLD

PRESS NOTICES

Mr. Freeman's landscapes have an individuality which entitles him to his own place as a poet of nature.... The appreciation of his lofty ardours, his desolate landscapes and his strange, though beautiful, rhythms and forms of verse, is not one which springs up instantly in the mind; but once it has arisen it does not diminish.—New Statesman.

I think that whatever limitations our age and our poetry may have, Mr. Freeman's poetry, and much else that is now being written, will find in all succeeding generations readers to whom it will give companionship and comfort.—Mr. J.C. Squire, in Land and Water.

This book must be read steadily through; quotation can reveal little of its scope, its richness.... When a man, in poems that are clearly fragments of autobiography, thus surrenders to the world the life of his spirit, the beauty of what he writes is inseparable from its truth. Truth endures, and a prophet would have a sad foreboding of posterity if he did not believe that of this day's poets Mr. Freeman will not be among the forgotten.—Times Literary Supplement.

This rarefied air is something to which the reader must adjust himself; but he finds the process of adjustment made easy by a peculiar fascination in the atmosphere which Mr. Freeman creates. If it is aloof from ordinary experience, it is by so much the more individual; and in it there are to be found thrills and feelings, an understanding of a particular aspect of nature, which have not hitherto been reported in poetry—Westminster Gazette.

POEMS NEW AND OLD

By John Freeman

London:

Selwyn and Blount, Ltd.

21, York Buildings, Adelphi, W.C. 2

1920

"——He still'd

All sounds in air; and left so free mine ears

That I might hear the music of the spheres,

And all the angels singing out of heaven,

Whose tunes were solemn, as to passion given."

NOTE.

With the exception of two or three poems which have appeared in newspapers, or in an anthology entitled Twelve Poets, the verses in the first part of this volume have not hitherto been printed. The second part contains Memories of Childhood and Other Poems, and the third part retrieves many verses from Presage of Victory (1916), Stone Trees (1916), Fifty Poems (1911) and Twenty Poems (1909). Chronological order has not been carefully observed, or avoided, in the arrangement of the third part, but the earlier pieces will easily be distinguished by those who may wish to distinguish them.

CONTENTS

Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required.

PART I

- The Evening Sky

- Beechwood

- Thy Hill Leave Not

- The Caves

- I Will Ask

- In Those Old Days

- The Ash

- Imagination

- No More Adieu

- The Visit

- Travelling

- The Song of the Forest

- Out of the East

PART II

- The Wakers

- Memories of Childhood:

- I.--Childhood Calls

- II.--The Answer

- III.--The First House

- IV.--The Other House

- V.--The Fire

- VI.--The Kite

- VII.--The Chair

- VIII.--The Swing

- IX.--Fear

- X.--The Streets

- XI.--When Childhood Died

- XII.--All that I was I am

- The Shock

- The Unloosening

- Wild Heart:

- I.--Dark and Strange

- II.--Wild Heart

- III.--Home for Love

- IV.--The Alde

- V.--Against the Cold Pale Sky

- VI.--The Dark Fire

- VII.--The Kestrel

- VIII.--The Image

- IX.--Perversities--I.

- X.--Perversities--II.

- XI.--The Valley

- XII.--The Dark Night of the Mind

- The Body

- The Tossing Mountains

- The Pond

- Ten O'clock No More

- From Wear to Thames

- Time from his Grave

- Wilder Music

- Grasses

- Fair and Brief

- Nightfall

- The Slaves

- The Fugitive

- The Unthrift

- The Wren

- The Winds

- The Wanderer

- Merrill's Garden

- The Lime Tree

- DARK CHESTNUT

- Lonely Airs

- The Creeper

- Smoke

- Queens

- The Red House

- The Beam

- Last Hours

- The Wish

- Nowhere, Everywhere

- Take Care, Take Care

- Nearness

- The Second Flood

- The Glass

- But Most Thy Light

- In That Dark Silent Hour

- Once There was Time

- Scatter the Silver Ash like Snow

- Justification

- I have Never Loved You Yet

- The Pigeons

- And These for You:

- I.--Not With These Eyes

- II.--Asking Forgiveness

- Judgment Day

- Lighting the Fire

- Recovery

- Eyes

- Fulfilment

- Bring your Beauty

- Memorial

- The Human Music

- The Candle

- Old Fires

- The Crowns

- The Bright Rider

- To the Heavenly Power

- Snows

- The Thorn

- Change

- Beyond the Barn

- Let Honour Speak

- Talk

- The Undying

- The Native Country

PART III

- Stone Trees

- It was the Lovely Moon

- The Hounds

- Hector

- Listening

- Stones

- The Enemies

- The Silvery One

- The Flute

- Stars

- Ten O'clock and Four O'clock

- The Yew

- November Skies

- Change

- Delight

- Sleeping Sea

- The Weaver of Magic

- The Darksome Nightingale

- Under the Linden Branches

- Strife

- Foreboding

- Discovery

- More than Sweet

- The Brightness

- The Holy Mountains

- Rapture

- Music Comes

- The Idiot

- The Mouse

- Happiness

- Comfortable Light

- Hallo!

- Fear

- Waking

- The Fall

- Stay

- Shadows

- Walking at Eve

- The Physician

- Vision and Echo

- Revisitation

- Unpardoned

- Some Hurt Thing

- The Waits

- In The Lane

- The Last Time

- You that Were

- "The Light that Never was on Sea or Land"

- At Evening's Hush

- Happy Death

- Wisdom and a Mother

- The Thrush Sings

- To My Mother

- The Unuttered

- Fair Eve

- The Snare

- O Hide Me in Thy Love

- Prayer to my Lord

- The Tree

- Earth To Earth

- On a Piece of Silver

- The Escape

- Wonder

- Lambourn Town

- The Lamp

- Who is ut that Answers?

- Waiting

- Absence

- Sleep

- Your Shadow

- The Full Tide

- Hands

- The Night Watch

- The Haunted Shadow

- Alone and Cold

- Inevitable Change

- Loneliness

- I heard a voice upon the window beat

- First Love

- The Call

- The Shade

- Happy is England Now

- The Stars in their Courses

- Sweet England

- Presage of Victory

- The Return

- English Hills

- Homecoming

- England's Enemy

- From Piccadilly in August

- Evening Beauty: Blackfriars

- Sailing of the Glory

- At the Dock

- "The Men who loved the Cause that Never Dies"

End Autogenerated TOC.

PART I

THE EVENING SKY

Rose-bosom'd and rose-limb'd

With eyes of dazzling bright

Shakes Venus mid the twinèd boughs of the night;

Rose-limb'd, soft-stepping

From low bough to bough

Shaking the wide-hung starry fruitage—dimmed

Its bloom of snow

By that sole planetary glow.

Venus, avers the astronomer,

Not thus idly dancing goes

Flushing the eternal orchard with wild rose.

She through ether burns

Outpacing planetary earth,

And ere two years triumphantly returns,

And again wave-like swelling flows,

And again her flashing apparition comes and goes.

This we have not seen,

No heavenly courses set,

No flight unpausing through a void serene:

But when eve clears,

Arises Venus as she first uprose

Stepping the shaken boughs among,

And in her bosom glows

The warm light hidden in sunny snows.

She shakes the clustered stars

Lightly, as she goes

Amid the unseen branches of the night,

Rose-limb'd, rose-bosom'd bright.

She leaps: they shake and pale; she glows—

And who but knows

How the rejoiced heart aches

When Venus all his starry vision shakes;

When through his mind

Tossing with random airs of an unearthly wind,

Rose-bosom'd, rose-limb'd,

The mistress of his starry vision arises,

And the boughs glittering sway

And the stars pale away,

And the enlarging heaven glows

As Venus light-foot mid the twinèd branches goes.

BEECHWOOD

Hear me, O beeches! You

That have with ageless anguish slowly risen

From earth's still secret prison

Into the ampler prison of aery blue.

Your voice I hear, flowing the valleys through

After the wind that tramples from the west.

After the wind your boughs in new unrest

Shake, and your voice—one voice uniting voices

A thousand or a thousand thousand—flows

Like the wind's moody; glad when he rejoices

In swift-succeeding and diminishing blows,

And drooping when declines death's ardour in his breast;

Then over him exhausted weaving the soft fan-like noises

Of gentlest creaking stems and soothing leaves

Until he rest,

And silent too your easied bosom heaves.

That high and noble wind is rootless nor

From stable earth sucks nurture, but roams on

Childless as fatherless, wild, unconfined,

So that men say, "As homeless as the wind!"

Rising and falling and rising evermore

With years like ticks, æons as centuries gone;

Only within impalpable ether bound

And blindly with the green globe spinning round.

He, noble wind,

Most ancient creature of imprisoned Time,

From high to low may fall, and low to high may climb,

Andean peak to deep-caved southern sea,

With lifted hand and voice of gathered sound,

And echoes in his tossing quiver bound

And loosed from height into immensity;

Yet of his freedom tires, remaining free.

—Moulding and remoulding imponderable cloud,

Uplifting skiey archipelagian isles

Sunnier than ocean's, blue seas and white isles

Aflush with blossom where late sunlight glowed;—

Still of his freedom tiring yet still free,

Homelessly roaming between sky, earth and sea.

But you, O beeches, even as men, have root

Deep in apparent and substantial things—

Earth, sun, air, water, and the chemic fruit

Wise Time of these has made. What laughing Springs

Your branches sprinkle young leaf-shadows o'er

That wanting the leaf-shadows were no Springs

Of seasonable sweet and freshness! nor

If Summer of your murmur gathered not

Increase of music as your leaves grow dense,

Might even kine and birds and general noise of wings

Of summer make full Summer, but the hot

Slow moons would pass and leave unsatisfied the sense.

Nor Autumn's waste were dear if your gold snow

Of leaves whirled not upon the gold below;

Nor Winter's snow were loveliness complete

Wanting the white drifts round your breasts and feet.

To hills how many has your tossed green given

Likeness of an inverted cloudy heaven;

How many English hills enlarge their pride

Of shape and solitude

By beechwoods darkening the steepest side!

I know a Mount—let there my longing brood

Again, as oft my eyes—a Mount I know

Where beeches stand arrested in the throe

Of that last onslaught when the gods swept low

Against the gods inhabiting the wood.

Gods into trees did pass and disappear,

Then closing, body and huge members heaved

With energy and agony and fear.

See how the thighs were strained, how tortured here.

See, limb from limb sprung, pain too sore to bear.

Eyes once looked from those sockets that no eyes

Have worn since—oh, with what desperate surprise!

These arms, uplifted still, were raised in vain

Against alien triumph and the inward pain.

Unlock your arms, and be no more distressed,

Let the wind glide over you easily again.

It is a dream you fight, a memory

Of battle lost. And how should dreaming be

Still a renewed agony?

But O, when that wind comes up out of the west

New-winged with Autumn from the distant sea

And springs upon you, how should not dreaming be

A remembered and renewing agony?

Then are your breasts, O unleaved beeches, again

Torn, and your thighs and arms with the old strain

Stretched past endurance; and your groans I hear

Low bent beneath the hoofs by that fierce charioteer

Driven clashing over; till even dreaming is

Less of a present agony than this.

Fall gentler sleep upon you now, while soft

Airs circle swallow-like from hedge to croft

Below your lowest naked-rooted troop.

Let evening slowly droop

Into the middle of your boughs and stoop

Quiet breathing down to your scarce-quivering side

And rest there satisfied.

Yet sleep herself may wake

And through your heavy unlit dome, O Mount of beeches, shake.

Then shall your massy columns yield

Again the company all day concealed....

Is it their shapes that sweep

Serene within the ambit of the Moon

Sentinel'd by shades slow-marching with moss-footed hours that creep

From dusk of night to dusk of day—slow-marching, yet too soon

Approaching morn? Are these their grave

Remembering ghosts?

... Already your full-foliaged branches wave,

And the thin failing hosts

Into your secrecies are swift withdrawn

Before the certain footsteps of the dawn.

But you, O beeches, even as men have root

Deep in apparent and substantial things.

Birds on your branches leap and shake their wings,

Long ere night falls the soft owl loosens her slow hoot

From the unfathomed fountains of your gloom.

Late western sunbeams on your broad trunks bloom,

Levelled from the low opposing hill, and fold

Your inmost conclave with a burning gold.

... Than those night-ghosts awhile more solid, men

Pass within your sharp shade that makes an arctic night

Of common light,

And pause, swift measuring tree by tree; and then

Paint their vivid mark,

Ciphering fatality on each unwrinkled bark

Across the sunken stain

That every season's gathered streaming rain

Has deepened to a darker grain.

You of this fatal sign unconscious lift

Your branches still, each tree her lofty tent;

Still light and twilight drift

Between, and lie in wan pools silver sprent.

But comes a day, a step, a voice, and now

The repeated stroke, the noosed and tethered bough,

The sundered trunk upon the enormous wain

Bound kinglike with chain over chain,

New wounded and exposed with each old stain.

And here small pools of doubtful light are lakes

Shadowless and no more that rude bough-music wakes.

So on men too the indifferent woodman, Time,

Servant of unseen Master, nearing sets

His unread symbol—or who reads forgets;

And suns and seasons fall and climb,

Leaves fall, snows fall, Spring flutters after Spring,

A generation a generation begets.

But comes a day—though dearly the tough roots cling

To common earth, branches with branches sing—

And that obscure sign's read, or swift misread,

By the indifferent woodman or his slave

Disease, night-wandered from a fever-dripping cave.

No chain's then needed for no fearful king,

But light earth-fall on foot and hand and head.

Now thick as stars leaves shake within the dome

Of faintly-glinting dusking monochrome;

And stars thick hung as leaves shake unseen in the round

Of darkening blue: the heavenly branches wave without a sound,

Only betrayed by fine vibration of thin air.

Gleam now the nearer stars and ghosts of farther stars that bare,

Trembling and gradual, brightness everywhere....

When leaves fall wildly and your beechen dome is thinned,

Showered glittering down under the sudden wind;

And when you, crowded stars, are shaken from your tree

In time's late season stripped, and each bough nakedly

Rocks in those gleamless shallows of infinity;

When star-fall follows leaf-fall, will long Winter pass away

And new stars as new leaves dance through their hasty May?

—But as a leaf falls so falls weightless thought

Eddying, and with a myriad dead leaves lies

Bewildered, or in a little air awhile is caught

Idly, then drops and dies.

Look at the stars, the stars! But in this wood

All I can understand is understood.

Gentler than stars your beeches speak; I hear

Syllables more simple and intimately clear

To earth-taught sense, than the heaven-singing word

Of that intemperate wisdom which the sky

Shakes down upon each unregarding century,

There lying like snow unstirred,

Unmelting, on the loftiest peak

Above our human and green valley ways.

Lowlier and friendlier your beechen branches speak

To men of mortal days

With hearts too fond, too weak

For solitude or converse with that starry race.

Their shaken lights,

Their lonely splendours and uncomprehended

Dream-distance and long circlings 'mid the heights

And deeps remotely neighboured and attended

By spheres that spill their fire through these estranging nights:—

Ah, were they less dismaying, or less splendid!

But as one deaf and mute sees the lips shape

And quiver as men talk, or marks the throat

Of rising song that he can never hear,

Though in the singer's eyes her joy may dimly peer,

And song and word his hopeless sense escape—

Sweet common word and lifted heavenly note—

So, beneath that bright rain,

While stars rise, soar and stoop,

Dazzled and dismayed I look and droop

And, blinded, look again.

"Return, return!" O beeches sing you then.

I like a tree wave all my thoughts with you,

As your boughs wave to other tossed boughs when

First in the windy east the dawn looks through

Night's soon-dissolving bars.

Return, return? But I have never strayed:

Hush, thoughts, that for a moment played

In that enchanted forest of the stars

Where the mind grows numb.

Return, return?

Back, thoughts, from heights that freeze and deeps that burn,

Where sight fails and song's dumb.

And as, after long absence, a child stands

In each familiar room

And with fond hands

Touches the table, casement, bed,

Anon each sleeping, half-forgotten toy;

So I to your sharp light and friendly gloom

Returning, with first pale leaves round me shed,

Recover the old joy

Since here the long-acquainted hill-path lies,

Steeps I have clambered up, and spaces where

The Mount opens her bosom to the air

And all around gigantic beeches rise.

THY HILL LEAVE NOT

Thy hill leave not, O Spring,

Nor longer leap down to the new-green'd Plain.

Thy western cliff-caves keep

O Wind, nor branch-borne Echo after thee complain

With grumbling wild and deep.

Let Blossom cling

Sudden and frozen round the eyes of trees,

Nor fall, nor fall.

Be still each Wing,

Hushed each call.

So was it ordered, so

Hung all things silent, still;

Only Time earless moved on, stepping slow

Up the scarped hill,

And even Time in a long twilight stayed

And, for a whim, that whispered whim obeyed.

There was no breath, no sigh,

No wind lost in the sky

Roamed the horizon round.

The harsh dead leaf slept noiseless on the ground,

By unseen mouse nor insect stirred

Nor beak of hungry bird.

Then were voices heard

Mingling as though each

Earth and grass had individual speech.

—Has evening fallen so soon,

And yet no Moon?

—No, but hark: so still

Was never the Spring's voice adown the hill!

I do not feel her waters tapping upon

The culvert's under stone.

—And if 'tis not yet night a thrush should sing.

—Or if 'tis night the owl should his far echo bring

Near, near.—And I

Should know the hour by his long-shaking distant cry.

—But how should echo be? The air is dead,

No song, no wing,

—No footfall overhead

Of beast,—Or labourer passing, and no sound

Of labourer's Good-night, good-night, good-night!

—That we, here underground,

Take to ourselves and breathe unheard Good-night!

—O, it is lonely now with not one sound

Neath that arched profound,

—No throttled note

Sweet over us to float,

—No shadow treading light

Of man, beast, bird.

—If, earth in dumb earth, lie we here unstirred,

—Why, brother, it were death renewed again

If sun nor rain,

—O death undying, if no dear human touch nor sound

Fall on us underground!

THE CAVES

Like the tide—knocking at the hollowed cliff

And running into each green cave as if

In the cave's night to keep

Eternal motion grave and deep;—

That, even while each broken wave repeats

Its answered knocking and with bruised hand beats

Again, again, again,

Tossed between ecstasy and pain;

Still in the folded hollow darkness swells,

Sinks, swells, and every green-hung hollow fills,

Till there's no room for sound

Save that old anger rolled around;

So into every hollow cliff of life,

Into this heart's deep cave so loud with strife,

In tunnels I knew not,

In lightless labyrinths of thought,

The unresting tide has run and the dark filled,

Even the vibration of old strife is stilled;

The wave returning bears

Muted those time-breathing airs.

—How shall the million-footed tide still tread

These hollows and in each cold void cave spread?

How shall Love here keep

Eternal motion grave and deep?

I WILL ASK

I will ask primrose and violet to spend for you

Their smell and hue,

And the bold, trembling anemone awhile to spare

Her flowers starry fair;

Or the flushed wild apple and yet sweeter thorn

Their sweetness to keep

Longer than any fire-bosomed flower born

Between midnight and midnight deep.

And I will take celandine, nettle and parsley, white

In its own green light,

Or milkwort and sorrel, thyme, harebell and meadowsweet

Lifting at your feet,

And ivy blossom beloved of soft bees; I will take

The loveliest—

The seeding grasses that bend with the winds, and shake

Though the winds are at rest.

"For me?" you will ask. "Yes! surely they wave for you

Their smell and hue,

And you away all that is rare were so much less

By your missed happiness."

Yet I know grass and weed, ivy and apple and thorn

Their whole sweet would keep

Though in Eden no human spirit on a shining morn

Had awaked from sleep.

IN THOSE OLD DAYS

In those old days you were called beautiful,

But I have worn the beauty from your face;

The flowerlike bloom has withered on your cheek

With the harsh years, and the fire in your eyes

Burns darker now and deeper, feeding on

Beauty and the remembrance of things gone.

Even your voice is altered when you speak,

Or is grown mute with old anxiety

For me.

Even as a fire leaps into flame and burns

Leaping and laughing in its lovely flight,

And then under the flame a glowing dome

Deepens slowly into blood-like light:—

So did you flame and in flame take delight,

So are you hollow'd now with aching fire.

But I still warm me and make there my home,

Still beauty and youth burn there invisibly

For me.

Now my lips falling on your silver'd skull,

My fingers in the valleys of your cheeks,

Or my hands in your thin strong hands fast caught,

Your body clutched to mine, mine bent to yours:

Now love undying feeds on love beautiful,

Now, now I am but thought kissing your thought ...

—And can it be in your heart's music speaks

A deeper rhythm hearing mine: can it be

Indeed for me?

THE ASH

The undecaying yew has shed his flowers

Long since in golden showers.

The elm has robed her height

In green, and hangs maternal o'er the bright

Starred meadows, and her full-contented breast

Lifts and sinks to rest.

Shades drowsing in the grass

Beneath the hedge move but as the hours pass.

Beech, oak and beam have all put beauty on

In the eye of the sun.

Because the hawthorn's sweet

All the earth is sweet and the air, and the wind's feet.

In the wood's green hollows the earth is sweet and wet,

For scarce one shaft may get

The sudden green between:

Only that warm sweet creeps between the green;

Or in the clearing the bluebells lifting high

Make another azure sky.

All's leaf and flower except

The sluggish ash that all night long has slept,

And all the morning of this lingering spring.

Every tree else may sing,

Every bough laugh and shake;

But the ash like an old man does not wake

Even though draws near the season's poise and noon

Of heavy-poppied swoon ...

Still the ash is asleep,

Or from his lower upraised palms now creep

First green leaves, promising that even those gaunt

Tossed boughs shall be the haunt

Of Autumn starlings shrill

Mid his full-leaved high branches never still.

If to any tree,

'Tis to the ash that I might likened be—

Masculine, unamenable, delaying,

With palms uplifted praying

For another life and Spring

Yet unforeshadowed; but content to swing

Stiff branches chill and bare

In this fine-quivering air

That others' love makes sweetness everywhere.

IMAGINATION

To make a fairer,

A kinder, a more constant world than this;

To make time longer

And love a little stronger,

To give to blossoms

And trees and fruits more beauty than they bear,

Adding to sweetness

The aye-wanted completeness,

To say to sorrow,

"Ease now thy bosom of its snaky burden";

(And sorrow brightened,

No more stung and frightened),

To cry to death,

"Stay a little, O proud Shade, thy stony hand";

(And death removing

Left us amazed loving);—

For this and this,

O inward Spirit, arm thyself with power;

Be it thy duty

To give a body to beauty.

Thine to remake

The world in thy hid likeness, and renew

The fading vision

In spite of time's derision.

Be it thine, O spirit,

The world of sense and thought to exalt with light;

Purge away blindness,

Terror and all unkindness.

Shine, shine

From within, on the confused grey world without

That, growing clearer,

Grows spiritual and dearer.

NO MORE ADIEU

Unconscious on thy lap I lay,

A spiritual thing,

Stirless until the yet unlooked-for day

Of human birth

Should call me from thy starry twilight, Earth.

And did thy bosom rock and clear voice sing?

I know not—now no more a spiritual thing.

Nor then thy breathed Adieu

I rightly knew.

—Until those human kind arms caught

And nursed my head

Upon her breast who from the twilight brought

This stranger me.

Mother, it were yet happiness to be

Within your arms; but now that you are dead

Your memory sleeps in mine; so mine is comforted,

Though I breathed dear Adieu

Unheard by you.

And I have gathered to my breast

Wife, mistress, child,

Affections insecure but tenderest

Of all that clutch

Man's heart with their "Too little!" and "Too much!"

O, what anxieties, what passions wild

Bind and unbind me, what storms never to be stilled

Until Adieu, Adieu

Breathe the night through.

O, when all last farewells are said

To these most dear;

O, when within my purged heart peace is shed;

When these old sweet

Humanities move out on hushing feet,

And all is hush; then in that silence clear

Who is it comes again—near and near and near,

Even while the sighed Adieu

Fades the hush through?

O, is it on thy breast I fall,

A spiritual thing

Once more, and hear with ear insensual

The voice of primal Earth

Breathed gently as on Eden faint airs forth;

And so contented to thy bosom cling,

Though all those loves are gone nor faithful echoes ring,

Nor fond Adieu, Adieu

My parted spirit pursue?

—So hidden in green darkness deep,

Feel when I wake

The tides of night and day upon thee sweep,

And know thy forehead bared before the East,

And hear thy forests hushing in the West

And in thy bosom, Earth, the slow heart shake:

But hear no more the infinite forest murmurs break

Into Adieu, Adieu,

No more Adieu!

THE VISIT

I reached the cottage. I knew it from the card

He had given me—the low door heavily barred,

Steep roof, and two yews whispering on guard.

Dusk thickened as I came, but I could smell

First red wallflower and an early hyacinth bell,

And see dim primroses. "O, I can tell,"

I thought, "they love the flowers he loved." The rain

Shook from fruit bushes in new showers again

As I brushed past, and gemmed the window pane.

Bare was the window yet, and the lamp bright.

I saw them sitting there, streamed with the light

That overflowed upon the enclosing night.

"Poor things, I wonder why they've lit up so,"

A voice said, passing on the road below.

"Who are they?" asked another. "Don't you know?"

Their voices crept away. I heard no more

As I crossed the garden and knocked at the door.

I waited, then knocked louder than before,

And thrice, and still in vain. So on the grass

I stepped, and tap-tapped on the rainy glass.

Then did a girl without turning towards me pass

From the room. I heard the heavy barred door creak,

And a voice entreating from the doorway speak,

"Will you come this way?"—a voice childlike and quick.

The way was dark. I followed her white frock,

Past the now-chiming, sweet-tongued unseen clock,

Into the room. One figure like a rock

Draped in an unstarred night—his mother—bowed

Unrising and unspeaking. His aunt stood

And took my hand, murmuring, "So good, so good!"

Never such quiet people had I known.

Voices they scarcely needed, they had grown

To talk less by the word than muted tone.

"We'll soon have tea," the girl said. "Please sit here."

She pushed a heavy low deep-seated chair

I knew at once was his; and I sat there.

I could not look at them. It seemed I made

Noise in that quietness. I was afraid

To look or speak until the aunt's voice said,

"You were his friend." And that "You were!" awoke

My sense, and nervousness found voice and spoke

Of what he had been, until a bullet broke

A too-brief friendship. The rock-like mother kept

Night still around her. The aunt silently wept,

And the girl into the screen's low shadow stept.

"You were great friends," said with calm voice the mother.

I answered, "Never friend had such another."

Then the girl's lips, "Nor sister such a brother."

Her words were like a sounding pebble cast

Into a hollow silence; but at last

She moved and bending to my low chair passed

Swift leaf-like fingers o'er my face and said,

"You are not like him." And as she turned her head

Into full light beneath the lamp's green shade

I saw the sunken spaces of her eyes.

Then her face listening to my dumb surprise.

"Forgive," she said, "a blind girl's liberties."

"You were his friend; I wanted so to see

The friends my brother had. Now let's have tea."

She poured, and passed a cup and cakes to me.

"These are my cakes," she smiled; and as I ate

She talked, and to the others cup and plate

Passed as they in their shadow and silence sat.

"Thanks, we are used to each other," she said when I

Rose in the awkwardness of seeing, shy

Of helping and of watching helplessly.

And from the manner of their hands 'twas clear

They too were blind; but I knew they could hear

My pitiful thoughts as I sat aching there.

... I needs must talk, until the girl was gone

A while out of the room. The lamp shone on,

But the true light out of the room was gone.

"Rose loved him so!" her mother said, and sighed.

"He was our eyes, he was our joy and pride,

And all that's left is but to say he died."

She ceased as Rose returned. Then as before

We talked and paused until, "Tell me once more,

What was it he said?" And I told her once more.

She listened: in her face was pride and pain

As in her mind's eye near he stood and plain....

Then the thin leaves fell on my cheek again

And on my hands. "He must have loved you well,"

She whispered, as her hands from my hands fell.

Silence flowed back with thoughts unspeakable.

It was a painful thing to leave them there

Within the useless light and stirless air.

"Let me show you the way. Mind, there's a stair

"Here, then another stair ten paces on....

Isn't there a moon? Good-bye."

And she was gone.

Full moon upon the drenched fruit garden shone.

TRAVELLING

They talked of old campaigns, nineteen-fourteen

And Mons and watery Yser, nineteen-fifteen

And Neuve Chapelle, 'sixteen, 'seventeen, 'eighteen

And after. And they grumbled, leaving home,

Then talked of nineteen-nineteen, nineteen-twenty

And after.

Their thoughts wandered, leaving home

Among familiar places and known years;

Anticipating in the river, of time

Rocks, rapids, shallows, idle glazing pools

Mirroring their dark dreams of heaven and earth.

—And then they parted, one to Chatham, one

To Africa, Constantinople one,

One to Cologne; and all to an unknown year,

Nineteen-nineteen perhaps, or another year.

THE SONG OF THE FOREST

(11th November, 1918)

I

To Thee, Most Holy, Most Obscure, light-hidden,

Shedding light in the darkness of the mind

As gold beams wake the air to birds a-wing;

To Thee, if men were trees, would forests bow

In all our land, as under a new wind;

To Thee, if trees were men, would forests sing

Lifting autumnal crowns and bending low,

Rising and falling again as inly chidden,

Singing and hushing again as inly bidden.

To Thee, Most Holy, men being men upraise

Bright eyes and waving hands of unarticulating praise.

II

To Thee, Most Holy, Most Obscure, who pourest

Thy darkness into each wild-heaving human forest,

While some say, "'Tis so dark God cannot live,"

And some, "It is so dark He never was,"

And few, "I hear the forest branches give

Assurèd signs His wind-like footsteps pass;"

To Thee, now that long darkness is enlightened,

Lift men their hearts, shaking the death-chill dews.

Even sad eyes with morning light are brightened,

And in this spiritual Easter's lovely hues

Are no more with death's arctic shadow frightened.

III

Here in this morning twilight gleaming pure

Mid the high forest boughs and making clear

The motion the night-wakeful brain had guessed;

Here in this peace that wonders, Is it Peace?

And sighs its satisfaction on the shivering air;

Here, O Most Holy, here, O bright Obscure,

Every deep root within the earth's quick breast

Knows that the long night's ended and sore agitations cease,

And every leaf of every human tree

In England's forest stirs and sings, Light Giver, now to Thee.

IV

I cannot syllable that unworded praise—

An ashen sapling bending in Thy wind,

Uplifting in Thy light new-budded leaves;

Nor for myself nor any other raise

My boughs in music, though the woodland heaves—

O with what ease of pain at length resigned,

What hope to the old inheritance restored!

Thy praise it is that men at last are glad.

Long unaccustomed brightness in their eyes

Needs must seem beautiful in thine, bright Lord,

And to forget the part that sorrow had

In every shadowed breast, where still it lies,

Is there not praise in such forgetfulness?

For to grieve less means not that love is less.

V

—Nor for myself nor any other. Yet

I cannot but remember all that passed

Since justice shook these bosoms, and the fret

Of indignation stirred them and they cast

Forgot aside all lesser wrongs, and rose

Against the spiritual evil of that threat

That made them of dishonour slaves or foes.

And who may but with pride remember how

Not by ten righteous justice might be saved,

But by unsaintly millions moving all

As the tide moves when myriad tossed waves flow

One way, and on the crumbling bastions fall;

Then sinking backwards unopposed and slow

Over the ruined towers where those vain angers raved.

VI

Creep tarnished gilded figures to their holes

Who once walked like great men upon the earth

Flickering their false shadows. Fear, like a hound,

Hunts them, and there's a death in every sound;

And had they souls sorrow would prick their souls

At every heavy sigh the wind waved forth.

... Into their holes they've crept, and they will die.

Of them no more and never any more.

Their leper-gilt is gone, and they will lie

Poisoning a little earth and nothing more.

VII

—That justice has been saved and wrong been slain,

That the slow fever-darkness ends in day,

Nor madness shakes the pillared world again

With the same blind proud fury; that in vain

Whispers the Tempter now, "So pass away

Strength, honesty and hope, and nothing left but pain!"

That the many-voiced confusion of the night

Clears in the winging of a spirit bright

With new-recovered joy;—for this, O Light,

Light Giver, Night Dispeller, praise should be.

But praise is dumb from burning hearts to Thee.

VIII

But as a forest bending in the wind

Murmurs in all its boughs after the wind,

Sounds uninterpreted and untaught airs;

So now when Thy wind over England stirs,

The proud and untranslating sounds of praise

Mingle tumultuous over our human ways;

And magnifying echoes of Thy wind

Rouse in the profoundest forests of the mind.

IX

And in the secret thicket where Thy light

Is dimmed with starry shining of the night,

Hearing these mingled airs from every wood

Thou'lt smile serenely down, murmuring, "'Tis good."

While Angels in the thicket borders curled

Amid the farthest gold beams of Thy hair,

Seeing on one drooped beam this distant world

Floating illumined, cry, "Bright Lord, how fair!"

OUT OF THE EAST

When man first walked upright and soberly

Reflecting as he paced to and fro,

And no more swinging from wide tree to tree,

Or sheltered by vast boles from sheltered foe,

Or crouched within some deep cave by the sea

Stared at the noisy waste of water's woe

Where the earth ended, and far lightning died

Splintered upon the rigid tideless tide;

When man above Time's cloud lifted his head

And speech knew, and the company of speech,

And from his alien presence wild beasts fled

And birds flew wary from his arrow's reach,

And cattle trampling the long meadow weed

Did sentry in the wind's path set; when each

Horn, hoof, claw, sting and sinew against man

Was turned, and the old enmity began;

When, following, beneath the hand of kings

Moved men their parting ways, and some passed on

To forest refuge, some by dark-browed springs,

And some to high remoter pastures won,

And some o'er yellow deserts spread their wings,

Thinning with time and thirst and so were gone

Forgotten; when between each wandered host

The seldom travellers faltered and were lost;—

In those old days, upon the soft dew'd sward

That held its green between the thicket's cloud,

Walked two men musing ere the wide moon poured

Her full-girthed weightless flood. And one was bowed

With years past knowledge, and his face was scored

Where light or deep had every long year ploughed—

Pain, labour, present peril, distant dread

Scored in his brow and bending his shagged head.

Palsy his frame shook as a harsh wind shakes

Complaining reeds fringing a frozen river;

His eye the aspect had of frozen lakes

Whereunder the foiled waters swirl and quiver;

His voice the deep note that the north wind takes

Drawn through bare beechwoods where forlorn birds shiver—

Deep and unfaltering. A younger man

Listened, while warmer currents in him ran.

"Was not my son even as myself to me,

As you to him showed his own life again?

Now he is dead, and all I looked to see

In him removes to you—less near and plain,

Confused with other blood; and what will be

I groping cannot tell, and grope in vain.

For men have turned to other ways than mine:

Yourself are less fulfilment than a sign,

"Sign of a changing world. And change I fear.

I have seen old and young like brief gnats die,

And have faced death by plague and flood and spear:

I have seen mine own familiar people lie

In generations reaped; and near and near

Age leads on Death—I hear his husky sigh.

Yet Death I fear not, but these clouds of change

Sweeping the old firm world with new and strange.

"Son of my son, to whom the world shines new,

You are strange to me for whom the world is old.

Your thoughts are not my thoughts, and unto you

The past, sole warmth for me, is void and cold.

Another passion pours your spirit through,

Another faith has leapt upon the fold

And wrestles with the ancient faith. 'And lo!'

Lightly men say, 'Even the gods come and go!'"

He paused awhile in pacing and hung still,

Amid the thickening shades a darker shade.

Down the steep valley from the barren hill

A herd of deer with antlered leader made

Brief apparition. Mist brimmed up until

Only the great round heights yet solid stayed—

Then they too changed to spectral, and upon

The changing mist wavered, and were gone....

"Standing to-day your father's grave beside,

I knew my heart with his was covered there;

O, more than flesh did in the cold earth hide—

My past, his promise. There was none to care

Save for the body of a prince that died

As princes die; there was none whispered, 'Where

Moves now among us his unburied part?

What breast beats with the pulses of his heart?'

"—Vain thoughts are these that but a dying man

Searches among the dark caves of his mind!

But as I stood, the very wind that ran

Between the files breathed more than common wind,

As though the gods of men when Time began,

Fathers of fathers of old humankind,

Startled, heard now the changeful future knock;

And their lament it was from rock to rock

"Tossed with the wind's long echo ... O, speak not,

Nor tell me with my loss I am so dazed,

That my tongue speaks unfaithfully my thought;

That you, you too, within his shadow raised,

Stand bare now, wanting all you held or thought,

By aimless love or prisoned grief amazed.

Tell me not: let me out of silence speak,

Or let me still my thoughts in silence break."

And so both stood, and not a word to say,

By silence overborne, until at last

The young man breathed, "Look how the end of day

Falls heavily, as though the earth were cast

Into a shapeless soundless pit, where ray

Of heavenly light never the verge has past.

Yet will the late moon's light anon shine here,

And then gray light, and then the sun's light clear.

"Sire, 'twas my father died, and like night's pit

Soundless and shapeless yawn my orphaned years.

And yet I know morn comes and brings with it

Old tasks again, and new joys, hopes and fears.

Or sword or plough these fingers will find fit,

And morrows end with other cries and tears,

With women's arms and children's voices and

The sacred gods blessing the new-sown land.

"But look, upon your beard the dew is bright,

Chill is the winter fall: let us go in."

Then moved they slowly downward till a light

Shining the door-post and thonged door between

Showed the square Prince's House. Out of the night

They passed the sudden rubied warmth within.

Curled shadowy by the wall a servant slept:

A sleepy hound from the same corner crept.

Soon were they couched. The young man fell asleep;

While the old Prince drowsing uneasily,

Tossing on the crest of agitations deep,

Dreamed waking, waking dreamed. Then memory

The unseen hound, did from her corner creep

Into his bosom and stirred him with her sigh

Soundless. And he arose and answering pressed

Her beloved head yet closer to his breast....

Happy those years returned when first he strode

Beside his father's knees, or climbed and felt

The warm strength of those arms, or singing rode

High on his shoulders; or in winter pelt

Of dread beasts wrapt, set as his father showed

Snares in the frosty grass, and at dawn knelt

Beside the snares, and shouting homeward tore,

Winged with such pride as seldom manhood wore.

—How many, many, many years ago!

There was no older man now walked the earth.

Had all those years sunk to a bitter glow,

Like the fire lingering yet upon the hearth?

Ah, he might warm his hands there still, and so

Must warm his heart now in this wintry dearth,

Till the reluming sunken fire should give

Warmth to his ageing wits and bid him live.

Even this house! It was his father told

How in the days half lost in icy time

Men first forsook their wormy caves and cold

To build where the wind-footed cattle climb;

And noise of labour broke the silence old

By such unbroken since the sparkling prime

Of the world's spring. And so the house arose,

A builded cave, perpetual as the snows

On the remotest summits of the range

Hemming the north. Then house by house appeared

'Neath valley-eaves, and change following on change

Unnoted tamed earth's shaggy front. Men heard

Strange voices syllabling with accents strange,

By travellers breathed who, startled, paused and feared

Seeing the smoke of habitations curled

Above this hollow of an unrumoured world.

Startled, they paused and spoke by doubtful sign,

Answered by hesitating sign, until

Moved one with aspect fearless and benign,

And met one fearless, while all else hung still.

And then was welcome, rest, and meat and wine

And intercourse of uncouth word, as shrill

Voice with deep voice was mingled. So they stayed

And to astonished eyes strange arts betrayed.

By them the oarage of the wind was taught,

And how the quick tail steered the cockled boat.

They netted fruitful streams, and smiling brought

Their breaking wickers home, too full to float.

And opening the earth's rich womb they wrought

Arms from the sullied ore; and labouring smote

The mountain's bosom, till a path was seen

Stony amid the flushed snow and flushed green.

Then first upon earth's wave the silver share

Floated, by the teamed oxen drawn; then first

Were seed-time rites, and harvest rites when bare

The cropped fields lay, and gathered tumult—nurst

Long in the breasts of men that laboured there—

Now in the broad ease of fulfilment burst;

And when the winter tasks failed in days chill,

Weaving of bright-hued yarn, and chattering shrill;

And the loved tones of music sounded sweet

Unwonted, when the new-stopped pipe was heard

Rising and falling, and the falling feet

Of sudden dancers. And old men were stirred

With old men's memories of ancient heat

When youth sang in their bosoms like a bird....

Sweet that divine musician, Memory,

Fingering her many-reeded melody.

Then as he stared into the wasting glow

And watched the fire faint in the whitening wood,

Came starker shadows moving vast and slow,

And echoes of wild strife and smell of blood,

Twitching of slain men, cries of parting woe,

Bruised bodies ghastly in the mountain flood;

Burials and burnings, triumph with terrors blent,

And widowed languors and night-long lament.

Like seeds long buried, these dead memories

Upthrust in their new green and spread to flower:

An eager child against his father's knees

Leaning, he had listened many an evening hour.

Now these remote reworded histories

Entangled with his own renewed their power,

Breathing an antique virtue through his mind,

As through dense yew boughs breathes the undying wind.

Sighing, he rose up softly. On the wall

A dark shape shambled aimless to and fro;

Head bent, eyes inward-seeing, rugged, tall,

Himself a shadow moved with musings slow

Amid his cumbered past, and heard sweet call

Of mother voice, and mother folk, and flow

Of gentle and proud speech and tender laughter,

Story and song, fault and forgiveness after;

And a voice graver, gentler than a man

Might hear from any but a woman beloved,

Stilling and awakening the blood that ran

Like ocean tide, as neared she or removed ...

Faded that music. Then a voice began

Paining within his heart, yet unreproved;

For dear the anguish is that steals upon

A father's spirit lamenting his lost son.

—The latest born and latest lost of those

Of his strong and her gentle being born.

By earthquake, pestilence, by human foes

Long were they dead; and yet not all forlorn

He grieved, for at his side the youngest rose

Bright as a willow gilded by dewy morn....

Felled now the tree, silent that music, still

The motion that did all the vale-air fill.

Once more they bore the body from the hunt

Where he alone had died. Once more he heard

The wail and sigh, and saw once more their front

Of drooping grief; once more the wailing stirred

Old hounds to baying wilder than was wont;

Fell once more like slow, sullen rain each word

Reluctant, telling to his senses strayed,

How while the gods drowsed and men hung afraid.

Slain was the Prince unwary by the paw

Of a springing beast that died in giving death.

Again the featureless torn face he saw,

The ribboned bosom emptied of warm breath;

Again the circle sudden hush'd with awe,

And smothered moaning heard the hush beneath.

Again, again, and every night again,

Vision renewed and voice recalled in vain.

Again those dear and lamentable rites

Within the winter stems of forest shade,

The pile, the smokeless flame, the thousand lights,

The one light that in all the thousand played;

Deep burthened voices while, around the heights

Lifting, young trebles their wild echo made;

Then the returning torches at the pyre

Lit, when the eye glowed faint within the fire.

Even as a man that by slow steps may climb

An unknown mountain path with tired tread

By ice-fringed brook and close herb white with rime,

Sees sudden far below a strange land spread

Immense; so from his lonely crag of Time

The Prince, his eye bewildered and adread,

Gazed at the vast, with mist and storm confused,

Cloud-racked, and changing even while he mused.

Ending were the old wise and stable ways.

Adventurers into distant lands had fared,

From distant lands adventurers with gaze

Proud and unenvying on his kingdom stared,

And sojourning had shaken quiet days

With restless knowledge, and strange worship reared

Of foreign altars, idols, prayers and songs

And sacrifice as to such gods belongs.

And all unsatisfied his people grown

Would move from this rejected mountain range

By yearlong valley journeys slowly down,

Sun-following, till surfeited with change,

Mid idle pastures pitched or fabled town,

Subdued to climes and kings and customs strange,

At length their very name should die away

And all their remnant be a vague "Men say."

"Men say!" he sighed, and from that lofty verge

Of inward seeing drooped his doubtful sight.

Sweet was it from such reverie to emerge

And breathe once more the thoughtless air of night,

And watch the fire-slave through fresh billets urge

The sleeping flame, until the vivid light

And toothed shadows wearied.... And then crept

The hounds a little nearer, and all slept.

But the young man still lay in quiet sleep,

Or half-sleep, and a dream-born cloud enwreathed

With memories, hopes and longings hidden deep

In his flown mind. Another air he breathed,

Saw from an unsubstantial mountain sweep

In purest light, soon in low shadow sheathed,

Semblance of faint-known faces, or beloved

Daily-acquainted still, or long removed.

Even as sacred fire in fennel stalks

Through windy ways is borne and densest night,

Till where the outpost shivering sentry walks

Beating the minutes into hours, the light

Touches the guarded pile and, flaring, balks

Beasts padding near and each unvisioned sprite

By old dread apprehended; and new gladness

Shakes in the village prone in winter sadness:—

So through the young man's dream the kingly flame

In his own breast was undiminished borne.

And other peoples catching from his fame

A noble heat, in neighbouring lands forlorn,

Would glow with new power and the ancient name

Bless, that had brightened through their narrow morn.

And purer yet and steadier would pass on

The sacred flame to son and son and son.

Or with contracting mind he saw the host

Of mountain warriors banded, moving down

Untrodden ways, as on young buds a frost

Falls, and the spring lies stiff. The air was sown

With strife, the fields with blood, the night with ghost

Wandering by ghost, and wounded men were strown

Surprised, unweaponed; and chill air congealed

Each hurt, and with the blood their breath was sealed.

And the loved tones of music sounded fierce

When the returning files with aspect proud

Approached, and brandished their rich trophied spears.

Sweet the pipes' spearlike music, sweet and loud,

And music of smitten arms was sweet to tears;

Sweet the dance unto smiling gods new vowed,

Sweet the recounting song and choral cries,

And age's quaverings and girls' envious sighs.

—So of himself, a father-king, he dreamed,

Holding an equal nation in his eye.

O with what golden points the future gleamed!

Rustled the years like laden mule-trains by,

Each with its burthen of old time redeemed....

Splendour on splendour poured, and so would lie

Unnoted and unmeasured:—metals, herds,

Distant-sought wonders, strange growths, beasts and birds.

Within the summer of that splendid shade

Might men live happy and nought left to fear,

Or if an antique restless spirit played

Fretful within their bones, and change drew near

Drumming wild airs, and another music made,

A father-king, speaking assured and clear,

Bidding them follow he would lead them forth

Through the yet undiscovered frowning north.

And the last fire on the warm stones would burn,

And the smoke linger on the mountain skies.

And seeing, they would muse yet of return

And then forget their sadness in the cries

Confused of the great caravan; and so turn

Towards the next sun-setting and the next sunrise

Many and many a day and wind and wind

Through foreign earth, as a dream through the mind.

Flowing on with the changes of its thought.

And doubtful kings entreating them to stay

Would sleep the easier when they lingered not;

And sullen tribes menacing would make way,

And broad slow rivers in their tide be caught,

And the long caravan o'er the ford all day

And all day and all day pass; while the tide slept

In sluggish shallows, or through marsh-reeds crept.

So would they on and on, with death and birth

For wayfellows and nightly stars for guide,

While seasons bloomed and faded on the earth,

And jealous gods their wandering gods would chide.

Until, weary of endless going forth

Dark-locust-like, the old fret would subside,

And young men with aged men and women cry,

"In this full-rivered pasture let us lie!

"Here let us lie, and wanderings be at rest!"

Midmost a cedar grove high sacrifice

Needs then be made, that gods be manifest;

And while the smoke spread in long twilit skies,

"Here let us lie, and wanderings be at rest,"

Would old men breathe repeated between sighs.

"In this green world and cool," would mothers say,

"Rest we, nor with thin babes yet longer stray."

—So stealing from the mind of the old King

Exhausted, into the sleeping young man's brain

Crept the same dream and lifted on new wing

And took from his swift passions a new stain,

Sanguine and azure, and first fluttering

Rose then on easy vans that bore again

The sleeper past his common thought's confine:—

So borne, so soaring, in that air divine,

He saw his people stayed, their journeys ended....

There should they, no more fretful, dwell for ever

In the full-nourished pasture where untended

Herds multiplied, and famine threatened never,

And where high border-hills glittered with splendid

Sparse-covered veins washed by the hill-born river.

So stead by stead arose, and men there moved

Satisfied, and no more vain longings roved.

Again the silver plough gleamed in the sod,

And seed from old fields slept in furrows new.

Then when Spring's rain and sun together trod

And interweaved swift steps the meadow through,

Old rites revived; they bore the shapen god

With green stalks and first-budded boughs, and drew

Together youth and age. And sowers leapt

High o'er the seed in earth's cold bosom wrapt:—

So in the golden-hued and burning hours

Of harvest, leapt on high the full-eared corn.

Friendly to pious hands those imaged Powers

Of rain and sun. And when the grain was borne

By oxen trailing tangled straws and flowers,

With leaves and dying blossoms on each horn,

Friendly the gods commingling in the shades

Of moon and torch and smoke-delaying glades.

Fell slowly sunset; the starred evening cool

Drooped round as mid his people the king rode,

Blessing and blessed, and in the faithful pool

Of their old loves his clear reflection glowed

Like summer's golden moon:—in wise and fool,

Noble and mean, accustomed reverence showed

Clear-shining; so he reached the unbarred hall

Where lamps, lords, servitors flashed festival,

Remembering old journeys and their end.

Bright-throned he sat there, with those lords around

Snow-polled, co-eval, as with friends their friend

Feasting. Arose at length the awaited sound

Of bardic chanting, bidding their thoughts descend

Into the chamber where the Past lay bound,

Wanting but music's finger; so upspringing,

The Past stormed all their minds in that loud singing.

And strangers, furred and tawny, seated there,

Far travellers from the sunrise, looking on

The feasting and the splendour, and with ear

Uncertain listening to the solemn tone

Of most dear Memory, envied all and sware

A sudden fealty. But the bard sang on

While silver beakers brimmed untouched; and darkened

The proud remembering eyes of men that hearkened.

Then came once more those strangers leading long

Migration of their subject folk. They stayed

And medley'd and were mingled, and their throng

Melted in his like snows, and so were made

One with them, and forgot their useless tongue,

Nor now their ancient bloody worship paid

To painted gods:—name, language, story died

When their last faithless exile parting sighed.

So year on year, century on century

In his imagination of delight

Followed, in a new world all innocency

And simpleness, and made for beings bright,

Where man to man was friend, unfearful, free,

And natural griefs alone darkened their night,

And natural joys as the wide air were common,

And kindness was the bond of all kin human.

—When the loved reeds of music sounded clear

From birds' breasts quivering in tall woodland trees

That rustled leafless in the winter air,

And with morn's new voice shrilled the western breeze:

Folding her wings the dream crept from his ear

To hang where bats drowse until daylight dies.

Then he from sleep's dear vanity awaking

Watched a sole sunbeam the roof-shadows raking.

PART II

THE WAKERS

The joyous morning ran and kissed the grass

And drew his fingers through her sleeping hair,

And cried, "Before thy flowers are well awake

Rise, and the lingering darkness from thee shake.

"Before the daisy and the sorrel buy

Their brightness back from that close-folding night,

Come, and the shadows from thy bosom shake,

Awake from thy thick sleep, awake, awake!"

Then the grass of that mounded meadow stirred

Above the Roman bones that may not stir

Though joyous morning whispered, shouted, sang:

The grass stirred as that happy music rang.

O, what a wondrous rustling everywhere!

The steady shadows shook and thinned and died,

The shining grass flashed brightness back for brightness,

And sleep was gone, and there was heavenly lightness.

As if she had found wings, light as the wind,

The grass flew, bent with the wind, from east to west,

Chased by one wild grey cloud, and flashing all

Her dews for happiness to hear morning call....

But even as I stepped out the brightness dimmed,

I saw the fading edge of all delight.

The sober morning waked the drowsy herds,

And there was the old scolding of the birds.

MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD

To

MARJORY

I

CHILDHOOD CALLS

Come over, come over the deepening river,

Come over again the dark torrent of years,

Come over, come back where the green leaves quiver,

And the lilac still blooms and the grey sky clears.

Come, come back to the everlasting garden,

To that green heaven, and the blue heaven above.

Come back to the time when time brought no burden

And love was unconscious, knowing not love.

II

THE ANSWER

O, my feet have worn a track

Deep and old in going back.

Thought released turns to its home

As bees through tangling thickets come.

One way of thought leads to the vast

Desert of the mind, and there is lost,

But backward leads to a dancing light

And myself there, stiff with delight.

O, well my thought has trodden a way

From this brief day to that long day.

III

THE FIRST HOUSE

That is the earliest thing that I remember—

The narrow house in the long narrow street,

Dark rooms within and darkness out of doors

Where grasses in the garden lift in the wind,

Long grasses clinging round unsteady feet.

The sunlight through one narrow passage pours,

As through the keyhole into a dusty room,

Striking with a golden rod the greening gloom.

The tall, tall timber-stacks have yet been kind,

Letting the sun fling his rod clear between,

Lest there should be no gold upon the green,

And no light then for a child to dream upon,

And day be of day's brightness all forlorn.

I saw those timber piles first dark and tall,

And then men clambered up, and stumbled down,

Each with a heavy and long timber borne

Upon broad shoulders, leather-covered, bent.

Hour after hour, day after day they went,

Until the piles were gone and a new sky

Stretched high and white above the garden wall.

And then fresh piles crept slowly up and up,

The strong men staggering, more cruelly bowed,

Till at last they lay idle on the top

Looking down from their height on things so small,

While I looked wondering and fearful up

At the strong men at rest on the new-built cloud.

But there was other gold than the sun's sparse gold—

Florence's hair, its brightness lying still

Upon my mind as then upon the grass.

Now the grass covers it and I am old,

Remembering but her hair and that long grass,

And the great wood-stacks threatening to fall—

When all dark things will.

IV

THE OTHER HOUSE

That other house, in the same crowded street,

One red-tiled floor had, answering to my feet,

And a bewildering garden all of light and heat.

Only that red floor and garden now remain,

One glowing firelike in my glowing brain,

One with smell, colour, sun and cloud revived again.

Yet in the garden the sky was very small,

Closed by some darkness beyond the low brown wall;

But from the west the gold could long unhindered fall.

Of human faces I remember none

Amid the garden; but myself alone

With creeping-jenny, sunflower, marigold, snapdragon—

These all my love, these now all my light,

Bringing their kindness to any painful night.

The sun brushed all their brightness with his skirt more bright.

And I was happy when I knew it not,

Dreaming of nothing more than that small plot,

And the high sky and sun that floated bright and hot.

But what night was, save dark, I did not know.

The blind shut out the stars: the moon would go

Staring, unstared at, moon and stars unnoted flow.

Until one night, into the strange street led,

To stare at a strange light from the Factory shed,

Wheeling and darting, withdrawn, and sudden again outsped—

No one knew why—but I knew darkness then,

And saw the stars that hung so still; but when

I lay abed the old starless dark came back again.

Night is not night without the stars and moon.

I knew them not, or I forgot too soon,

And now remember only the glowing sun of noon,

The red floor, and yellow flowers, and a lonely child,

And a whistle morn and noon and evening shrilled,

And darkness when the household murmurs even were stilled.

V

THE FIRE

Near the house flowed, or paused, the black Canal,

Edged by the timber piles so black and tall.

From the rotten fence I watched the horses pull

Along the footpath, slow and beautiful,

Moving with strength and ease, in their great size

And untired movement wonderful to my eyes;

Their dull brass clanking as each shaggy foot

Stamped the soft cinder track as fine as soot.

The driver lurched old and forbidding by,

Not seeing the child that feared to meet his eye.

I watched the rope dip, tighten, and the water flash

In falling, and then heard the hiss and splash;

I watched the barge drag slowly on and on,

Not dreaming how lovely a ship could ride the water upon,

Not dreaming how lovely flowing water was,

Sung to by trees and fingered by long grass,

Or running from the bosom of a hill

Down, where it flows so deep that it seems still.

But it was by that rotten fence one night

I saw the timber piles break into light,

Suddenly leaping into a heavenly flame

That played with the wind and one with the wind became.

Pile to pile gave its fire, till they were like

Bright angels with flashing swords before they strike,

Terrible and lovely. But men those angels fought,

Small and humble and patient all night wrought,

And all day wrought and night and day again,

And night and day, pouring their hissing rain,

Until the angels tired and one by one died.

Then their black spectres haunted the waterside,

Charred ruins, broken-limbed, no more erect,

Or heaped black dust, with cold white ashes flecked.

But I had seen the angel-quelling men,

With blackened and bruised face, the horses thin,

The glittering harness, the leaky, bubbling mains,

The broad smoke, and the steam from the leaping rains:—

O I had seen what I should not forget,

Men that defeated ruinous angels and shall still defeat.

VI

THE KITE

It was a day

All blue and lifting white,

When I went into the fields with Frank

To fly his kite.

The fields were aged, bare,

Shut between houses everywhere.

All the way there

The wind tugged at the kite to take it

Untethered, toss and break it;

But Frank held fast, and I

Walked with him admiringly;

In his light brave and fine

How bright was mine!

We tailed the kite

While the wind flapped its purple face

And yellow head.

Frank's yellow head

Was scarcely higher, and not so bright.

"Let go!" he cried, and I let go

And watched the kite

Swaying and rising so

That I was rooted to the place,

Watching the kite

Rise into the blue,

Lifting its head against the white

Against the sun,

Against the height

That far-off, farther drew;

Shivering there

In that fine air

As we below shivered with delight

And fear.

There it floated

Among the birds and clouds at ease

Of others all unnoted,

Swimming above the ranked stiff trees.

And I lay down, looking up at the sky,

The clouds and birds that floated

By others still unnoted,

And that swaying kite

Specking the light:

Looking up at the sky,

The birds and clouds that drew

Nearer, leaving the blue,

Stooping, and then brushing me,

With such tenderness touching me

That I had still lain there

In those fields bare,

Forgetting the kite;

For every cloud was now a kite

Streaming with light.

VII

THE CHAIR

The chair was made

By hands long dead,

Polished by many bodies sitting there,

Until the wood-lines flowed as clean as waves.

Mine sat restless there,

Or propped to stare

Hugged the low kitchen with fond eyes

Or tired eyes that looked at nothing at all.

Or watched from the smoke rise

The flame's snake-eyes,

Up the black-bearded chimney leap;

Then on my shoulder my dull head would drop.

And half asleep

I heard her creep—

Her never-singing lips shut fast,

Fearing to wake me by a careless breath.

Then, at last,

My lids upcast,

Our eyes met, I smiled and she smiled,

And I shut mine again and truly slept.

Was I that child

Fretful, sick, wild?

Was that you moving soft and soft

Between the rooms if I but played at sleep?

Or if I laughed,

Talked, cried, or coughed,

You smiled too, just perceptibly,

Or your large kind brown eyes said, O poor boy!

From the fireside I

Could see the narrow sky

Through the barred heavy window panes,

Could hear the sparrows quarrelling round the lilac;

And hear the heavy rains

Choking in the roof-drains:—

Else of the world I nothing heard

Or nothing remember now. But most I loved

To watch when you stirred

Busily like a bird

At household doings; with hands floured

Mixing a magic with your cakes and tarts.

O into me, sick, froward,

Yourself you poured;

In all those days and weeks when I

Sat, slept, woke, whimpered, wondered and slept again.

Now but a memory

To bless and harry me

Remains of you still swathed with care;

Myself your chief care, sitting by the hearth

Propped in the pillowed chair,

Following you with tired stare,

And my hand following the wood lines

By dead hands smoothed and followed many years.

VIII

THE SWING

It was like floating in a blessed dream to roam

Across green meadows, far from home,

With only trees and quivering sky to hedge the sight,

Dazzling the eyes with strange delight.

Such wide, wide fields I had never seen, and never dreamed

Could be; and wonderful it seemed

To wander over green and under green and run

Unwatched even of the shining sun.

One tree there was that held a wrinkled creaking bough

Far over the grass, hanging low;

And a swing from it hanging drew us near and made

New brightness beneath that doming shade.

For there my sisters swung long hours delightedly,

And there delighted clambered I;

And all our voices shrilled as one when up we flung

And into the stinging sharp leaves swung.

Then in a garden dense with bramble and sweet flowers

Where honeysuckle a new sweetness pours,

We sat and ate and drank. Well I remember how

We were all shaded by one bough

Bending with red fruit over our uplifted eyes,

Teasing our well-watched covetousness.

And then we went back happy to the empty swing,

But I was tired of everything

Except the grass and trees and the wide shadows there

Widening slowly everywhere.

It was like swinging in a solemn dream to roam

In a strange air, far from home—

Until I saw the shadows suddenly wake and move,

And float, float down from above.

Then I ran quickly back, round the large gloomy trees,

O with what shivering unease!

And stumbled where they waited, and was far too glad,

Finding them, to be afraid or sad.

—Then waited an unforgetting year once more to see

So wide a sky, so great a tree.

IX

FEAR

Surely I must have ailed

On that dark night,

Or my childish courage failed

Because there was no light;

Or terror must have come

With his chill wing,

And made my angel dumb,

Or found him slumbering.

Because I could not sleep

Terror began to wake,

Close at my side to creep

And sting me like a snake.

And I was afraid of death,

But when I thought of pain—

O, language no word hath

To recall that thought again!

Into my heart fear crawled

And wreathed close around,

Mortal, convulsive, cold,

And I lay bound.

Fear set before my eyes

Unimaginable pain;

Approaching agonies

Sprang nimbly into my brain.

Just as a thrilling wind

Plucks every mournful wire,

So terror on my wild mind

Fingered, with ice and fire.

O, not death I feared,

But the anguish of the body;

My dizzying passions heard,

Saw my own bosom bloody.

I thought of years of woe,

Moments prolonged to years,

Heard my heart racing so,

Redoubling all those fears.

Yet still I could not cry,

Not a sound the stillness broke;

But the dark stirred, and my

Negligent angel woke.

X

THE STREETS

Marlboro' and Waterloo and Trafalgar,

Tuileries, Talavera, Valenciennes,

Were strange names all, and all familiar;

For down their streets I went, early and late

(Is there a street where I have never been

Of all those hundreds, narrow, skyless, straight?)—

Early and late, they were my woods and meadows;

The rain upon their dust my summer smell;

Their scant herb and brown sparrows and harsh shadows

Were all my spring. Was there another spring?

I knew their noisy desolation well,

Drinking it up as a child drinks everything,

Knowing no other world than brick and stone,

With one rich memory of the earth all bright.

Now all is fallen into oblivion—

All that I was, in years of school and play,

Things that I hated, things that were delight,

Are all forgotten, or shut all away

Behind a creaking door that opens slow.

But there's a child that walks those streets of war,

Hearing his running footsteps as they go

Echoed from house to house, and wondering

At Marlboro', Waterloo and Trafalgar;

And at night, when the yellow gas lamps fling

Unsteady shadows, singing for company;

Yet loving the lighted dark, and any star

Caught by sharp roofs in a narrow net of sky.

XI

WHEN CHILDHOOD DIED

I can recall the day

When childhood died.

I had grown thin and tall

And eager-eyed.

Such a false happiness

Had seized me then;

A child, I saw myself

Man among men.

Now I see that I was

Ignorant, surprised,

As one for the surgeon's knife

Anæsthetized.

So that I did not know

What loomed before,

Nor how, a child, I became

A child no more.

The world's sharpened knife

Cut round my heart;

Then something was taken

And flung apart.

I did not, could not know

What had been done.

Under some evil drag

I lived as one

At home in the seeming world;

Then slowly came

Through years and years to myself

And was no more the same.

I know now an ill thing was done

To a young child

By the world's wary knife

Maimed and defiled.

I can recall the day

Almost without anger or pain,

When childhood did not die

But was slain.

XII

ALL THAT I WAS I AM

Hateful it seems now, yet was I not happy?

Starved of the things I loved, I did not know

I loved them, and was happy lacking them.

If bitterness comes now (and that is hell)

It is when I forget that I was happy,

Accusing Fate, that sits and nods and laughs,

Because I was not born a bird or tree.

Let accusation sleep, lest God's own finger

Point angry from the cloud in which He hides.

Who may regret what was, since it has made

Himself himself? All that I was I am,

And the old childish joy now lives in me

At sight of a green field or a green tree.

THE SHOCK

Thinking of these, of beautiful brief things,

Of things that are of sense and spirit made,

Of meadow flowers, dense hedges and dark bushes

With roses trailing over nests of thrushes;

Of dews so pure and bright and flush'd and cool,

And like the flowers as brief as beautiful;

Thinking of the tall grass and daisies tall

And whispered music of the waving bents;

Of these that like a simple child I love

Since they are life and life is flowers and grass;

Thinking of trees, and water at their feet

Answering the trees with murmur childlike sweet;

Thinking of those high thoughts that passed like the wind

Yet left their brightness lying on the mind,

As the white blossoms the raw airs shake down

That lie awhile yet lovely on the chill grass;

Thinking of the dark, where all these end like cloud,

And the stars watch like Knights to Honour vowed,

Of those too lovely colours of the East,

And the too tender loveliness of grey:

Thinking of all, I was as one that stands

'Neath the bewildering shock of breaking seas;

Mortal-immortal things had lost their power,

I knew no more than sweetness in the flower;

No more than colour in the changing light,

No more than order in the stars of night;

A breathing tree was but gaunt wood and leaves;

All these had lost their old power over me.

I had forgotten that ever such things were:

Immortal-mortal, I had been but blind ...

O the wild sweetness of the renewing sense

That swept me and drove all but sweetness hence!

... As beautiful as brief—ah! lovelier,

Being but mortal. Yet I had great fear—

That I should die ere these sweet things were dead,

Or live on knowing the wild sweetness fled.

THE UNLOOSENING

Winter was weary. All his snows were failing—

Still from his stiff grey head he shook the rime

Upon the grasses, bushes and broad hedges,

But all was lost in the new touch of Time.

And the bright-globèd hedges were all ruddy,

As though warm sunset glowed perpetual.

The myriad swinging tassels of first hazel,

From purple to pale gold, were swinging all

In the soft wind, no more afraid of Winter.

Nor chaffinch, wren, nor lark was now afraid.

And Winter heard, or (ears too hard of hearing)

Snuffed the South-West that in his cold hair played.

And his hands trembled. Then with voice a-quaver

He called the East Wind, and the black East ran,

Roofing the sky with iron, and in the darkness

Winter crept out and chilled the earth again.

And while men slept the still pools were frozen,

Mosses were white, with ice the long grasses bowed;

The hawthorn buds and the greening honeysuckle

Froze, and the birds were dumb under that cloud.

And men and beasts were dulled, and children even

Less merry, under that low iron dome.

Early the patient rooks and starlings gathered;

Any warm narrow place for men was home.

And Winter laughed, but the third night grew weary,

And slept all heavy, till the East Wind thought him dead.

Then the returning South West in his nostrils

Breathed, and his snows melted. And his head

Uplifting, he saw all the laughing valley,

Heard the unloosened waters leaping down

Broadening over the meadows; saw the sun running

From hill to hill and glittering upon the town.

All day he stared. But his head drooped at evening,

Bent and slow he stumbled into the white

Cavern of a great chalk hill, hedged with tall bushes,

And in its darkness found a darker night

Among the broken cliff and falling water,

Freezing or falling quietly everywhere;

Locked in a long, long sleep, his brain undreaming,

With only water moving anywhere.

Old men at night dreamed that they saw him going,

And looked, and dared not look, lest he should turn.

And young men felt the air beating on their bodies,

And the young women woke from dreams that burn.

And children going through the fields at morning

Saw the unloosened waters leaping down,

And broke the hazel boughs and wore the tassels

Above their eyes—a pale and shaking crown.

WILD HEART

I

DARK AND STRANGE

When first Love came, then was I but a boy

Swept with delirium of undreamt joy.

Now Love comes to a man serious with change

Of life and death—and makes the world dark and strange.

II

WILD HEART

Wild heart, wild heart,

Where does the wind find home?

Wild heart, wild heart,

Where does the wild blood rest?

Home, home,

Rest, rest—

Unto you I come

And catch you to my breast.

Wild heart, wild heart,

There the wind will sleep.

Wild heart, wild heart,

And the blood gently flow.

Come, come,

Unresting rest

Within my heart's cave deep

Where thoughts like bright stars glow.

Wild heart, wild heart,

Here, here is your home.

Wild heart, wild heart,

With that winged star I come.

Home, home,

Rest in unrest—

Unto you, wild heart, I come.

My wild heart is your home.

III

HOME FOR LOVE

Because the earth is vast and dark

And wet and cold;

Because man's heart wants warmth and light

Lest it grow old;

Therefore the house was built—wall, roof

And brick and beam,

By a lost hand following the lost

Delight of a dream,

And room and stair show how that hand

Groped in eager doubt,

With needless weight of teasing timber

Matching his thought—

Such fond superfluousness of strength

In wall and wood

As his half-wise, half-fearful eye

Deemed only good.

His brain he built into the house,

Laboured his bones;

He burnt his heart into the brick

And red hearth-stones.

It is his blood that makes the house

Still warm, safe, bright,

Honest as aim and eye and hand,

As clean, as light.

Because the earth is vast and dark

The house was built—

Now with another heart and fire

To be fulfilled.

IV

THE ALDE

How near I walked to Love,

How long, I cannot tell.

I was like the Alde that flows

Quietly through green level lands,

So quietly, it knows

Their shape, their greenness and their shadows well;

And then undreamingly for miles it goes

And silently, beside the sea.

Seamews circle over,

The winter wildfowl wings,

Long and green the grasses wave

Between the river and the sea.

The sea's cry, wild or grave,

From, bank to low bank of the river rings;

But the uncertain river though it crave

The sea, knows not the sea.

Was that indeed salt wind?

Came that noise from falling

Wild waters on a stony shore?

Oh, what is this new troubling tide

Of eager waves that pour

Around and over, leaping, parting, recalling?...

How near I moved (as day to same day wore)

And silently, beside the sea!

V

AGAINST THE COLD PALE SKY

Against the cold pale sky

The elm tree company rose high.

All the fine hues of day

That flowered so bold had died away.

Only chill blue, faint green,

And deepening dark blue were seen.

There swinging on a bough

That hung or floated broad and low.

The lamp of evening, bright

With more than planetary light,

Was beautiful and free—

A white bird swaying on the tree.

You watched and I watched,

Our eyes and hearts so surely matched.

We saw the white bird leap, leap

Shining in his journey steep

Through that vast cold sky.

Our hearts knew his unuttered cry—

A cry of free delight

Spreading over the clustering night.

Pole Hill grave and stark

Stared at the valley's tidal dark,

The Darent glimmered wan;

But that eager planet winging on,

And singing on, went high

Into the deeps and heights of sky.

And our thoughts rising too

Brightened the mortal darkness through

Trembled and danced and sang

Till the mute invisible heavens rang.

VI

THE DARK FIRE

Love me not less

Yet ease me of this fever,

That in my wondering heart

Burns, sinks, burns again ever.

Is it your love

In me so fiercely burning,

Or my love leaping to you

Then requickened returning?

Come not to me,

Bring not your body nearer,

Though you overleapt the miles

I could not behold you clearer.

I could not clasp you

Than in my thought more surely;

Breast to breast, heart to heart

Might cling no more securely.

I do not know you,

Seeing you, more than unseeing.

What you are that you are

Here in my spiritual being.

Leave me you cannot,

Nor can I remove me

From the sevenfold dark fire

You have lit here since you love me.

Yet love unsure

No wilder could be burning.

Come, go, come, go,

There's neither leaving nor returning.

Love me, love me more.

O, not my heart shall quaver

If the dark fire more deep

Sinks and is sevenfold sevenfold graver.

VII

THE KESTREL

In a great western wind we climbed the hill

And saw the clouds run up, ride high and sink;

And there were shadows running at our feet

Till it seemed the very earth could not be still,

Nor could our hearts be still, nor could we think

Our hearts could ever be still, our thought less fleet

Than the dizzy clouds, less than the flying wind.

Eastward the valley and the dark steep hill

And other hills and valleys lost behind

In mist and light. The hedges were not yet bare

Though the wind picked at them as he went by.

The woods were fire, a fire that dense or clear

Burned steady, but could not burn up the shadows

Rooted where the trees' roots entangled lie,

In darkness; or a flame burned solitary

In the middle of the highest of brown meadows,

Burned solitary and unconsuming where

A red tree stooped to its black shadow and

The kestrel's shadow hunted the kestrel up the hill.

We climbed, and as we stood (where yet we stand

And of the visioned sun and shadow still drink)

Happiness like a shadow chased our thought

That tossed on free wings up and down the world;

Till by that wild swift-darting shadow caught

Our free spirits their free pinions furled.

Then as the kestrel began once more the heavens to climb

A new-winged spirit rose clear above the hills of time.

VIII

THE IMAGE

I am a river flowing round your hill,

Holding your image in my lingering water,

With imaged white clouds rising round your head;

And I am happy to bear your image still.

Though a loud ruffling wind may break and scatter

That happiness, I know it is not fled.

But when the wind is gone or gentled so

That only the least quivering quivers on,

Your image recomposes in my breast

With those high clouds, quiet and white as snow—

Spiritual company; and when day's gone

And those white clouds have stepped into the west;

And the dark blue filling the heavens deep

Is bright with stars that sing above your head,

Their light lies in the deep of my dark eyes

With your dark shape, a shadow of your sleep ...

I am happy still, watching the bright stars tread

Around your shadow that in my bosom lies.

IX

PERVERSITIES

I

Now come,

And I that moment will forget you.

Sit here

And in your eyes I shall not see you.

Speak, speak

That I no more may hear your music.

Into my arms,

Till I've forgotten I ever met you.

I shall not have you when I hold you

Body to body,

Though your firm flesh, though your strong fingers

Be knit to these.

On a wild hill I shall be chasing

The thought of you;

False will be those true things I told you:

I shall forget you.

No, do not come.

Where the wind hunts, there shall I find you.

In cool gray cloud

Where the sun slips through I shall see you,

Or where the trees

Are silenced, and darken in their branches.

Your coming would

Loosen, when my thought still would bind you.

Against my shoulder your warm shoulder

When last you leaned—

Think, were you nearer then and dearer,

Or I more glad?

O eternal love, your body brings you

No nearer.

Trust me, be bold, be even a little bolder

And do not come.

X

PERVERSITIES

II

Yet when I am alone my eyes say, Come.

My hands cannot be still.

In that first moment all my senses ache,

Cells, that were empty fill,

The clay walls shake,

And unimprisoned thought runs where it will.

Runs and is glad and listens and doubts, and glooms

Because you are not here.

Then once more rises and is clear again

As sense is never clear,

And happy, though in vain

These eyes wait and these arms to bring you near.

Yet spite of thought my arms and eyes say, Come,

Pained with such discontent.

For though thought have you all my senses ache—

O, it was not meant

My body should never wake

But on thought's tranquil bosom rest content.

XI

THE VALLEY

Between the beechen hill and the green down

The valley pastures sink;

And the green river runs through their warm green

Northward into the sea.

Dark is the beechen hill these winter days,

The trees swallow the light

And make an evening there when morning shines

And the down heaves to the south.

Only when the sun's low a fire creeps through

The dark of the beechen hill;

While the green down, misty from head to foot,

Grows huge and dim with sleep.

Then in the valley by the yet shining river,

Under the noisy elms,

I know how like twin shadows over me

Rising high, east and west,

Are Love's dark hills, quiet, unchanging, vast,

Sleeping beneath the stars;

While I with those stars in my bosom shining

Move northward to the sea.

XII

THE DARK NIGHT OF THE MIND

I could not love if my thought loved not too,

Nor could my body touch the body of you,

Unless first in the dark night of the mind

Love had fulfilled what Love had well designed.

Was it in thought or flesh we walked, when low

The sun dropped, and the white scar on the hill

Sank into the dark trees?

Could we indeed so quietly go

Body by body into that heavenly glow?

The elms that rose so vast above the mill

Near leafless were and still;

But from the branches with such loud unease

Black flocking starlings mixed their warring cries

That seemed the greater noise of the creaking mill;

And every branch and extreme twig was black

With birds that whistled and heard and whistled back,

Filling with noise as late with wings the skies.

Was it their noise we heard,

Or clamour of other thoughts in our quiet mind that stirred?

Then through the climbing hazel hedge new thinned

By the early and rapacious wind,

We saw the silver birches gleam with light

Of frozen masts in seas all wild and green.

O, were they truly trees, or some unseen

Thought taking on an image dark and bright?

And did those bodies see them, or the mind?

And did those bodies face once more the hill

To bathe in night, or on a darker road

Our spirits unseeing unwearying rise and rise

Where these feet never trod?

From that familiar outer darkness I

Would rise to the inner, deeper, darker sky

And find you in my spirit—or find you not,

O, never, never, if not in my thought.

THE BODY

When I had dreamed and dreamed what woman's beauty was,

And how that beauty seen from unseen surely flowed,

I turned and dreamed again, but sleeping now no more:

My eyes shut and my mind with inward vision glowed.

"I did not think!" I cried, seeing that wavering shape

That steadied and then wavered, as a cherry bough in June

Lifts and falls in the wind—each fruit a fruit of light;

And then she stood as clear as an unclouded moon.

As clear and still she stood, moonlike remotely near;

I saw and heard her breathe, I years and years away.

Her light streamed through the years, I saw her clear and still,

Shape and spirit together mingling night with day.

Water falling, falling with the curve of time

Over green-hued rock, then plunging to its pool

Far, far below, a falling spear of light;

Water falling golden from the sun but moonlike cool:

Water has the curve of her shoulder and breast,

Water falls as straight as her body rose,

Water her brightness has from neck to still feet,

Water crystal-cold as her cold body flows.

But not water has the colour I saw when I dreamed,

Nor water such strength has. I joyed to behold

How the blood lit her body with lamps of fire

And made the flesh glow that like water gleamed cold.

A flame in her arms and in each finger flame,

And flame in her bosom, flame above, below,

The curve of climbing flame in her waist and her thighs;

From foot to head did flame into red flame flow.

I knew how beauty seen from unseen must rise,

How the body's joy for more than body's use was made.

I knew then how the body is the body of the mind,

And how the mind's own fire beneath the cool skin played.

O shape that once to have seen is to see evermore,

Falling stream that falls to the deeps of the mind,

Fire that once lit burns while aught burns in the world,

Foot to head a flame moving in the spirit's wind!

If these eyes could see what these eyes have not seen—

The inward vision clear—how should I look for joy,

Knowing that beauty's self rose visible in the world

Over age that darkens, and griefs that destroy?

THE TOSSING MOUNTAINS

They were like dreams that in a drowsy hour

A sad old God had dreamed in loneliness of power.

They were like dreams that in his drowsy mind

Rose slowly and then, darkening, made him wise and blind—

So that he saw no more the level sun,

Nor the small solid shadow of unclouded noon.

The dark green heights rose slowly from the green

Of the dark water till the sky was narrowly seen;

Only at night the lifting walls were still,

And stars were bright and calm above each calm dark hill.

... I could not think but that a God grown old

Saw in a dream or waking all this round of bold

And wavelike hills, and knew them but a thought,

Or but a wave uptost and poised awhile then caught

Back to the sea with waves a million more

That rise and pause and break at last upon the shore.

A God, a God saw first those hills that I

Saw now immense upholding the starry crowded sky:

His breath the mist that clung their shoulders round,

His slow unconscious sigh that easeless floating sound.

Ere mine his thought failed under each rough height

And then was brave, seeing the stars climb calm and bright.

Ere they were named he named them in his mood,

Like varying children of one giant warring brood—

Broad-Foot, Cloud-Gatherer, Long-Back, Winter-Head,

Bravery and Bright-Face and that long Home of the Dead;

And their still waters glittering in his glance

Named Buckler, Silver Dish, Two Eyes and Shining Lance,

Names unrecorded, but the circling wind

Remembers and repeats them to the listening mind....

That mind was mine. At Shining Lance I stared

Between Long-Back and Winter-Head as the new sun bared

The Lake and heights of shadow and the wan gold

Deepened and new warmth came into the light's sharp cold.

And the near trees shivered no more but shook

Their music over Shining Lance; and the excited brook

Freshened in the sun's eye and tossed his spray

High and sparkling, and then sprang dancing, dancing away.

But Winter-Head and Long-Back, gravely bright,

Stood firm as if for ever and a day and a night—

As they were more than a wave before 'tis caught

Back to the tossing tide, more than a flying thought,

More than a dream that an old God once dreamed

When visionary not at all visionary seemed.

THE POND

Gray were the rushes

Beside the budless bushes,

Green-patched the pond.

The lark had left soaring

Though yet the sun was pouring

His gold here and beyond.

Bramble-branches held me,

But had they not compelled me

Yet had I lingered there

Hearing the frogs and then

Watching the water-hen

That stared back at my stare.

There amid the bushes

Were blackbird's nests and thrush's,

Soon to be hidden

In leaves on green leaves thickening,

Boughs over long boughs quickening

Swiftly, unforbidden.

The lark had left singing

But song all round was ringing,

As though the rushes

Were sighingly repeating

And mingling that most sweet thing

With the sweet note of thrushes.

That sweetness rose all round me,

But more than sweetness bound me,

A spirit stirred;

Shadowy and cold it neared me,

Then shrank as if it feared me—

But 'twas I that feared.

TEN O'CLOCK NO MORE [A]

The wind has thrown

The boldest of trees down.

Now disgraced it lies,

Naked in spring beneath the drifting skies,

Naked and still.

It was the wind

So furious and blind

That scourged half England through,

Ruining the fairest where most fair it grew

By dell and hill.

And springing here,

The black clouds dragging near,

Against this lonely elm

Thrust all his strength to maim and overwhelm

In one wild shock.

As in the deep

Satisfaction of dark sleep

The tree her dream dreamed on,

And woke to feel the wind's arms round her thrown

And her head rock.

And the wind raught

Her ageing boughs and caught

Her body fast again.

Then in one agony of age, grief, pain,

She fell and died.

Her noble height,

Branches that loved the light,

Her music and cool shade,

Her memories and all of her is dead

On the hill side.

But the wind stooped.

With madness tired, and drooped

In the soft valley and slept.

While morning strangely round the hush'd tree crept

And called in vain.

The birds fed where

The roots uptorn and bare

Thrust shameful at the sky;

And pewits round the tree would dip and cry

With the old pain.

"Ten o'clock's gone!"

Said sadly every one.

And mothers looking thought

Of sons and husbands far away that fought:—

And looked again.

[A] Ten o'clock is the name of a tall tree that crowned the eastern Cotswolds.

FROM WEAR TO THAMES

Is it because Spring now is come

That my heart leaps in its bed of dust?

Is it with sorrow or strange pleasure

To watch the green time's gathering treasure?

Or is there some too sharp distaste

In all this quivering green and gold?

Something that makes bare boughs yet barer,

And the eye's pure delight the rarer?

Not that the new found Spring is sour....

The blossom swings on the cherry branch,

From Wear to Thames I have seen this greenness

Cover the six-months-winter meanness.

And windflowers and yellow gillyflowers

Pierce the astonished earth with light:

And most-loved wallflower's bloody petal

Shakes over that long frosty battle.

But this leaping, sinking heart

Finds question in grass, bud and blossom—

Too deeply into the earth is prying,

Too sharply hears old voices crying.

There is in blossom, bud and grass

Something that's neither sorrow nor joy,

Something that sighs like autumn sighing,

And in each living thing is dying.

It is myself that whispers and stares

Down from the hill and in the wood,

And in the untended orchard's shining

Sees the light through thin leaves declining.

Let me forget what I have been

What I can never be again.

Let me forget my winter's meanness

In this fond, flushing world of greenness.

Let me forget the world that is

The changing image of my thought,

Nor see in thicket and hedge and meadow

Myself, a grave perplexèd shadow;

And O, forget that gloomy shade

That breathes his cloud 'twixt earth and light ...

All, all forget but sun and blossom,

And the bird that bears heaven in his bosom.

TIME FROM HIS GRAVE

When the south-west wind came

The air grew bright and sweet, as though a flame

Had cleansed the world of winter. The low sky

As the wind lifted it rose trembling vast and high,

And white clouds sallied by

As children in their pleasure go

Chasing the sun beneath the orchard's shadow and snow.

Nothing, nothing was the same!

Not the dull brick, not the stained London stone,

Not the delighted trees that lost their moan—

Their moan that daily vexed me with such pain

Until I hated to see trees again;

Nor man nor woman was the same

Nor could be stones again,

Such light and colour with the south-west came.

As I drank all that brightness up I saw

A dark globe lapt in fold on fold of gloom,

With all her hosts asleep in that cold tomb,

Sealed by an iron law.

And there amid the hills,

Locked in an icy hollow lay the bones

Of one that ghostly and enormous slept

Obscure 'neath wrinkled ice and bedded stones.

But as spring water the old dry channel fills,

Came the south-west wind filling all the air.

Then Time rose up, ghostly, enormous, stark,

With cold gray light in cold gray eyes, and dark

Dark clouds caught round him, feet to rigid chin.

The wind ran flushed and glorious in,

Godlike from hill to frozen hill-top stepp'd,

And swiftly upon that bony stature swept.

Then a long breath and then quick breaths I heard,

In those black caves of stillness music stirred,

Those icy heights were riven:

From crown to clearing hollow grass was green;

And godlike from flushed hill to hill-top leapt

Time, youthful, quick, serene,

Dew flashing from his limbs, light from his eyes

To the sheeny skies.

A lark's song climbed from earth and dropped from heaven,

Far off the tide clung to the shore

Now silent nevermore.

... Into what vision'd wonder was I swept,

Upon what unimaginable joyance had I leapt!

WILDER MUSIC

Came the same cuckoo's cry

All day across the mead.

Flitted the butterfly

All day dittering over my head.

Came a bleak crawk-caw

Between tall broad trees.

Came shadows, floating, drifting slowly down

Large leaves from darker trees.

Rose the lark with the rising sun,

Rose the mist after the lark,

O wild and sweet the clamour begun

Round the heels of the limping dark.

Rose after white cloud white cloud,

Nodded green cloud to green;

The stiff and dark earth stirred, breathing aloud,

And dew shook from the green.

Remained the eyes that stared,

Ears that ached to hear;

Remained the nerve of being, bared,

Stung with delight and fear.

Beauty flushed, ran and returned,

Like a music rose and fell;

Staring and blind and deaf I listened and burned—

A wilder music fell.

GRASSES

O cover me, long gentle grasses,

Cover me with your seeding heads,

Cover me with your shaking limbs,

Cover me with your light soft hands,

Cover me as the delicious long wind passes

Over you and me, green grasses.

'Tis of your blood I would be drinking,

To your soft shrilling listening now,

And your thin fingers peering through

At the deep forests of the sky.

O satisfy my peevish thought past thinking,

My sense with your sense linking.

Already are your brown roots creeping

Around the roots of my mind's mind,

Into the darkness hidden within

The rayed dark of unconsciousness;

And your long stems in a bright wind are leaping

Over me uneasily sleeping.

O cover me, long gentle grasses,

As one day over a quiet flesh

You will shake, shake and dance and sing;

And body too still and spirit astir

Will hear you in every firm bright wind that passes

Over you, loved green grasses.

FAIR AND BRIEF

So fair, that all the morning aches

With such monotony!

So brief, that sadness breaks

The brittle spell.

Nothing so fair, nothing so brief:

The sun leaps up and falls.

The wind tosses every leaf:

Every leaf dies.

Blossom, a white cloud in the air,

Is blown like a cloud away.

Must all be brief, being fair?

Nothing remain?

Yes, night and that high regiment

Of stars that wheel and march,

Ever their bright lines bent

To a secret thought;

Moving immutable, bright and grave,

Fair beyond all things fair;

Though all else vanish, save

Imagination's dream.

NIGHTFALL

I

Eve goes slowly

Dancing lightly

Clad with shadow up the hills;

Birds their singing

Cease at last, and silence

Falling like fine rain the valley fills.

Not a bat's cry

Stirs the stillness

Perfect as broad water sleeping,

Not a moth's wings

Flit in the gathering darkness,

Not a mouselike moonray ev'n comes creeping.

Then a light shines

From the casement,

Wreathed with jasmine boughs and stars,

Palely golden

As the late eve's primrose,

Glimmers through green leafy prison bars.

II

Only joy now

Come in silence,

Come before your look's forgot;

Come and hearken

While the lonely shadow

Broadens on the hill and then is not.

Now the hour is,

Here the place is,

Here am I who saw thee here.

Evening darkens

All is still and marvellous,

Now the sharp stars in the deep sky peer.

Come and fill me

As the wind fills

Leafy wide boughs of a tree;

Come and windlike

Cleanse my slumbrous branches,

Come and moonlike bathe the leaves of me.

III

Eve has gone and

Night follows,

Every bush is now a ghost;

Every tree looms

Lofty large and sombre;

All day's simple friendliness is lost.

See the poplars

Black in blackness,

In all their leaves there is no sigh.

'Neath that darkling

Cedar who dare wander

Now, or under the vast oak would lie!...

Till that tingling

Silence broken

Every clod renews its breath;

Birds, leaves, grasses

Heave as one, then sleep on

Full of sweeter sleep and unlike death.

IV

Only joy now

Come like music

Falling clear from strings of light;

Come like shadow

Drinking up late sunrays,

Come like moonrays sweeping the round night.

See how night is

Opening flowerlike:

Open so thy bosom to me.

See how earth falls

Easeful into silence:

Let my moth-wing'd thought so fall on thee.

While the lamp's beam

Primrose golden

Now is like a shifting spear

Borne in battle,

Seen awhile then hidden,

Bold then beaten—now long lost, and here!

THE SLAVES

The tall slaves bow if that capricious King

But glances as he passes;

Their dark hoods drawing over abashed faces

They bow humbly, unappealingly.

The dark robes round their shuddering bodies cling,

They bow and but whisper as he passes.

They have not learned to look into his eyes,

If he insults to answer,

To stand with head erect and angry arching bosom:

They bow humbly, unappealingly,

As though he mastered earth and the violet inky skies,

And whisper piteously for only answer.

So they stand, tall slaves, ashamed of their great height,

And if he comes raving,

Shouting from the west, furious and moody,

They bow more humbly, unappealingly,

Ashamed to remember how they lived in that calm light;

They droop until he passes, tired of raving.

Only when he's gone they lift their darkened brows,

Light comes back to their eyes,

Their leaves caress the light, the light laves their branches,

They move loverlike, appealingly;

Slaves now no more the poplars lift and shake their boughs,

And there's a heaven of evening in their eyes.

THE FUGITIVE

In the hush of early even

The clouds came flocking over,

Till the last wind fell from heaven

And no bird cried.

Darkly the clouds were flocking,

Shadows moved and deepened,

Then paused; the poplar's rocking

Ceased; the light hung still

Like a painted thing, and deadly.

Then from the cloud's side flickered

Sharp lightning, thrusting madly

At the cowering fields.

Thrice the fierce cloud lighten'd,

Down the hill slow thunder trembled;

Day in her cave grew frightened,

Crept away, and died.

THE UNTHRIFT

Here in the shade of the tree

The hours go by

Silent and swift,

Lightly as birds fly.

Then the deep clouds broaden and drift,

Or the cloudless darkness and the worn moon.

Waking, the dreamer knows he is old,

And the day that he dreamed was gone

Is gone.

THE WREN

Within the greenhouse dim and damp

The heat floats like a cloud.

Pale rose-leaves droop from the rust roof

With rust-edged roses bowed.

As I go in

Out flies the startled wren.

By the tall dark fir tree he sings

Morn after morn still,

Shy and bold he flits and sings

Tinily sweet and shrill.

As I go out

His song follows me about ...

About the orchard under trees

Beaded with cherries bright,

Past the rat-haunted Honeybourne

And up those hills of light:

As up I go

His notes more sweetly flow.

Or down those dark hills when night's there

Full of dark thoughts and deep,

A thin clear soundless music comes

Like stars in broken sleep.

When I come down

All those dark thoughts are flown.

And now that sweetness is more sweet,

Here where the aeroplanes

Labouring and groaning in the height

Lift their lifeless vans:—

Sweet, sweet to hear

The far off wren singing clear.

THE WINDS

In these green fields, in this green spring,

In this green world of burning sweet

That drives its sour from everything

And burns the Arctic with new heat,

That seems so slow and flies so fleet

On half-seen wing;

In this green world the birds are all

With motion mad, are wild with song;

The grass leaps like a sudden wall

Flung up against a foe that long

Strode round and wrought his frosty wrong.

The bright winds call,

The bright winds answer; the clouds rise

White from the grave, shaking their head,

Strewing the grave-clothes through the skies,

In languid drifting shadow shed

Upon the fields where, slowly spread,

Each shadow dies.

In every wood is green and gold,

The unbridged river runs all green

With queenly swan-clouds floating bold

Down to the mill's swift guillotine.

Beyond the mill each murdered queen

Floats white and cold.

—If I could rise up in a cloud

And look down on the new earth in flight,

Shadow-like cast my thought's thin shroud

Back upon these fields of light;

And hear the winds of day and night

Meet, singing loud!

THE WANDERER

Over the pool of sleep

The night mists creep,

Then faint thin light and then clear day,

Noontide, and lingering afternoon;

Then that Wanderer, the Moon

Wandering her old wild way.

How many spirits follow

Her in that dark hollow!

Like a lost lamb she roams on high

Through the cold and soundless sky,

And stares down into her deep

Reflection in the pool of sleep.

How many follow

Her in that lone hollow!

She sees them not nor would she hear

Though both shape and sound were clear,

But stares, stares into the pool

Of her fear and beauty full.

Far in strange gay skies

She pales and dies,

Forgetting that bright transitory

Reflection of astonished glory,

Nor heeds the spirits that follow

Her into day's bright hollow.

MERRILL'S GARDEN

There is a garden where the seeded stems of thin long grass are bowed

Beneath July's slow rains and heat and tired children's trailing feet;

And the trees' neglected branches droop and make a cloud beneath the cloud,

And in that dark the crimson dew of raspberries shines more sweet than sweet.

The flower of the tall acacia's gone, the acacia's flower is white no more,

The aspen lifts his pithless arms, the aspen leaves are close and still;

The wind that tossed the clouds along, gray clouds and white like feathers bore,

Lets even a feather faintly fall and smoke spread hugely where it will.

But though the acacia's flower is gone and raspberries bear bright fruit untasted,

Beauty lives there, oh rich and rare, past the sum of eager June.

The lime tree's pyramid of flower and leaf and yellow flower unwasted

Rises at eve and bars the breast wild-heaving of the timid moon.

Now the tall pear-trees unrebuked lift their green fingers to the sky;

Their lower boughs are crossed like arms of templars in long stony sleep.

Their arms are crossed as though the wind, returning from wild war on high,

Had touched them with an angry breath, or whispered from his cavern deep.

A foxglove lifts her bells and bells silent above the singing grass,

Still the old marigold her light sprinkles like riches to the poor.

Snapdragon still his changeling blossom shakes with the burden of the bees,

And the strong bindweed creeps and winds and springs on high a conqueror.

Would now her eyes grieve to behold snapdragon, foxglove, marigold

Daily diminish in their sweet and bindweed wreathing over all—

Weed and grass and weed and grass, friendless, melancholy, cold,

Wreathing the earth like wreathing snow from bare wall to low greening wall?

Old were her eyes that lingered on old trees and grass and flowers trim.

She smelt the ripe pears when they drooped and fell and broke upon the path.

Old were her thoughts of things of old; her present thoughts were few and dim;

Her eyes saw not the things she saw; she listened, to no living breath.

Her youth and prime and autumn time bloomed in her thought all light and sweet:

No wallflower more of sweet could hold, of sunny light no marigold.

Fruit on her mind's boughs ripened full, in summer's and calm autumn's heat:

Then fell, for there came none to pick; but winter came, and she was old.

Now if her sons come they will find—not her: her empty garden only,

The wallflower done and snapdragon still swinging with the greedy bees,

Marigold glittering in the grass, scant foxglove ringing faintly, lonely,

Close red fruit beading the long boughs and bindweed wreathing where it please.

A tawny lean cat Marmalade slinks like a panther through the tall

Thin bending grass and watches long a scholar thrush rehearsing song;

Or children running in the sun hunt and hunt a well lost ball;

But most the garden sleeps away the day, but still, when eves are long,

When eves are long and no moon rises, and nervous, still, is all the air,

That small stiff figure moves again, silent amid the hushing grass;

In the firm-carven lime tree's shade she moves, and meets her old thoughts there,

Then in the deepening dark is lost, or her light steps unnoted pass.

Only that careless garden keeps secure her memory though it sleeps,

And the bright flowers and tyrant weed and tall grass shaking its loud seed

Less lovely were if wanting her who like a living thought still creeps

And sees what once she saw and music hears of her living sons and dead.

THE LIME TREE

That lime tree on the distant rising ground

(If it was a lime tree) showed her yellow leaves

Above the renewed green of wet August grass—

First Autumn yellow that on first Autumn eves

Too soon was found.

Comfortless lime tree! Scarce an aspen leaf

Like a green butterfly flitted to the ground;

There was no sign of Autumn in the grass.

Even the long garden beds their beauty brief—

Their mignonette,

Nasturtium and sweet-william and red stocks,

And clover crouching in the border grass,

And blood-like fuschia, eve's primrose and white phlox

And honeysuckle—waved all their smell and hue

Morn and eve anew.

But that far lime tree yellowing by the oak,

Warning oak, elm and poplar and each fresh tree

Shaking in the south wind delightedly,

And clover in the closeness of the grass,

Warns also me.

And now when all the trees are standing still

Beneath the purple and white of the west sky,

And time is standing still—as stand it will—

That early yellowing lime with palsied fingers

Cannot be still.

DARK CHESTNUT

Thou shaking thy dark shadows down,

Like leaves before the first leaves fall,

Pourest upon the head of night

Her loveliest loveliness of all—

Dark leaves that tremble

When soft airs unto softer call.

O, darker, softer fall her thoughts

Upon the cold fields of my mind,

Weaving a quiet music there

Like leaf-shapes trembling in least wind:

Dark thoughts that linger

When the light's gone and the night's blind.

I see her there beneath your boughs.

Dark chestnut, though you see her not;

Her white face and white hands are clear

As the moon in your stretched arms caught;

But stranger, clearer,

The living shadows of her thought.

LONELY AIRS

Ah, bird singing late in the gloam

While the evening shadow thickens,

And the dizzy bat-wings roam,

And the faint starlight quickens;

And her bud eve's primrose bares

Before night's cold fingers come:

Thine are such lonely airs,

Bird singing late in the gloam!

THE CREEPER

It covered all

The cold east wall,

Its green, thin gold, purple, brown,

And flame running up and down;

Lifting its quiet bosom to every wind that crept

Up the high wall and in its darkness slept.

Then when the wind slept all the creeper turned

To undiminishing fire that burned and burned and burned.

But one black night

(For not in the light

May such treacheries be done)

Came with dishonoured weapon one

And cut the stem just where the branches thin

Their million-leaf'd wild wandering begin:

Cut the firm stem quite through, and so it bled,

And all the million leaves shivered and hung there dead.

The wall how cold,

The house how old

Became when that warm bright fire died,

And the fond wind could no more hide.

And it was strange that so much death could be

From one dark night-hour's darker felony;

And how the leaves being dead could not cast down

Their colours in bright pools of red and gold and brown.

—It did not die,

But flamed on high

Morn after morn, even when white snow

Covered all brightness, high and low;

And in the night when the snow glimmered wan

Still beautiful as a fire its brightness shone:

Its million quiet leaves quivering in my mind,

When from no earthly meadows crept the remembered wind.

SMOKE

They stood like men that hear immortal speech

Moving among their branches, and like trees

We stood and watched them, and in our still branches

Echoes of that immortal music stirred.

October days had touched their breasts with light,

With yellow light and red light and wan green;

And the gray cloud that grew from low to high

Made the warm light more warm, the green more wan.

We stood and watched them and in our still branches

We felt the warm light glow, though now the rain

Was loud upon the leaves.

And standing there

You cried, "O, that sweet smell, where is the fire?

Where is the fire?" For sharp upon the rain

The smell came of a wood fire and clung round

Hanging upon our branches, till we saw

No more those lighted trees nor heard the rain—

Knew only the deep echoes and the smell

Of a wood fire that breathed its smoke across

From some near hearth, or undiscovered world.

QUEENS

The red sun stared unwinking at the East

Then slept under a cloak of hodden gray;

The rimy fields held the last light of day,

A little tender yet. And I remember

How black against the pale and wintry west

Stood the confused great army of old trees,

Topping that lean, enormous-shouldered hill

With crossing lances shivering and then still.

I looked as one that sees

Queens passing by and lovelier than he dreamed,

With fringe of silver light following their feet,

And all those lances vail'd, and solemn Knights

Watching their Queens as with eyes grave and sweet

They left for the gray fields those airy heights.

Nothing had lovelier seemed—

Not April's noise nor the early dew of June,

Nor the calm languid cow-eyed Autumn Moon,

Nor ruffling woods the greenest I remember—

Than this pale light and dark of cold December.

THE RED HOUSE

On the wide fields the water gleams like snow,

And snow like water pale beneath pale sky,

When old and burdened the white clouds are stooped low.

Sudden as thought, or startled near bird's cry,

The whiteness of first light on hills of snow

New dropped from skiey hills of tumbling white

Streams from the ridge to where the long woods lie;

And tall ridge-trees lift their soft crowns of white

Above slim bodies all black or flecked with snow.

By the tossed foam of the not yet frozen brook

Black pigs go straggling over fields of snow;

The air is full of snow, and starling and rook

Are blacker amid the myriad streams of light.

Warm as old fire the Red House burns yet bright

Beneath the unmelting snows of pine and larch,

While February moves as slow, as slow

As Spring might never come, never come March.

Amid such snows, by generations haunted,

By echoes, memories and dreams enchanted,

Firm when dark winds through the night stamp and shout,

Brightest when time silvers the world all about,

That old house called The Heart burns, burns, and still

Outbraves the mortal threat of the hanging hill.

THE BEAM

The dead white on the fields' dead white

Turned the peace to misery.

Tall bony trees their wild arms thrust

Into the cold breast of the night.

Brightly the stars shone in their dust.

The hard wind's gust

Scratched like a bird the frozen snow.

Against the dead light grew the gold,

Lifting its beam to that high dust;

The lamp within the hut's small pane

Called the world to life again.

Arms of the trees atremble thrust

Defiance at the cold

Night of narrow shrouding snow.

A human beam, small spear of light,

Lifting its beauty to that high

Indifference of starry dust.

The aching trees were comforted,

And their brave arms more deeply thrust

Into the sky.

Earth's warm light fingered the dead snow.

LAST HOURS

A gray day and quiet,

With slow clouds of gray,

And in dull air a cloud that falls, falls

All day.

The naked and stiff branches

Of oak, elm, thorn,

In the cold light are like men aged and

Forlorn.

Only a gray sky,

Grass, trees, grass again,

And all the air a cloud that drips, drips,

All day.

Lovely the lonely

Bare trees and green grass—

Lovelier now the last hours of slow winter

Slowly pass.

THE WISH

That you might happier be than all the rest,

Than I who have been happy loving you,

Of all the innocent even the happiest—

This I beseeched for you.

Until I thought of those unending skies—

Of stagnant cloud, or fleckless dull blue air,

Of days and nights delightless, no surprise,

No threat, no sting, no fear;

And of the stirless waters of the mind,

Waveless, unfurrowed, of no living hue,

With dead eaves dropping slowly in no wind,

And nothing flowering new.

And then no more I wished you happiness,

But that whatever fell of joy or woe

I would not dare, O Sweet, to wish it less,

Or wish you less than you.

NOWHERE, EVERYWHERE

Flesh and blood, bone and skin,

Are the house that beauty lives in.

Formed in darkness, grown in light

Are they the substance of delight.

Who could have dreamed the things he sees

In these strong lovely presences—

In cheeks of children, thews of men,

Women's bodies beloved of men?

Who could have dreamed a thing so wise

As that clear look of the child's eyes?

Who the thin texture of her hand

But with a hand's touch understand?

Shaped in eternity were these

Body's miracles, where the seas

Their continuous rhythm learned,

And the stars in their bright order burned.

From stars and seas was motion caught

When flesh, blood, bone and skin were wrought

Into swift lovely liveliness.

Oh, but beauty less and less

Than beauty grows. The cheeks fall in,

Colour dies from the smooth skin,

And muscles slack and bones are brittle;

Veins and arteries little by little

Delay the tides of the blood:

That is a ditch that was a flood.

Then all but dry bones disappears,

White bones that lie a hundred years

Cheated of resurrection....

Where is that beauty gone?

Escaped even while we watched it so,

And none guessed the way it would go?

Only it's fled, and here alone

Lie blood and skin and flesh and bone.

Where is the beauty that was here?

—Nowhere, everywhere.

TAKE CARE, TAKE CARE

Bind up, bind up your dark bright hair

And hide the smouldering sunken fire.

Let it be held no more than fair,

Nor yourself guess how rare, how rare

Its movement, colour and deep fire.

Your eyes they have their consciousness,

Your lips their grave reflective smile,

Your hands their cunning for distress:

Your hair has only beauteousness

And hid flame for its only guile.

That glowing hair on shoulders white

Is pride past sum: take care, take care!

Even to dream of wish'd delight

Too much perturbs the ebb of night—

Bind up, bind up your burning hair!

NEARNESS

Thy hand my hand,

Thine eyes my eyes,

All of thee

Caught and confused with me:

My hand thy hand

My eyes thine eyes,

All of me

Sunken and discovered anew in thee....

No: still

A foreign mind,

A thought

By other yet uncaught;

A secret will

Strange as the wind:

The heart of thee

Bewildering with strange fire the heart in me.

Hand touches hand,

Eye to eye beckons,

But who shall guess

Another's loneliness?

Though hand grasp hand

Though the eye quickens,

Still lone as night

Remain thy spirit and mine, past touch and sight.

THE SECOND FLOOD

How could I know, how could I guess

That here was your great happiness—

In mine? And how could I know

Your love infinite must grow?

Suddenly at dawn I wake

To see the cruse of colour break

Over the East, and then the gray

Creep up with light of common day ...

No, no, no! again that bright

Flashing, flushing, flooding light

Leading on day, until I ache

With love to see the dark world wake.

O, with such second flood your love

Painted my earth and heaven above,

With such wild magnificence

As bruised my heart in every sense,

In every nerve. Was ever man

Fit this renewed love to sustain?

Now in these days when Autumn's leaf

Is red and gold, and for a brief

Day the earth flowers ere it dies,

What if Spring came with new surprise,

Came ere the aspen shivered bare

Or the beech coins glittered in cold air,

Before the rough wind the maple stripped

And this bare moon on bare boughs stepped!

Vain thought—O, yet not wholly vain:

Even to me Love has come again,

Moving from your quick breast where he

Fluttered in his wondering infancy.

THE GLASS

Your face has lost

The clearness it once wore,

And your brow smooth and white

Its look of light;

Your eyes that were

So careless, are how deep with care!

O, what has done

This cruelty to you?

Is it only Time makes strange

Your look with change,

Or something more

Than the worst pang Time ever bore?—

Regret, regret!

So bitter that it changes

Bright youth to madness,

Poisoning mere sadness ...

O, vain glass that shows

Less than the bitterness the heart knows.

BUT MOST THY LIGHT

I know how fire burns,

How from the wrangling fumes

Rose and amber blooms,

And slowly dies.

Nothing's so swift as fire,

There's nothing alive so fierce.

The lifted lances pierce,

Sink, and upspring.

Like an Indian sword it leaps

Out of the smoking sheath.

Even the winged feet of death

Learn speed from fire;

And pain its cunning learns;

Languor its sweet

From the decaying heat

That never dies.

I know how fire burns

Unguessed, save for tears,

When the thousand-fanged flame spears

The body's guard;

Or when the mind, the mind

Is ever-glowing wood,

And fire runs in the blood

Lunatic, blind;

When remorse burns and burns

And burns always, always—

The fire that surest slays

Or surest numbs.

I know how fire burns

But how I cannot tell.

And Heaven burns like Hell

Yet the Heart endures.

'Tis the immortal Flame

In mortal life that's bitter,

Or than all sweet sweeter

Though life burns down.

Teach me, fire, but this,

Nor alone destroying burn:—

Of thy warmth let me learn,

But most thy light.

IN THAT DARK SILENT HOUR

In that dark silent hour

When the wind wants power,

And in the black height

The sky wants light,

Stirless and black

In utter lack,

And not a sound

Escapes from that untroubled round:—

To wake then

In the dark, and ache then

Until the dark is gone—

Lonely, yet not alone;

Hearing another's breath

All the quiet beneath,

Knowing one sleeps near

That day held dear

And dreams held dear; but now

In this sharp moment—how

Share the moment's sweetness,

Forgo its completeness,

Nor be alone

Now the dark is grown

Spiritual and deep

More than in dreams and sleep?

O, it is pain, 'tis need

That so will plead

For a little loneliness.

If it be pain to miss

Loved touch, look and lip,

Companionship

Yet is verier pain

Then, then

In that dark silent hour

When the wind wants power,

And you, near or far, sleep,

And your released thoughts toward me creep

While I, imprisoned, awake,

Ache—ache

To be for one

Long, little moment with myself alone.

ONCE THERE WAS TIME

Let no tears fall

If then they fell not.

If eyes told nothing,

Now let them tell not.

Once there was time

For words, looks and tears:

That time is past, is past—

Heart, thou shalt tell not!

Beyond any speech

Is silence bitter,

As between love and love

Nothing is sweeter.

Once there was time, time yet

For words, looks and tears ...

Past, past, past, past—

Nothing so bitter!

Now if tears come

That then fell never;

If eyes such sad, sad things

Look now for ever;

If words, looks or tears

Tremble with telling,

Oh, what returning voice is it whispers

Never, never, never!

SCATTER THE SILVER ASH LIKE SNOW

O, what insect is it

That burrows in the heart and frets

The heart's near nerves,

Leaving its unclean

Stigmata in the mind serene,

Making the proud how mean?

It is not common hate,

Anger has not such deadly cunning

To annul, to chill.

Wild anger is not

So cunning even while so hot;

Hate is too soon forgot.

There is no sword so sharp

With lightnings as the wanton tongue;

Nothing that burns like words—

Bubbling flames that spread

In the now unspiritual head,

By sleepless fevers fed.

O evil words that are

The knives of desolating thought!

And though words be still

The hot eyes yet dart

Burning deaths from this mad heart

Into that torn heart.

O Love, forget, forget,

Put by that glittering edge, put by;

Slay the insect with light;

Smother that smoky glow,

Scatter the silver ash like snow

When thy spring airs blow!

JUSTIFICATION

From far-off it came near

Deep-charactered and clear,

Until I saw the features close to mine

And the eyes unhappy shine.

It was Sorrow's face,

Wanting kindness and grace,

And wanting strength of silence, and the power

To abide a luckier hour.

The first fear turned to hating

As I saw him dumbly waiting,

For it was my true likeness that he wore

And would wear evermore:—

My face that was to be

When his years' misery

With here a little and there a little had made

My strong spirit afraid.

I saw his face and hated,

Seeing mine so sad-fated.

And then I struck and killed him, knowing that he

Had else slain me.

I HAVE NEVER LOVED YOU YET

I have never loved you yet, if now I love.

If Love was born in that bright April sky

And ran unheeding when the sun was high,

And slept as the moon sleeps through Autumn nights

While those dear steady stars burn in their heights:

If Love so lived and ran and slept and woke

And ran in beauty when each morning broke,

Love yet was boylike, fervid and unstable,

Teased with romance, not knowing truth from fable.

But Winter after Autumn comes and stills

The petulant waters and the wild mind fills

With silence; and the dark and cold are bitter,

O, bitter to remember past days sweeter.

Then Spring with one warm cloudy finger breaks

The frost and the heart's airless black soil shakes;

Love grown a man uprises, serious, bright

With mind remembering now things dark and light.

O, if young Love was beautiful, Love grown old

Experienced and grave is not grown cold.

Life's faithful fire in Love's heart burns the clearer

With all that was, is and draws darkling nearer.

I have never loved you yet, if now I love.

THE PIGEONS

The pigeons, following the faint warm light,

Stayed at last on the roof till warmth was gone,

Then in the mist that's hastier than night

Disappeared all behind the carved dark stone,

Huddling from the black cruelty of the frost.

With the new sparkling sun they swooped and came

Like a cloud between the sun and street, and then

Like a cloud blown from the blue north were lost,

Vanishing and returning ever again,

Small cloud following cloud across the flame

That clear and meagre burned and burned away

And left the ice unmelting day by day.

... Nor could the sun through the roof's purple slate

(Though his gold magic played with shadow there

And drew the pigeons from the streaming air)

With any fiery magic penetrate.

Under the roof the air and water froze,

And no smoke from the gaping chimney rose.

The silver frost upon the window-pane

Flowered and branched each starving night anew,

And stranger, lovelier and crueller grew;

Pouring her silver that cold silver through,

The moon made all the dim flower bright again.

... Pouring her silver through that barren flower

Of silver frost, until it filled and whitened

A room where two small children waited, frightened

At the pale ghost of light that hour by hour

Stared at them till though fear slept not they slept.

And when that white ghost from the window crept,

And day came and they woke and saw all plain,

Though still the frost-flower blinded the window-pane,

And touched their mother and touched her hand in vain,

And wondered why she woke not when they woke;

And wondered what it was their sleep that broke

When hand in hand they stared and stared, so frightened;

They feared and waited, and waited all day long

While all the shadows went and the day brightened,

All the ill shadows but one shadow strong.

Outside were busy feet and human speech

And daily cries and horns. Maybe they heard,

Painfully wondering still, and each to each

Leaning, and listening if their mother stirred—

Cold, cold,

Hungering as the long slow hours grew old,

Though food within the cupboard idle lay

Beyond their thought, or but beyond their reach.

The soft blue pigeons all the afternoon

Sunned themselves on the roof or rose at play,

Then with the shrinking light fluttered away;

And once more came the icy hearted moon,

Staring down at the frightened children there

That could but shiver and stare.

... How many hours, how many days, who knows?

Neighbours there were who thought they had gone away

To return some luckier or luckless day.

No sound came from the room: the cold air froze

The very echo of the children's sighs.

And what they saw within each other's eyes,

Or heard each other's heart say as they peered

At the dead mother lying there, and feared

That she might wake, and then might never wake,

Who knows, who knows?

None heard a living sound their silence break.

In those cold days and nights how many birds

Flittering above the fields and streams all frozen

Watched hungrily the tended flocks and herds—

Earth's chosen nourished by earth's wise self-chosen!

How many birds suddenly stiffened and died

With no plaint cried,

The starved heart ceasing when the pale sun ceased!

And when the new day stepped from the same cold East

The dead birds lay in the light on the snow-flecked field,

Their song and beautiful free winging stilled.

I walked under snow-sprinkled hills at night,

And starry sprinkled, skies deep blue and bright.

The keen wind thrust with his knife against the thin

Breast of the wood as I went tingling by

And heard a weak cheep-cheep—no more—the cry

Of a bird that crouched the smitten wood within....

But no one heeded that sharp spiritual cry

Of the two children in their misery,

When in the cold and famished night death's shade

More terrible the moon's cold shadows made.

How was it none could hear

That bodiless crying, birdlike, sharp and clear?

I cannot think what they, unanswered, thought

When the night came again and shadows moved

As the moon through the ice-flower stared and roved,

And that unyielding Shadow came again.

That Shadow came again unseen and caught

The children as they sat listening in vain,

Their starved hearts failing ere the Shadow removed.

And when the new morn stepped from the same cold East

They lay unawakening in the barren light,

Their song and their imaginations bright,

Their pains and fears and all bewilderment ceased....

While the brief sun gave

New beauty to the death-flower of the frost,

And pigeons in the frore air swooped and tossed,

And glad eyes were more glad and grave less grave.

There is not pity enough in heaven or earth,

There is not love enough, if children die

Like famished birds—oh, less mercifully.

A great wrong's done when such as these go forth

Into the starless dark, broken and bruised,

With mind and sweet affection all confused,

And horror closing round them as they go.

There is not pity enough!

And I have made, children, these verses for you,

Lasting a little longer than your breath,

Because I have been haunted with your death;

So men are driven to things they hate to do.

Jesus, forgive us all our happiness,

As Thou dost blot out all our miseries.

AND THESE FOR YOU

I

NOT WITH THESE EYES

Let me not see your grief!

O, let not any see

That grief,

Nor how your heart still rocks

Like a temple with long earthquake shocks.

Let me not see

Your grief.

These eyes have seen such wrong,

Yet remained cold:

Ills grown strong,

Corruption's many-headed worm

Destroying feet that moved so firm—

Shall these eyes see

Your grief?

And that black worm has crawled

Into the brain

Where thought had walked

Nobly, and love and honour moved as one,

And brave things bravely were begun....

Now, can thought see

Unabashed your grief?

Into that brain your grief

Has run like cleansing fire:

Your grief

Through these unfaithful eyes has leapt

And touched honour where it lightly slept.

Now when I see

In memory your grief

There is no thought that's not

Yours, yours,

No love that sleeps,

No spiritual door that opens not

In the green quiet village of thought

Shining with light,

And silent to your silence.

II

ASKING FORGIVENESS

I did not say, "Yes, we had better part

Since love is over or must be suppressed."

I did not say, "I'll hold you in my heart

Saint-like, and in the thought of your thought rest,

And pray for you and wish you happiness

In a better love than mine."

I was another man to another woman,

Tears falling or burnt dry were nothing then.

I struck your heart, I struck your mind; inhuman,

Future and past I stabbed and stabbed again,

Cursing the very thought of your happiness

In another love than mine:

—Then left you sick to death, and I like death.

It was a broken body bore me away—

A broken mind—poisoned by my own breath,

And love self-poisoned.... Was it but yesterday?

—Forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive,

Forgive!

JUDGMENT DAY

When through our bodies our two spirits burn

Escaping, and no more our true eyes turn

Outwards, and no more hands to fond hands yearn;

Then over those poor grassy heaps we'll meet

One morning, tasting still the morning's sweet,

Sensible still of light, dark, rain, cold, heat;

And see 'neath the green dust that dust of gray

Which was our useless bodies laid away,

Mocked still with menace of a Judgment Day.

We then that waiting dust at last will call,

Each to the other's,—"Rise up at last, O small

Ashes that first-love held loveliest of all!

"'Tis Judgment Day, arise!" And they will arise,

The dust will lift, and spine, ribs, neck, head, knees

At the sound remember their old unities,

And stand there, yours with mine, as once they stood

Beloved, obeyed, despised, with that swift blood,

Those looks and trembling lips, heart's pause and thud.

"And was it these that love-galled thought pursued

And with his immortality indued,

Nor was by their mortality quite subdued?

"This was the bony hand that held my hand,

The shoulders whereon all my world might stand:

They fell, but in their fall was I unmanned?

"This was the breast my eyes delighted in,

The ribs were faint as now under the skin:

They mouldered, but not my love mouldered within.

"Away, away! This was not truly thee—

A mortal bravery, Time's delinquency,

A dream that held me from thee, thee from me.

"It was not in these bodies that we drew

Near, nearer: never, never by these we knew

Transfusion past all sense of 'I' and 'You.'

"It was youth's blindness held the body so dear:

Slowly, slowly, year after bewildered year,

The dark thinned and the eyes of love grew clear,

"And thought following thought, enlinking each,

Ran where the delighting body could not reach,

And had speech when there was no voice for speech;

"So that we scarce grieved when those bodies died,

And our eyes more than our true spirits cried;

But as when trees fall, the free wind that sighed

"Awhile in their fond branches ceases not,

But sings a moment over the cumbered spot,

Then flies away:—our unentangled thought,

"Our vivid spirits of love, unbroken moved

And lifted no more sense-confined, and roved

And knew till then we had not utterly loved ...

"Leave now this dust!"

And then the dust will sink,

The upheaved mound to its old shape will shrink,

And we shall turn again from Time's dusk brink.

Will it be thus? It will be thus. Even now,

Though body to body submissively still bow,

'Tis not on body's blood that our loves grow.

Though I am old and you are old, though nerves

Slacken, and beauty slowly lose its curves,

And greedy Time the bone and sinew starves,

Like some lean Captain gloating over a town

That has not fallen, but will fall, every stone

O'erthrust and every bravery overthrown;

Who entering the defeated walls at last

Finds emptiness, and hears an escaping blast,

Triumphant from the shining east hills cast,

And knows defeat in victory.... O that rare

Music is ours, is ours—prelusive air

Caught from the Judgment music high and severe.

Will it indeed be thus? Yes, thus! The body burns,

Not with desire, and into pale smoke turns,

And there is only flame towards flame that yearns.

While that ill lecherous Time among the stones

Sits musing and rocking his old brittle bones,

Irked by long shadows, mocked by those bright far tones.

LIGHTING THE FIRE

You were a gipsy as you bent

Your dark hair over the black grate.

Hardly the west light above the hill

Showed your shadow, crooked and still.

The bellows hissed, and one bright spark

Deepened the hasty dark.

The bellows hissed, and the old smell

Crept on the air of smoking peat,

And round the spark a bubbling flame

Grew bright and loud. Sweeping the gloom

Lunatic shadows fled and came

Whirling about the room.

Then as you raised your head I saw

In the clear light of the bubbling fire

Your dark hair all lined with the gray

Sprinkled by years and sorrow and pain ...

Till as the bellows idle lay

Shadow swept back again.

RECOVERY

Where are you going with eyes so dull,

You whose eyes were beautiful,

You whose hair with the light was gay,

And now is thin and harsh and gray?

Is it age alone or age and tears

That has slowly rubbed your beauty away?

Where were you going when your swift eyes

Were like merry birds under May skies?—

In your cheeks the colours fluttering brave

As you danced with the wind and ran with the wave.

From what bright star was your brightness caught?

What to your music the music gave?

Now is your beauty a thing of old,

The fire is sunken, the ashes cold.

But if sweet singing on your ear stray,

Or the praise is uttered of yesterday,

Or of courage and nobleness one word said—

Like a cloud Time's ravage is brushed away.

EYES

A winter sky of pale blue and pale gold,

Bare trees, a wind that made the wood-path cold,

And one slow-moving figure, gray and old.

We met where the soft path falls from the wood

Down to the village. As I came near she stood

And answered when I spoke, drawing the hood

Back from her face. I saw only her eyes,

Large and sad. I could not bear those eyes.

They were like new graves. I could not bear her eyes.

But what we said as each passed on is gone.

We looked and spoke and passed like strangers on,

I to the high wood, she towards the paling sun.

And there, where the clear-heavened small pool lies,

And the tallest beeches brush the bending skies,

In pool and tree I saw again her eyes.

FULFILMENT

Happy are they whom men and women love,

And you were happy as a river that flows

Down between lonely hills, and knows

The pang and virtue of that loneliness,

And moves unresting on until it move

Under the trees that stoop at the low brink

And deepen their cool shade, and drink

And sing and hush and sing again,

Breathing their music's many-toned caress;

While the river with his high clear music speaks

Sometimes of loneliness, of hills obscure,

Sometimes of sunlight dancing on the plain,

Or of the night of stars unbared and deep

Multiplied in his depths unbared and pure;

Sometimes of winds that from the unknown sea creep,

Sometimes of morning when most clear it breaks

Spilling its brightness on his breast like rain:—

And then flows on in loneliness again

Towards the unknown near sea.

Was it in mere happiness or pain?

There were things said that spoke of naked pain,

With nothing between the wound and the sharp-edged world;

Things seen that told of such perplexity

As darkened night with night: but was that pain?

And there were things created all delight,

Making delight fruitful a hundred fold:

Sweetness of earth, energy of sun and rain,

Colour and shape, flowers and grasses bright,

And the clear firm body of a bare lovely hill,

And woods around its feet fast caught and curled,

And the cold sweets of lonely travelled night....

And was that happiness?—or something more,

That gathered happiness and pain like flowers

Half perished, and let them perish; and brightened still

In those dark mental journeys of cold hours

That found you what you were and left you stronger,

Shutting a door and opening a door?...

O door that you have passed so quickly through,

Ere we well knew what man you were, nor knew

What you had shown in life but a little longer!

It was not pain nor happiness for you,

Not any named delight or pang of sense,

But swift fulfilment past all sense or thought

Of what you were with all that time could make you;

No separate gift, spiritual influence,

But something wrought

From your own heart, with all that life could make you.

BRING YOUR BEAUTY

Bring your beauty, bring your laughter, bring even your fears,

Bring the grief that is, the joy that was in other years,

Bring again the happiness, bring love, bring tears.

There was laughter once, there were grave, happy eyes,

Talk of firm earth, old earth-sweeping mysteries:

There were great silences under clear dark skies.

Now is silence, now is loneliness complete; all is done.

The thrush sings at dawn, too sweet, up creeps the sun:

But all is silent, silent, for all that was is done.

Yet bring beauty and bring laughter, and bring even tears,

And cast them down; strew your happiness and fears,

Then leave them to the darkness of thought and years.

Fears in that darkness die; they have no spring.

Grief in that darkness is a bird that wants wing....

O love, love, your brightness, your beauty bring.

MEMORIAL

The wild October sky

Rises not so high,

The tree's roots that creep

Into the earth's body thrust not so deep

As our high and dark thought.

Yet thought need not roam

Far off to bring you home.

The sky is our wild mind,

Your roots are round our spirits twined,

To ours are your hearts caught.

O, never buried dead!

The living brain in the head

Is not so quick as you

Burning our conscious darkness through

With brightness past our thought.

THE HUMAN MUSIC

At evening when the aspens rustled soft

And the last blackbird by the hedge-nest laughed,

And through the leaves the moon's unmeaning face

Looked, and then rose in dark-blue leafless space;

Watching the trees and moon she could not bear

The silence and the presence everywhere.

The blackbird called the silence and it came

Closing and closing round like smoke round flame.

Into her heart it crept and the heart was numb,

Even wishes died, and all but fear was dumb—

Fear and its phantoms. Then the trees were enlarged,

And from their roundness unguessed shapes emerged,

Or no shape but the image of her fear

Creeping forth from her mind and hovering near.

If a bat flitted it was an evil thing;

Sadder the trees grew with every shadowy wing—

Their shape enlarged, their arms quivered, their thought

Stirring in the leaves a silent anguish wrought.

"What are they thinking of, the evil trees,

Nod-nodding, standing in malignant ease?

Something against man's mortal heart was sworn

Once, when their dark Powers were conceived and born;

And in such fading or such lightless hours

The world is delivered to these plotting Powers."

No physical swift blow she dreaded, not

Lightning's quick mercy; but her heart grew hot

And cold and hot with uncomprehended sense

Of an assassin spiritual influence

Moving in the unmoving trees....

Till, as she stared,

Her eyes turned cowards at last, and no more dared.

Yet could she never rise and shut the door:

Perhaps those Powers would batter at the door,

And that were madness. So right through the house

She set the doors all wide when she could arouse

The body's energy to serve the mind.

Then the air would move, and any little wind

Would cleanse awhile the darkness and diminish

Her fear, and the dumb shadow-war would finish.

But it was not the trees, the birds, the moon;

Birds cease, months fly, green seasons wither soon:

Nature was constant all the seasons through,

Sinister, watchful, and a thick cloud drew

Over the mind when its simplicity

Challenged what seemed with thought of what must be....

She wondered, seeing how a child could play

Lightly in a shady field all day:

For in that golden, brief, benignant weather

When spring and summer calling run together

And the sun's fresh and hot, she saw deep guile

In the sweetness of that unconditioned smile.

Sweetness not sweetness was but indifference

Or wantonness disguised, to her grave sense;

And if she could have seen the things she felt

She'd looked for darkness, and lit shapes that knelt

Appealing, unregarded, at a high

Altar uprising from the pit to the sky....

Had the trees consciousness, with flowers and clouds

And winds that hung like thin clouds in the woods,

And stars and silence:—had they each a mind

Bending on hers, clear eyes on her eyes blind?

In the green dense heights—elm, oak, ash, yew or beech

She scarce saw—was there not a brain in each,

An undiscovered centre of quick nerves

By which (like man) the tree lives, masters, serves,

Waxes and wanes? Oppressed her mind would shrink

From thought, and into her trembling body sink.

Something of this had childhood taught her when

Sickly she lay and peered again and again

At gray skies and white skies and void bright blue,

And watched the sun the bare town-tree boughs through,

And then through leafy boughs and once more bare.

Or in the west country's heavy hill-drawn air

Had felt the green grass pushing within her veins,

Tangling and strangling: and the warm spring rains

Tapping all night upon her childish head:

She shivered, lying lonely on her bed,

With all that life all round and she so weak,

Longing to speak—yet what was there to speak?

And as she grew and health came and love came

And life was happier, happier, still the same

Inhuman spirit rose whenever she

Held in her thoughts more than her eyes could see.

Behind the happiest hours the dark cloud hung

Distant or nearing, and its dullness flung

On the south meadows of her thought, the fairest

Shrinking in shadow; aspirations rarest

Falling, like shot birds in a reedy fen,

Slain by the old Enemy of men.

Life ebbed while men strove for the means of life;

The grudging earth turned labour into strife.

The moving hosts within the heavy clod

Seemed infinite in malice; frost and flood,

Season and inter-season, were conspired

In smiling or sour mockery; and untired

And undelighted, man scratched and scratched on,

And what he did, by Nature was undone.

She saw men twisted more than rocks or trees,

Bruised, numbed, by age and labour and the disease

Of labour in the cold fields; women worn

By many child-bearings, and their self-scorn

Because of time and their lost woman's powers.

Bitter was Nature to women; for those hours

Of the spirit's and the body's first delight

Passed soon, and the long day, evening, night

Of life uncherished; bitterest when even

That brief hour was denied, of dancing heaven,

Dewy love, and fulfilled desires.

But age

Of all ills made her pity and anger rage.

To see and smell the calm months bud and bloom,

April's first warmth, June's hues and slow perfume,

The sweetness drifting by in those long hours

While, out of her she nursed, the vital powers

Were pressed by pain and pressed by pain renewed,

Till, closing the life-long vicissitude,

Came starving death with full-heaped summer, and

Wrung the last pangs that spirit could withstand ...

Or to see age in its prison slowly freeze

With impotence more disastrous than disease,

While trees flowered on, or all the winter through

Upheld brave arms and with spring flowered anew

Above those living graves and graves of the dead;—

'Twas all such bitterness, but she nothing said.

She saw men as courageous boats that sailed

On all the seas, and some a far port hailed

Perhaps to sail again, or anchor there

Forever; some would quietly disappear

In stormless waters, and some in storms be broken

And all be hidden and no clear meaning spoken,

Nor any trace upon the waters linger.

Where the boat went the wind with hasty finger,

Savage and sly as aught of land could be,

Erased the little wrinkling of the sea.

O, in such enmity was man enisled,

Such loneliness, by foolish shades beguiled,

That it was bravery to see and live,

But cowardice to see and to forgive,

The wrong of evil, the wrong of death to life,

The defeat of innocence, the waste of strife,—

The heavy ills of time, injustice, pain—

In field and forest and flood rose huge and plain,

Brushing her mind with darkness, till she thought

Not with her brain, but all her nerves were wrought

Into an apprehension burning strong,

Unslackening, of mortality's old wrong.

But if her eyes she raised to those clear lonely

Altitudes of stars and ether only,

Her eyes fell and rebuked her as forbidden

With human mind to question what was hidden.

At summer dusk the broad moon rising high

Put gentleness in the vast strength of the sky,

Easing its weight; or the hot summer sun

Made noonday kind, and the hours lightly run.

But in those blazing midnights of the stars

Gathered and brightening for immortal wars

With spears and darts and arrows of sharp light,

She read the indifference of the infinite,

The high strife flashing through eternity

While on the earth stared mortals but as she.

O 'twas a living world that rose around

And in her sentience burned a hollow wound.

Such easy brightness as the poets see,

Or easy gloom, or hues of faerie,

She never saw, but into her own heart peered

To find what spirit indeed it was she feared:—

Whether in antique days a divine foe

Sprung branchlike from dense woods had wrought her woe;

Whether in antique days a pagan rite

(Herself a pagan still) unfilmed her sight

And taught her secrets never to be forgot,

And by man's generation pardoned not....

The same blood in ancestral veins ran fleet

As now made hers a road for pain's quick feet.

Into the marrow of her hidden life

Had poured the agony of their termless strife

With immaterial and material things;

And as a bird an unlearned music sings

Because a million generations sang,

So in her breast the old alarum rang,

So the old sorrowfulness in her thought

Renewed, and apprehensions all untaught;

As if indeed a creature primitive

Still did she in the world's dim morning live,

That wanted human warmth and gentleness

To make its solitude a little less.

Kindness gave solitude the lovely light

She loved, and made less terrible black midnight.

Even as a bird its unlearned music pours

Though windows all be blind and shut the doors,

And sings on still though no faint sound be heard

But wind and leaves and another lonely bird:

So poured she untaught kindness all around

And in that human music comfort found—

Music her own and music heard from others,

Prime music of all lovers, children, mothers,

Precarious music between all men sounding,

The horror of silent and dark Powers confounding.

Singing that music she could bravely live;

Hearing it, find less sorrow to forgive.

THE CANDLE

Time like a cloud

Has risen from the East

And whelmed the sky over

Even to the wide-arched West,

Darkening the blue,

Embrowning the early gold,

Until no more the eternal Sun

Looks simply through.

In each man's eyes

The cloud is set,

With but the chill light

Of silver January skies.

On each man's heart

Time's firm shadow falls,

And the mind throws but a candle's beam

On the dark walls.

But on those walls

Man paints his dream

Rejoicing purely

In the faithful candle's beam:

Lives by its beauty,

Pictures his heart's delight,

And with that only beam outbraves

Time's gathering night.

O spiritual flame,

Calm, faithful, bright!

Time may whelm over

All but this candle's light:

Shadow but shadow is;

Dark though it lies

'Tis blazon'd with man's long-dreamed dreams,

Pierced by his eyes.

OLD FIRES

The fire burns low

Where it has burned ages ago,

Sinks and sighs

As it has done to a hundred eyes

Staring, staring

At the last cold smokeless glow.

Here men sat

Lonely and watched the golden grate

Turn at length black;

Heard the cooling iron crack:

Shadows, shadows,

Watching the shadows come and go.

And still the hiss

I hear, the soft fire's sob and kiss,

And still it burns

And the bright gold to crimson turns,

Sinking, sinking,

And the fire shadows larger grow.

O dark-cheeked fire,

Wasting like spent heart's desire,

You that were gold,

And now crimson will soon be cold—

Cold, cold,

Like moon-shadows on new snow.

Shadows all,

They that watched your shadows fall.

But now they come

Rising around me, grave and dumb....

Shadows, shadows,

Come as the fire-shadows go.

And stay, stay,

Though all the fire sink cold as clay,

Whispering still,

Ancestral wise Familiars—till,

Staring, staring,

Dawn's wild fires through the casement glow.

THE CROWNS

Cherry and pear are white,

Their snows lie sprinkled on the land like light

On darkness shed.

Far off and near

The orchards toss their crowns of delight,

And the sun casts down

Another shining crown.

The wind tears and throws down

Petal by petal the crown

Of cherry and pear till the earth is white,

And all the brightness is shed

In the orchards far off and near,

That tossed by the road and under the green hill;

And the wind is fled.

Far, far off the wind

Has shaken down

A brightness that was as the brightness of cherry or pear

When the orchards shine in the sun.

—Oh there is no more fairness

Since this rareness,

The radiant blossom of English earth—is dead!

THE BRIGHT RIDER

All the night through I drank

Sleep like water or cool cider;

Life flowed over and I sank

Down below the night of clouds....

Then on a pale horse was rider

Through long brushing woods

Where the owl in silence broods,

Quavers, and is quiet again;

Where the grass dark and rank

Breathes on the still air its rain.

Rain and dark and green and sound

Closing slowly round

Swept me as I rode,

And rode on until I came

Where a white cold river flowed

Under woods thin and bare

In the moon's long candle flame.

Through the woods the wind crawled

Leviathan, and here and there

Branches creaked and old winds howled

Sick for home.

All the night I saw the river,

As a girl that sees beside her

Love, between fear and fear

Riding, and is dumb.

The white horse turned to cross the river,

But the waters like a wall

Rose and hung dark over all;

And as they fell the river wider

Wider grew, and sky was bare

Save of the sick candle's stare.

Death the divider

Glittered cold and dark and deep

Under banks of fear.

But that rider

Trembling, bright, rode on,

Trembling and bright rode on

Through green lanes of sleep.

TO THE HEAVENLY POWER

When this burning flesh

Burns down in Time's slow fire to a glowing ash;

When these lips have uttered

The last word, and the ears' last echoes fluttered;

And crumbled these firm bones

As in the chemic air soft blackened stones;

When all that was mortal made

Owns its mortality, proud yet afraid;

Then when I stumble in

The broad light, from this twilight weak and thin,

What of me will change,

What of that brightness will be new and strange?

Shall I indeed endure

New solitude in that high air and pure,

Aching for these fingers

On which my assurèd hand now shuts and lingers?

Now when I look back

On manhood's and on childhood's far-stretched track,

I see but a little child

In a green sunny world-home; there enisled

By another, cloudy world

Of unsailed waters all around him curled,

And he at home content

With the small sky of wonders over him bent:—

Lonely, yet not alone

Since all was friendly being all unknown;

To-day yesterday forgetting,

And never with to-morrow's sorrow fretting;

Not seeing good from ill

Since but to breathe and run and sleep was well;

Asking nor fearing nought

Since the body's nerves and veins held all his thought....

Such a child again shall I

Stray in some valley of infinity,

Where infinite finite seems

And nothing more immortal than my dreams?

Where earthly seasons play

Still with their snows and blossoms and night and day,

And no unsetting sun

Brightens the white cloud and awakes the moon?

In such half-life's half-light

To cloak with mortal an immortal sight?

With uninformed desire,

Shorn passion, gentle mind, contented fire,

Ignorant love; to run

But with the little journeys of the sun,

And at evening sleep

With birds and beasts, and stars rocked in the deep?

But maybe this man's mind

Will leave not its maturity behind,

And nothing will forget

Of all that teased or eased it here, while yet

A mortal dress it wore;

And these quick-darting thoughts and probings sore

More sharply then will turn;

And lonelier and yet hungrier the heart burn.

O, I would not forget

Earth is too rich, too dark, too sour, too sweet:—

Nor be divorcèd quite

From the late tingling of the nerves' delight.

Less I would never be

Than the deep-graving years have made of me—

A memory, pulse, mind,

Seed and harvest, a reaper and sower blind.

I shall no more be I

If I forget the world's joy and agony;

If I forget how strong

Is the assault of scarce-rebukèd wrong.

I shall no more be I

If my ears hear not earth's embittered cry

Perpetual; and forget

The unrighteous shackles on man's ankle set;

If no more my heart beat

Quicker because on earth is something sweet;

I shall no more be I

If the ancestral voices no more sigh

Familiar in my brain,

And leave me to cold silence and its pain,

And the bewildered stare

On an unhomely land in biting air:

If the blood no more vex

The heart with the importunities of sex,

If indeed marriage bind

No more body to body, mind to mind,

And love be powerless, cold,

That once by love's strength only was controlled,

And that chief spiritual force

Be dam'd back and stretch frozen to its source....

To the Heavenly Power I cry,

Foiled by these dreams of immortality,

"Let all be as Thou wilt,

And the foundations in Thy dark mind built;

Even infinity

Be but imagination's dream of Thee;

And let thought still, still

Vainly its waves on night's cliff break and spill.

"But, Heavenly Power," I'd cry,

Knowing how, near or far, He still is nigh,

"When this burning flesh

Is burnt away to a little driven ash,

What thing soever shall rise

From that cold ash unseen to unseen skies,

Grant that so much of me

Shall rise as may remember Thy world, and Thee."

SNOWS

Now the long-bearded chilly-fingered winter

Over the green fields sweeps his cloak and leaves

Its whiteness there. It caught on the wild trees,

Shook whiteness on the hedges and left bare

South-sloping corners and south-fronting smooth

Barks of tall beeches swaying 'neath their whiteness

So gently that the whiteness does not fall.

The ash copse shows all white between gray poles,

The oaks spread arms to catch the wandering snow.

But the yews—I wondered to see their dark all white,

To see the soft flakes fallen on those grave deeps,

Lying there, not burnt up by the yews' slow fire.

Could Time so whiten all the trembling senses,

The youth, the fairness, the all-challenging strength,

And load even Love's grave deeps with his barren snows?

Even so. And what remains?

The hills of thought

That shape Time's snows and melt them and lift up

Green and unchanging to the wandering stars.

THE THORN

The days of these two years like busy ants

Have gone, confused and happy and distressed,

Rich, yet sad with aching wants,

Crowded, yet lonely and unblessed.

I stare back as they vanish in a swarm,

Seeming how purposeless, how mean and vain,

Till creeping joy and brief alarm

Are gone and prick me not again.

The days are gone, yet still this heart of fire

Smouldering, smoulders on with ancient love;

And the red embers of desire

I would not, oh, nor dare remove!

Where is the bosom my head rested on,

The arms that caught my boy's head, the soft kiss?

Where is the light of your eyes gone?—

For now I know what darkness is....

It is the loneliness, the loneliness,

Since she that brought me here has left me here

With the sharp need of her to press

Sudden upon the nerve of fear;

It is the loneliness that wounds me still,

Shut from the generations that are past,

That with their blood my warm veins fill

And on my spirit their spirit cast;

That haunt me so and yet how strangely keep

Beyond communion, alone, alone,

Like that huge ancient hill asleep,

With to-day's noisy winds o'erblown.

There from the hill is sprung a single thorn,

Wind-twisted, straining from the earth to the skies,

Thin branches pleading with wild morn

And root that pressed in darkness lies.

From the unknown of earth and heaven are brought

Her strength, her weakness, death and bravest life;

Shadow and light and wind have wrought

Beauty from change, calm out of strife.

That tree upon the unchanging hill am I,

Alone upon the dark unwhispering hill:—

You in the stirless cold past lie,

But I ache warm and lonely still.

There's not a storm tossing among my boughs,

Nor gentle air drawn under quiet skies,

There's not an idle cloud that flows

Across the mind, nor bird that cries,

But says (if I have eyes, or ears to hear),

"You in this mortal being are alone."

And morn and noon and night-stars clear

Repeat, "Alone, alone, alone."

Yet the tree in wild storm her dark boughs shakes,

Thrusting her roots in the earth, her arms to heaven,

Fresh washed with dew when morning breaks;

And new light back to the light is given.

Is it that I that loved have yet forgot?

Is it that I that looked have yet been blind?

Longing, have yet remembered not

Nor heard you whispering in my mind?

But at a word you are nearer now than when

We sat and spoke, or merely looked and thought,

Knowing all speech superfluous then,

Since what we needed, silence brought;—

And your warm bosom my head rested on,

The arms that caught my boy's head, the soft kiss,

The brown grave eyes that gently shone—

Are here again, and brightness is.

Two years have gone, but nearer now are you,

Being dearer now; and this false loneliness

Is but a dream that cloudlike grew,

Then growing cloudlike less and less

Passes away, leaving me like the tree

Bright with the sun and wind and lingering dew;

Homely is all the world for me

Being sweeter with the sense of you.

CHANGE

Just as this wood, cast on the snaky fire,

Crushes the curling heads till smoke is thickened

And the ash sinks beneath the billet's weight,

And then again the hissing heads are quickened:

Just as this wood, by fretful fangs new stung,

Glows angrily, then whitens in the grate

And slowly smouldering smoulders away,

And dies defeated every famished tongue

And nothing's left but a memory of heat

And the sunk crimson telling warmth was sweet:

Just as this wood, once green with Spring's swift fire

Dies to a pinch of ashes cold and gray....

Just as this wood——

BEYOND THE BARN

I rose up with the sun

And climbed the hill.

I saw the white mists run

And shadows run

Down into hollow woods.

I went with the white clouds

That swept the hill.

A wind struck the low hedge trees

And clustering trees,

And rocked in each tall elm.

The long afternoon was calm

When down the hill

I came, and felt the air cool,

The shadows cool;

And I walked on footsore,

Saying, "But two hours more,

Then, the last hill....

Surely this road I know,

These hills I know,

All the unknown is known,

"And that barn, black and lone,

High on the hill—

There the long road ends,

The long day ends,

And travelling is over." ...

Nor thought nor travelling's over.

Here on the hill

The black barn is a shivering ruin,

A windy cold ruin.

I must go on and on,

Where often my thought has gone,

Up hill, down hill,

Beyond this ruin of Time;

Forgetting Time

I must follow my thought still.

LET HONOUR SPEAK

Let Honour speak, for only Honour can

End nobly what in nobleness began.

Nor hate nor anger may, though just their cause,

This strife prolong, if Honour whisper, Pause!

Let Honour speak.

For Honour keeps the ashes of the dead,

Accounts the anguish of all widowhead,

All childlessness, all sacrifice, defeat,

And all our dead have died for, though to live was sweet.

Let Honour speak,

Nor weariness nor weakness murmur, Stay!

Nor for this Now England's To be betray.

All else be dumb, for only Honour can

End nobly what in nobleness began.

TALK

So many were there talking that I heard

Nothing at first quite plain, as I sat down;

Until from this man's gibe and that keen word,

Another's chilly smile or peevish frown,

I caught their talk—but added none of mine.

They said how she still fumbled with her fate,

How she had banished visitants divine,

How long her sleep had been, her sloth how great,

How others had drawn near and passed her by,

While she luxuriously had dreamed, dreamed on,

She, she her own eternal enemy,

And wanting brain, brain, brain would be undone.

The glasses tinkled as they talked and laughed,

And if the door a moment hung ajar

The noises of the street, remotely soft,

Crept in as from a world sunken afar.

And still they talked, and then well pleased were pleased

To talk of other things—another's wife,

Money that ministers to a mind diseased,

And queer extravagant whims of death and life....

But I rose up, flushed at the careless slander,

Heedless what other laughing things were said,

And my bruised thoughts began to lift and wander

Far off, as from that jargoning I fled.

I saw the sharp green hills, the silver clouds

At rest upon the hills, the silver streams

Creeping between prone shoulders of dark woods.

I saw wide marshlands laved with level beams

Of the last light; I saw ships on the sea

That foamed hard by, stinging the fretful shore;

I smelt old ships on the deserted quay

That English sailors sailed, and will no more;

I thought of men I loved, and of dead men

I had longed to know—and each heroic ghost

Rose and moved on, and left me alone again

Aching for love and splendour glimpsed and lost.

God knows what things I thought when anger broke

Her narrow dam and swept my spirit clean.

Yet I for very shame not a word spoke,

But to my heart's heart caught the things I had seen,

And England, England! murmuring, stood and stared,

Swept like a lover with sweet influence

In brain and bone—and happy that I had spared

Her nobleness the indignity of defence.

THE UNDYING

In thin clear light unshadowed shapes go by

Small on green fields beneath the hueless sky.

They do not stay for question, do not hear

Any old human speech: their tongue and ear

Seem only thought, for when I spoke they stirred not

And their bright minds conversing my ear heard not.

—Until I slept or, musing, on a heap

Of warm crisp fern lay between sense and sleep

Drowsy, still clinging to a strand of thought

Spider-like frail and all unconscious wrought.

For thinking of that unforgettable thing,

The war, that spreads a loud and shaggy wing

On things most peaceful, simple, happy and bright,

Until the spirit is blind though the eye is light;

Thinking of all that evil, envy, hate,

The cruelty most dark, most desolate;

Thinking of the English dead—"How can you dead,"

I muttered, "with your life and young joy shed,

How can you but in these new lands of life

Relume the fiery passion of old strife—

Just anger, mortal hate, the natural scorn

Of men true-born for all things foully born?"

For I had thought that not death's touch could still

In man's clean spirit the hate of good for ill.

But now to see their shapes go lightly by

On those vast fields, clear 'neath the hueless sky,

With not one furious gesture, and (when seen

With but the broad dark hedgerow space between)

No eye's disdain, no thin drawn face of grief,

But pondering calm or lightened look and brief

Smile almost gay;—yet all seen in the air

That driv'n mist makes unreal everywhere—

"So strange," I breathed, "How can you English dead

Forget them for whose life your life was shed?"

It was no voice that answered, yet plain word

Less plain is than the unspoken that I heard,

As I lay there on the dry heap of fern

And watched them pass, mix, disappear and return,

And felt their mute speech into empty senses burn:

"Earth's is the strife. The Heavenly Powers that sent

The gray globe spinning in the firmament,

The Heavenly Powers that soon or late will stay

The spinning, as a child that tires of play,

And globe by spent globe put forgot away

In some vast airless hollow: could they see

Or seeing endure immortal misery

Made out of mortal, and undying hate

Earth's perishing agonies perpetuate?

O spirits unhappy, if from earth men brought

The mind's disease, the sickness of mad thought!

Sooner the Heavenly Powers would let them lie

Eternally unrising 'neath a sky

Arctic and lonely, where death's starven wind

Raged full-delighted:—sooner would those kind

Serenities man's generation cast

Back into nothingness, than heaven should waste

With finite anguish infinitely prolonged

Until the Eternal Spring were stained and wronged.

O, even the Heavenly Powers at such a breath

From mortal shores would fade and fade to death."

—Was it a voice or but a thought I heard,

Mine or another's, in my boughs that stirred

Waking the leafy darkness of the mind?

Was it a voice, or but a new-roused wind

That answered—"O, I know, I know, I know!

The oldest rivers into the full sea flow

And there are lost: so everything is lost,

On midnight waves into oblivion tost.

Yet—the high passion, the pity, the joy and pride,

The righteousness for which these men have died,

The courage, the uncounted sacrifice,

The love and beauty, all that's beyond all price;

That this, the immortal heart of mortal man,

Should be—O tell me what, tell me again, again—

Petals lost on the river of the years

When April sweetness pauses, fades and disappears!

That this high Quarrel should be quenched in death

As some vexed petty plaint unworthy breath;

That the blood and the tears should never rise

Renewed, accusing in grave judgment skies ...

Tell me again—O, rather tell me not

Lest that ill telling never be forgot."

And then I rose from that warm ferny heap

And my thoughts climbed from the abyss of sleep.

No more in human guise did cloud-shapes pass,

Nor sighed with sad intelligence the grass.

I saw the hueless sky break into blue,

And I remembered how that heaven I knew

When, a small child, I gazed at the great height,

And thought of nothing but the blue and white,

Pools of sweet blue swimming in fields of light.

And as tired men from mine and stithy turn

While still the midnight fires unslackened burn

Flushing their road, and so reach home and then

Dream of old childhood's days and dream again;

So I forgot those inward fires and found

Old happiness like dew lying all around.

Under the hedge I stood and far below

Saw on the Worcester Plain the swift clouds flow

Like ships on seas no greener than the Plain

That shone between October sun and rain;

And thinking how time's plenteousness would bring

Back and more bright the young delicious Spring,

Between wet brambles thrust my hand, and tasted

Ripe berries on neglected boughs that wasted.

THE NATIVE COUNTRY

Where is that country? The unresting mind

Like a lapwing nears and leaves it and returns.

I know those unknown hill-springs where they rise,

I know the answer of the elms to the wind

When the wind on their heaving bosom lies

And sleeps. I know the grouping pines that crown

The long green hill and fling their darkness down,

A never-dying shadow; and well I know

How in the late months the whole wide woodland burns

Unsmoking, and the earth hangs still as still.

I know the town, the hamlets and the lone

Shelterless cottage where the wind's least tone

Is magnified, and his far-flung thundering shout

Brings near the incredible end of the world. I know!

Even in sleep-walk I should linger about

Those lanes, those streets sure-footed, and by the unfenced stream go,

Hearing the swift waters past the locked mill flow.

Where is that country? It lies in my mind,

Its trees and grassy shape and white-gashed hill

And springs and wind and weather; its village stone

And solitary stone are in my mind;

And every thought familiarly returns

To find its home, and birdlike circling still

Above the smouldering beeches of November

And the bare elms and rattled hedgerows of December.

That native country lies deep in my mind

For every thought and true affection's home.

And like that mental land are you become,

Part of that land, and I the thought that turns

Towards home. And as in that familiar land I find

Myself among each tree, spring, road and hill,

And at each present step my past footsteps remember;

So you in all my inward being lies,

In you my history, my earth and stream and skies.

Your late fire is it that in my boughs yet burns,

Your stone that to my passing footfall cries.

PART III

STONE TREES

Last night a sword-light in the sky

Flashed a swift terror on the dark.

In that sharp light the fields did lie

Naked and stone-like; each tree stood

Like a tranced woman, bound and stark.

Far off the wood

With darkness ridged the riven dark.

And cows astonished stared with fear,

And sheep crept to the knees of cows,

And conies to their burrows slid,

And rooks were still in rigid boughs,

And all things else were still or hid.

From all the wood

Came but the owl's hoot, ghostly, clear.

In that cold trance the earth was held

It seemed an age, or time was nought.

Sure never from that stone-like field

Sprang golden corn, nor from those chill

Gray granite trees was music wrought.

In all the wood

Even the tall poplar hung stone still.

It seemed an age, or time was none ...

Slowly the earth heaved out of sleep

And shivered, and the trees of stone

Bent and sighed in the gusty wind,

And rain swept as birds flocking sweep.

Far off the wood

Rolled the slow thunders on the wind.

From all the wood came no brave bird,

No song broke through the close-fall'n night,

Nor any sound from cowering herd:

Only a dog's long lonely howl

When from the window poured pale light.

And from the wood

The hoot came ghostly of the owl.

IT WAS THE LOVELY MOON

It was the lovely moon—she lifted

Slowly her white brow among

Bronze cloud-waves that ebbed and drifted

Faintly, faintlier afar.

Calm she looked, yet pale with wonder,

Sweet in unwonted thoughtfulness,

Watching the earth that dwindled under

Faintly, faintlier afar.

It was the lovely moon that lovelike

Hovered over the wandering, tired

Earth, her bosom gray and dovelike,

Hovering beautiful as a dove....

The lovely moon:—her soft light falling

Lightly on roof and poplar and pine—

Tree to tree whispering and calling,

Wonderful in the silvery shine

Of the round, lovely, thoughtful moon.

THE HOUNDS

Far off a lonely hound

Telling his loneliness all round

To the dark woods, dark hills, and darker sea;

And, answering, the sound

Of that yet lonelier sea-hound

Telling his loneliness to the solitary stars.

Hearing, the kennelled hound

Some neighbourhood and comfort found,

And slept beneath the comfortless high stars.

But that wild sea-hound

Unkennelled, called all night all round—

The unneighboured and uncomforted cold sea.

HECTOR

Sleep, sleep, you great and dim trees, sleeping on

The still warm, tender cheek of night,

And with her cloudy hair

Brushed: sleep, for the violent wind is gone;

Only remains soft easeful light,

And shadow everywhere,

And few pale stars. Hardly has eve begun

Dreaming of day renewed and bright

With beams than day's more fair;

Scarce the full circle of the day is run,

Nor the yellow moon to her full height

Risen through the misty air.

But from the increasing shadowiness is spun

A shadowy shape growing clear to sight,

And fading. Was it Hector there,

Great-helmed, severe?—and as the last sun shone

Seeming in solemn splendour dight

Such as dream heroes bear;

And such his shape as heroes stare upon

In sleep's tumultuary fight

When a cry's heard, "Beware!" ...

—'Twas Hector, but the moment-splendour's gone:

Shadow fast deepens into night,

Night spreads—cold, wide, bare.

LISTENING

There is a place of grass

With daisies like white pools,

Or shining islands in a sea

Of brightening waves.

Swallows, darting, brush

The waves of gentle green,

As though a wide still lake it were,

Not living grass.

Evening draws over all,

Grass and flowers and sky,

And one rich bird prolongs the sweet

Of day on the edge of dark.

The grass is dim, the stars

Lean down the height of heaven;

And the trees, listening in all their leaves,

Scarce-breathing stand.

Nothing is as it was:

The bird on the bough sings on;

The night, pure from the cloud of day,

Is listening.

STONES

Small yellow stones

That, lifted, through my idle fingers fall

Leaving a score—

And these I toss between the parted lips

Of the lapping sea,

And the sea tosses again with millions more—

Yellow and white stones;

Then drawing back her snaky long waves all,

Leaves the stones

Yellow and white upon the sandy shore....

As they were bones

Yellow and white left on the silent shore

Of an unfoaming far unvisioned Sea.

THE ENEMIES

The angry wind

That cursed at me

Was nothing but an evil sprite

Vexed with any man's delight.

And strange it seemed

That a dark wind

Should run down from a mountain steep

And shout as though the world were asleep.

But when he ceased

And silence was—

Who could but fear what evil sprite

Crept through the tunnels of the night?

THE SILVERY ONE

Clear from the deep sky pours the moon

Her silver on the heavy dark;

The small stars blink.

Against the moon the maple bough

Flutters distinct her leafy spears;

All sound falls weak....

Weak the train's whistle, the dog's bark,

Slow steps; and rustling into her nest

At last, the thrush.

All's still; only earth turns and breathes.

Then that amazing trembling note

Cleaves the deep wave

Of silence. Shivers even that silvery one;

Sigh all the trees, even the cedar dark

----O joy, and I.

THE FLUTE

It was a night of smell and dew

When very old things seemed how new;

When speech was softest in the still

Air that loitered down the hill;

When the lime's sweetness could but creep

Like music to slow ears of sleep;

When far below the lapping sea

Lisped but of tired tranquillity....

No, 'twas a night that seemed almost

Of real night the little ghost,

As though a painter painted it

Out of the shallows of his wit—

The easy air, the whispered trees,

Faint prattle of strait distant seas,

Pettiness all: but hark, hark!

Large and rich in the narrow dark

Music rose. Was music never

Braver in her pure endeavour

Against the meanness of the world.

Her purple banner she unfurled

Of stars and suns upon the night

Amazed with the strange living light.

The notes rose where the dark trees knelt;

Their fiery joy made stillness melt

As flame in woods the low boughs burns,

Sere leaves, dry bushes, flame-shaped ferns.

The notes rose as great birds that rise

Majestically in lofty skies,

And in white clouds are lost; and then

Briefly they hushed, and woke again

Renewed.

Slowly silence came

As smoke after sinking flame

That spreads and thins across the sky

When day pales before it die.

STARS

The naked stars, deep beyond deep,

Burn purely through the nervèd night.

Over the narrow sleep

Of men tired of light;

Deep within deep, as clouds behind

Huge grey clouds hidden gleaming rise,

Untroubled by sharp wind

In cold desert skies.

Cold deserts now with infinite host

Of gathered spears at watch o'er small

Armies of men lost

In glooms funereal.

O bitter light, all-threatening stars,

O tired ghosts of men that sleep

After stern mortal wars

'Neath skies chill and steep.

These mortal hills, this flickering sea,

This shadowy and thoughtful night,

Throb with infinity,

Burn with immortal light.

TEN O'CLOCK AND FOUR O'CLOCK

It stands there

Tall and solitary on the edge

Of the last hill, green on the green hill.

Ten o'clock the tree's called, no one knows why.

Perhaps it was planted there at ten o'clock

Or someone was hanged there at ten o'clock—

A hundred such good reasons might be found,

But no one knows. It vexed me that none knew,

Seeing it miles and miles off and then nearer

And nearer yet until, beneath the hill,

I looked up, up, and saw it nodding there,

A single tree upon the sharp-edged hill,

Holding its leaves though in the orchard all

Leaves and fruit were stripped or hung but few

Red and yellow over the littered grass.

—It vexed me, the brave tree and senseless name,

As I went through the valley looking up

And then looked round on elm and beech and chestnut

And all that lingering flame amid the hedge

That marked the miles and miles.

Then I forgot:

For through the apple-orchard's shadow I saw

Between the dark boughs of the cherry-orchard

A great slow fire which Time had lit to burn

The mortal seasons up, and leave bare black

Unchanging Winter.

Weston-sub-Edge.

THE YEW

The moon gave no light.

The clouds rode slowly over, broad and white,

From the soft south west.

The wind, that cannot rest,

Soothed and then waked the darkness of the yew

Until the tree was restless too.

Of all the winds I knew

I thought, and how they muttered in the yew,

Or raved under the eaves,

Or nosed the fallen dry leaves,

Or with harsh voice holloa'd the orchard round,

With snapped limbs littering the ground.

And I thought how the yew

Between the window and the west his shadow threw,

Grave and immense,

Darkening the dark past thought and sense,

And how the moon would make the darkness heavenly bright:

But the moon gave no light.

NOVEMBER SKIES

Than these November skies

Is no sky lovelier. The clouds are deep;

Into their gray the subtle spies

Of colour creep,

Changing that high austerity to delight,

Till even the leaden interfolds are bright.

And, where the cloud breaks, faint far azure peers

Ere a thin flushing cloud again

Shuts up that loveliness, or shares.

The huge great clouds move slowly, gently, as

Reluctant the quick sun should shine in vain,

Holding in bright caprice their rain.

And when of colours none,

Not rose, nor amber, nor the scarce late green,

Is truly seen,—

In all the myriad gray,

In silver height and dusky deep, remain

The loveliest,

Faint purple flushes of the unvanquished sun.

DELIGHT

Winter is fallen

On the wretched grass,

Dark winds have stolen

All the colour that was.

No leaf shivers:

The bare boughs bend and creak as the wind moans by

Fled is the fitful gleam of brightness

From the stooping sky.

A robin scatters

Like bright rain his song,

Of merry matters

The sparrows gossip long.

Snow in the sky

Lingers, soon to cover the world with white,

And hush the slender enchanting music

And chill the delight.

But snow new fallen

On the stiffened grass

Gives back beauty stolen

By the winds as they pass:—

Turns the climbing hedge

Into a gleaming ladder of frozen light:

And hark, in the cold enchanted silence

A cry of delight!

CHANGE

A late and lonely figure stains the snow,

Into the thickening darkness dims and dies.

Heavily homeward now the last rooks go,

And dull-eyed stars stare from the skies.

A whimpering wind

Sounds, then's still and whimpers again.

Yet 'twas a morn of oh, such air and light!

The early sun ran laughing over the snow,

The laden trees held out their arms all white

And whiteness shook on the white below.

Lovely the shadows were,

Deep purple niches, 'neath a dome of light.

And now night's fall'n, the west wind begins to creep

Among the stiff trees, over the frozen snow;

An hour—and the world stirs that was asleep,

A trickle of water's heard, stealthy and slow,

First faintly here and there,

And then continual everywhere.

And morn will look astonished for the snow,

And the warm, wind will laugh, "It's gone, gone, gone!"—

And will, when the immortal soft airs blow,

This mortal face of things change and be gone

So—and with none to hear

How in the night the wind crept near?

SLEEPING SEA

The sea

Was even as a little child that sleeps

And keeps

All night its great unconsciousness of day.

No spray

Flashed when the wave rose, drooped, and slowly drew away.

No sound

From all that slumbering, full-bosomed water came;

The sea

Lay mute in childlike sleep, the moon was a gold candle-flame.

No sound

Save when a faint and mothlike air fluttered around.

No sound:

But as a child that dreams and in his full sleep cries,

So turned the sleeping sea and heaved her bosom of slow sighs.

THE WEAVER OF MAGIC

Weave cunningly the web

Of twilight, O thou subtle-fingered Eve!

And at the slow day's ebb

With small blue stars the purple curtain weave.

If any wind there be,

Bid it but breathe lightly as woodland violets o'er the sea;

If any moon, be it no more than a white fluttering feather.

Call the last birds together.

O Eve, and let no wisp

Of day's distraction thine enchantment mar;

Thy soft spell lisp

And lure the sweetness down of each blue star.

Then let that low moan be

A while more easeful, trembling remote and strange, far oversea;

So shall the easeless heart of love rest then, or only sigh,

Hearing the swallows cry!

THE DARKSOME NIGHTINGALE

Why dost thou, darksome Nightingale,

Sing so distractingly—and here?

Dawn's preludings prick my ear,

Faint light is creeping up the vale,

While on these dead thy rarer

Song falls, dark night-farer.

Were it not better thou shouldst sing

Where the drenched lilac droops her plume,

Spreading frail banners of perfume?

Or where the easeless pines enring

The river-lullèd village

Whose lads the lilac pillage?

Oh, if aught songful these hid bones

Might reach, like the slow subtle rain,

Surely the dead had risen again

And listened, white by the white stones;

Back to rich life song-charmed,

By ghostly joys alarmed.

This may not be. And yet, oh still

Pour like night dew thy richer speech

Some late-lost youth perchance to reach,

Or unloved girl; and stir and fill

Their passionless cold bosoms

Under red wallflower blossoms!

UNDER THE LINDEN BRANCHES

Under the linden branches

They sit and whisper;

Hardly a quiver

Of leaves, hardly a lisp or

Sigh in the air.

Under the linden branches

They sit, and shiver

At the slow air's fingers

Drawn through the linden branches

Where the year's sweet lingers;

And sudden avalanches

Of memories, fears,

Shake from the linden branches

Upon them sitting

With hardly a sigh or a whisper

Or quiver of tears.

STRIFE

The wind fought with the angry trees.

All morning in immense unease

They wrestled, and ruin strawed the ground,

And the north sky frowned.

The oak and aspen arms were held

Defiant, but the death was knelled

Of slender saplings, snappy boughs,

Twigs brittle as men's vows.

How moaned the trees the struggle through!

Anger almost to madness grew.

The aspen screamed, and came a roar

Of the great wind locked in anguish sore,

Desolate with defeat ... and then

Quiet fell again:

The trees slept quiet as great cows

That lie at noon under broad boughs.

How pure, how strange the calm; but hist!...

Was it the trees by the wind kissed?

Or from afar, where the wind's hid,

A throb, a sob?

FOREBODING

O linger late, poor yellow whispering leaves!

As yet the eves

Are golden and the simple moon looks through

The clouds and you.

O linger yet although the night be blind,

And in the wind

You wake and lisp and shiver at the stir

And sigh of her

Whose rimy fingers chill you each and all:

And so you fall

As dead as hopes or dreams or whispered vows....

O then the boughs

That bore your busy multitude shall feel

The cold light steal

Between them, and the timorous child shall start,

Hearing his heart

Drubbing affrighted at the frail gates, for lo,

The ghostly glow

Of the wild moon, caught in the barren arms

Of leafless branches loud with night's alarms!

DISCOVERY

Beauty walked over the hills and made them bright.

She in the long fresh grass scattered her rains

Sparkling and glittering like a host of stars,

But not like stars cold, severe, terrible.

Hers was the laughter of the wind that leaped

Arm-full of shadows, flinging them far and wide.

Hers the bright light within the quick green

Of every new leaf on the oldest tree.

It was her swimming made the river run

Shining as the sun;

Her voice, escaped from winter's chill and dark,

Singing in the incessant lark....

All this was hers—yet all this had not been

Except 'twas seen.

It was my eyes, Beauty, that made thee bright;

My ears that heard, the blood leaping in my veins,

The vehemence of transfiguring thought—

Not lights and shadows, birds, grasses and rains—

That made thy wonders wonderful.

For it has been, Beauty, that I have seen thee,

Tedious as a painted cloth at a bad play,

Empty of meaning and so of all delight.

Now thou hast blessed me with a great pure bliss,

Shaking thy rainy light all over the earth,

And I have paid thee with my thankfulness.

MORE THAN SWEET

The noisy fire,

The drumming wind,

The creaking trees,

And all that hum

Of summer air

And all the long inquietude

Of breaking seas——

Sweet and delightful are

In loneliness.

But more than these

The quiet light

From the morn's sun

And night's astonished moon,

Falling gently upon breaking seas.

Such quietness

Another beauty is—

Ah, and those stars

So gravely still

More than light, than beauty pour

Upon the strangeness

Of the heart's breaking seas.

THE BRIGHTNESS

Away, away—

Through that strange void and vast

Brimmed with dying day;

Away,

So that I feel

Only the wind

Of the world's swift-rolling wheel.

See what a maze

Of whirling rays!

The sharp wind

Weakens; the air

Is but thin air,

Not fume and flying fire....

O, heart's desire,

Now thou art still

And the air chill.

And but a stem

Of clear cold light

Shines in this stony dark.

Farewell, world of sense,

Too fair, too fair

To be so false!

Hence, hence

Rosy memories,

Delight of ears, hands, eyes.

Rise

When I bid, O thou

Tide of the dark,

Whelming the pale last,

Reflection of that vast

Too-fair deceit.

Ah, sweet

To miss the vexing heat

Of the heart's desire:

Only to know

All's lost, lost....

Sweet

To know the lack of sweet.

—Thou fool!

See how the steady dark

Is filled with eyes—

Eyes that smile,

Hot, then how cool!

Eyes that were stars till thou

Mad'st them eyes.

O, the tormenting

Look, the unrelenting

Passionate kiss

Of their wild light on thine—

Light of thine eyes!

As if one could

Loathe the world for too much sweetness!

All the air's a flame,

Wonderful—yet the same

Thou'st hated,

Being briefly sated

With sweet of sweetness.

Forgive a heart whose madness

Was not of madness born,

But of mere wild

Waste of desire....

Who does not know

One speaks so, or so,

Out of mere passion

That sees not love

From hate, nor life from death,

Nor hell from heaven?

In the East—oh, that flashed

Brightness, past

The loveliness even

Of sunset's flush!

THE HOLY MOUNTAINS

The holy mountains,

The gay streams,

Heavy shadows,

And tall, trembling trees;

The light that sleeps

Between the heavy shadows,

Wind that creeps

Faintly, from far-off seas——

The mountains' light,

Waters' noise,

Trees' shadows,

Clear, slow, calm air,

Are dreams, dreams,

And far, far-fallen echoes

Of secret worlds

And inconceivable dark seas.

RAPTURE

If thou hast grief

And passion vex the spirit that is in thee—

There was a stony beach

Where the heat flickered and the little waves

Whispered each to each.

Dove-coloured was that stony beach,

And white birds hungering hovered over

The shining waves;

And men had kindled there

A great fierce heap of golden flame—

Spoiled grasses with dead buttercups and pale clover.

The agonising flame

Yearned in its vitals towards the quiet air

And died in a little smoke.

And on the coloured beach the black warm ash

Remained.

Then on that warm ash

Another heap of grasses was outpoured,

And instant came

Another knot of struggling yellow smoke

That burst into new agonies of flame,

Dying into a drift of smoke;

And on the coloured beach the black cold ash

Remained.

Or is thy grief too deep,

Passion too dear, the spirit in thee asleep?—

Twelve deep and sombre, still,

Expectant, hushed,

The miles-long crowd stood—and then listening.

The nervous drums,

The unendurable, low reeds:

Silence—and then the nearing drums

Again, again the thrilling reeds,

And then

(The deep crowd hushed)

Following an almightier King

That rode unseen,

Drew near the tributary magnificence....

Hushed, hushed,

The deep crowd stood, devouring, listening;

But a child on his father's shoulder cried,

"Hurrah, hurrah!"—

Only have thou no fear

Pride, but no fear.

MUSIC COMES

Music comes

Sweetly from the trembling string

When wizard fingers sweep

Dreamily, half asleep;

When through remembering reeds

Ancient airs and murmurs creep,

Oboe oboe following,

Flute answering clear high flute,

Voices, voices—falling mute,

And the jarring drums.

At night I heard

First a waking bird

Out of the quiet darkness sing....

Music comes

Strangely to the brain asleep!

And I heard

Soft, wizard fingers sweep

Music from the trembling string,

And through remembering reeds

Ancient airs and murmurs creep;

Oboe oboe following,

Flute calling clear high flute,

Voices faint, falling mute,

And low jarring drums;

Then all those airs

Sweetly jangled—newly strange,

Rich with change....

Was it the wind in the reeds?

Did the wind range

Over the trembling string;

Into flute and oboe pouring

Solemn music; sinking, soaring

Low to high,

Up and down the sky?

Was it the wind jarring

Drowsy far-off drums?

Strangely to the brain asleep

Music comes.

THE IDIOT

He stands on the kerb

Watching the street.

He's always watching there,

Listening to the beat

Of time in the street,

Listening to the thronging feet,

Laughing at the world that goes

Scowling or laughing by.

He sees Time go by,

An old lonely man,

Crooked and furtive and slow.

He laughs as he sees

Time shambling by

While he stands at his ease,

Until Time smiles wanly back

At his laughing eye.

Greed's great paunch,

Lean Envy's ill looks,

Fond forgetful Love,

He reads them like books:

Whatever their tongue

He reads them like children's books,

Stands staring and laughing there

As all they go by.

O, he laughs as he sees

The fat and the thin,

The simple, the solemn and wise

Nod-nodding by.

He stares in their eyes,

Till they're angry and murmur, Poor fool!

And he hears and he laughs again

From the depth of his folly.

Even when with heavy

Plume and pall

The sleeky coaches roll by,

Coffin, flowers and all,

He laughs, for he sees

Crouched on the coffin a small

Yellowy shape go by—

Death, uneasy and melancholy.

THE MOUSE

Standing close by you

In the cold light

Of two tall candles

That measure the dark of night,

I hear the mouse,

The only thing that's moving

In the quiet house.

Don't you hear it,

That furious mouse?

How can you sleep so deep

And that noise in the house?

Won't you stir

At the furious scratching

In the cupboard there?

No! a sharper sound

Would wake you not;

Not the sweetest fluting

Tease you back to thought.

Yet the scratching mouse

Makes all my flesh a nervous

Haunted house.

O, the dream, the dream

Must be sweet and deep

If life's scratching's heard not

On your cold sleep.

Yet if you should hear it,

So furious and fretful—

How could you bear it?

HAPPINESS

I have found happiness who looked not for it.

There was a green fresh hedge,

And willows by the river side,

And whistling sedge.

The heaviness I felt was all around.

No joy sang in the wind.

Only dull slow life everywhere,

And in my mind.

Then from the sedge a bird cried; and all changed.

Heaviness turned to mirth:

The willows the stream's cheek caressed,

The sun the earth.

What was it in the bird's song worked such change?

The grass was wonderful.

I did not dream such beauty was

In things so dull.

What was it in the bird's song gave the water

That living, sentient look?

Lent the rare brightness to the hedge?

That sweetness shook

Down on the green path by the running water?

Or the small daisies lit

With light of the white northern stars

In dark skies set?

What was it made the whole world marvellous?

Mere common things were joys.

The cloud running upon the grass,

Children's faint noise,

The trees that grow straight up and stretch wide arms,

The snow heaped in the skies,

The light falling so simply on all;

My lifted eyes

That all this startling aching beauty saw?

I felt the sharp excess

Of joy like the strong sun at noon—

Insupportable bliss!

COMFORTABLE LIGHT

Most comfortable Light,

Light of the small lamp burning up the night,

With dawn enleagued against the beaten dark;

Pure golden perfect spark;

Or sudden wind-bright flame,

That but the strong-handed wind can urge or tame;

Chill loveliest light the kneeling clouds between,

Silverly serene;

Comfort of happy light,

That mouse-like leaps amid brown leaves, cheating sight;

Clear naked stars, burning with swift intense

Earthward intelligence;—

Sensitive, single

Points in the dark inane that purely tingle

With eager fire, pouring night's circles through

Their living blue;

Dark light still waters hold;

Broad silver moonpath trodden into gold:

Candle-flame glittering through the traveller's night—

Most comfortable light....

And lovelier, the eye

Where light from darkness shines unfathomably,

Light secret, clear, shallow, profound, known, strange,

Constant alone in change:—

Not that wild light that turns

Hunted from dying eyes when the last fire burns;

O, not that bitter light of wounded things,

When bony anguish springs

Sudden, intolerable;

Nor light of mad eyes gleaming up from hell....

Come not again, wild light! Shine not again,

Hill-flare of pain!

But thou, most holy light....

Not the noon blaze that stings, too fiercely bright,

Not that unwinking stare of shameless day;

But thou, the gray,

Nun-like and silent, still,

Fine-breathed on many an eastern bare green hill;

Keen light of gray eyes, cool rain, and stern spears;

Sad light, but not to tears:—

—O, comfort thou of eyes

Watching expectant from chill northern skies,

Excellent joy for lids heavy with night—

Strange with delight!

HALLO!

"Hallo, hallo!" impatiently he cried,

And I replied,

Sleepily, "Hallo—hallo!"

No sound then; and I stretched

My hand for the receiver, all my nerves

Tingling and listening.

My hand clutched nothing, and I lit

The candle—strange!

I could have sworn it was the shouting wire....

But no!

Besides, a bare and unfamiliar room

And he, why, long-forgotten, maybe dead.

Yet all around,

Filling the silence up with tiny sound,

A million tremulous thin echoings,

"Hallo—hallo—

Hallo!"

FEAR

There was a child that screamed,

And if it was the gathering tingling dark,

Or if it was the tingling silences

Between few words,

Or if the water's drip and quivering drip—

Who knows?

Or if the child half sleeping suddenly dreamed—

Who knows? for she knew not, but was afraid,

And then angry with fear,

And then it seemed afraid of all the voices

Echoing hers.

And then afraid again of that drip, drip

Of water somewhere near.

Yet a man dying would not with such fear

Scream out at hell.

Easier it were to die than to endure,

Unless death brought the instant consciousness

Of all the wrongs of all lost years

Falling like water, drip after trembling drip

Upon the naked anguish of the soul.

But death's stupidity

Is gentle to the lunatic last wits.

Little of terror, little of consciousness,

But stupor, a great ease,

Narrowing silences,

And silence;

And then no more the drip, drip of the years,

No more the strangeness, agonies and fears;

No more the noise, but one imponderable unhaunted

Hush....

I heard the child that cried

Chattering a moment after in the light,

And singing out of such contentment as

Lamps and familiar voices bring.

She needs must sing

Now that sharp, spiny agony thrust no more,

Nor water fell, drip, drip by quivering drip;

Her face was bright,

Unapprehensive as a day in spring.

WAKING

Lying beneath a hundred seas of sleep

With all those heavy waves flowing over me,

And I unconscious of the rolling night

Until, slowly, from deep to lesser deep

Risen, I felt the wandering seas no longer cover me

But only air and light....

It was a sleep

So dark and so bewilderingly deep

That only death's were deeper or completer,

And none when I awoke stranger or sweeter.

Awake, the strangeness still hung over me

As I with far-strayed senses stared at the light.

I—and who was I?

Saw—oh, with what unaccustomed eye!

The room was strange and everything was strange

Like a strange room entered by wild moonlight;

And yet familiar as the light swept over me

And I rose from the night.

Strange—yet stranger I.

And as one climbs from water up to land

Fumbling for weedy steps with foot and hand,

So I for yesterdays whereon to climb

To this remote and new-struck isle of time.

But I found not myself nor yesterday—

Until, slowly, from deep to lesser deep

Risen, I felt the seas no longer over me

But only air and light.

Yes, like one clutching at a ring I heard

The household noises as they stirred,

And holding fast I wondered. What were they?

I felt a strange hand lying at my side,

Limp and cool. I touched it and knew it mine.

A murmur, and I remembered how the wind died

In the near aspens. Then

Strange things were no more strange.

I travelled among common thoughts again;

And felt the new forged links of that strong chain

That binds me to myself, and this to-day

To yesterday. I heard it rattling near

With a no more astonished ear.

And I had lost the strangeness of that sleep,

No more the long night rolled its great seas over me.

—O, too anxious I!

For in this press of things familiar

I have lost all that clung

Round me awaking of strangeness and such sweetness

Nothing now is strange

Except the man that woke and then was I.

THE FALL

From that warm height and pure,

The peak undreamed of out of heavy air

Rising to heaven more strange and rare;

From that amazed brief sojourn, exquisite, insecure;

Fallen from thence to this,

From all immortal sunk to mortal sweet,

To slow gross joys from joy so fleet,

Fallen to mere remembrance of unsustainable bliss....

O harsh, O heavy air,

Difficult endurance, pain of common things!

The slow sun east to westward swings,

The flat-faced moon climbs labouring with a senseless stare.

From that inconceivable height——

O inward eyes that saw and ears that heard,

Spiritual swift wings that stirred

In that warm-flushing air and unendurable light;

When I was as mere down

On a swift-running youthful wind uptaken

Over tall trees, white mountains, shaken,

Into the uttermost azure lifted, lifted alone.

From that peak can it be

That I am fallen, fallen that was so high?

Or was that truly, surely I?

Who is it crawls here now, sad, uncontentedly?

Fallen from that high content,

—Fool, thou that wast content merely with bliss!

Happy those lovers that will not kiss;

Never to be fulfilled was the heart's endless passion meant.

Never on joys attainable

To linger, never on easy near delight—

O bitter, unreached infinite,

Merciful defeat, availless anguish, hunger unendurable!

O who shall be in longing wise,

Skilled in refusal, in embracing free,

Glad with earth's innocent ecstasy,

Yet all the uncomprehended heaven in his eyes!

STAY

Stay, thou desired one, stay!

Brighten the curious darkness of the world.

Cold through the chill dark swings the sleeping world,

Sense-heavy, dreaming dully of clear day.

No moon, no stars, no sound of wind or seas:

Wearily sleeping in immense unease,

Dreams, dreams the world of day.

Stay, thou adored one, stay,

Who on the dark hang'st lamps of gold delight,

Gold flames amid the purple pit of night.

Stay, stay,

Who the cool dawn's most lovely gray

Mak'st lovelier with rose of far away.

Stay, thou, who buildest wonder of things mean

(More truly so they're seen).

Stay—nay, fly not, nay—stay;

Youth gone, remain thou yet and yet.

Though the world spin in darkness and forget

The light,

Stay thou, whose coming's joy and flight despair.

Thou unimaginably more than fair,

Brief unsustainable strange dream, stay yet!

Lamping the world's close unsustainable dark

With golden unimaginable day.

SHADOWS

The shadow of the lantern on the wall,

The lantern hanging from the twisted beam,

The eye that sees the lantern, shadow and all.

The crackle of the sinking fire in the grate,

The far train, the slow echo in the coombe,

The ear that hears fire, train and echo and all.

The loveliness that is the secret shape

Of once-seen, sweet and oft-dreamed loveliness,

The brain that builds shape, memory, dream and all....

A white moon stares Time's thinning fabric through,

And makes substantial insubstantial seem,

And shapes immortal mortal as a dream;

And eye and brain flicker as shadows do

Restlessly dancing on a cloudy wall.

WALKING AT EVE

Walking at eve I met a little child

Running beside a tragic-featured dame,

Who checked his blitheness with a quick "For shame!"

And seemed by sharp caprice froward and mild.

Scarce heeding her the sweet one ran, beguiled

By the lit street, and his eyes too aflame;

Only, at whiles, into his eyes there came

Bewilderment and grief with terror wild.

So, Beauty, dost thou run with tragic life;

So, with the curious world's caress enchanted,

Even of ill things thine ecstasy dost make;

Yet at the touch of fear and vital strife

The splendours thy young innocency forsake,

And with thy foster-mother's woe thou art haunted.

THE PHYSICIAN

She comes when I am grieving and doth say,

"Child, here is that shall drive your grief away."

When I am hopeless, kisses me and stirs

My breast with the strong lively courage of hers.

Proud—she will humble me with but a word,

Or with mild mockery at my folly gird;

Fickle—she holds me with her loyal eyes;

Remorseful—tells of neighbouring Paradise;

Envious—"Be not so mad, so mad," she saith,

"Envied and envier both race with Death"

She my good Angel is: and who is she?—

The soul's divine Physician, Memory.

VISION AND ECHO

I have seen that which sweeter is

Than happy dreams come true.

I have heard that which echo is

Of speech past all I ever knew.

Vision and echo, come again,

Nor let me grieve in easeless pain!

It was a hill I saw, that rose

Like smoke over the street,

Whose greening rampires were upreared

Suddenly almost at my feet;

And tall trees nodded tremblingly

Making the plain day visionary.

But ah, the song, the song I heard

And grieve to hear no more!

It was not angel-voice, nor child's

Singing alone and happy, nor

Note of the wise prophetic thrush

As lonely in the leafless bush.

It was not these, and yet I knew

That song; but now, alas,

My unpurged ears prove all too gross

To keep the nameless air that was

And is not; and my eyes forget

The vision that I follow yet.

Yet though forgetful I did see.

And heard, but cannot tell,

And on my forehead felt an air

Unearthly, on my heart a spell.

I have seen that which deathless is,

And heard—what I for ever miss!

REVISITATION

It is here—the lime-tree in the garden path,

The lilac by the wall, the ivied wall

That was so high, the heavy, close-leaved creeper,

The harsh gate jarring on its hinges still,

The echoing clean flags—all

The same, the same, and never more the same.

That mound was once a hill,

The old lime-tree a forest (now as small

As the poor lilac by the ivied wall),

And this neglected narrow greenery

A wilderness, and I its king and keeper;

Lying upon the grass I saw the sky

And all its clouds: the garden edged the sky.

The harsh gate jars upon its hinges still.

UNPARDONED

Gentle as the air that kisses

The splendid and ignoble with one breath,

Gentle as obliterating Death—

Though you be gentler yet,

In days when the old, old things begin to fret

The backward-looking consciousness,

Will you forget?

Or if remembering, will you forgive?

But there is one severer.

Stung by your forgivingness so great

Shall I forgive you then?—

Basest of men

Would rise in bitterness and sting again.

Not if you should forget

Could I forget:

Or if remembering, myself could I forgive?

Never! And yet such things have been,

And ills as dark forgiven or forgot.

But in those black hours when the heart burns hot

And there's no nerve that's not

Quick with the sense of things unheard, unseen—

A terrible voice that's mine yet not mine cries,

"Can that Eternal Righteousness

Remembering forgive?"

SOME HURT THING

I came to you quietly when you were lying

In perfect midnight sleep.

Your dark soft hair was all about your pillow,

So black upon the white.

I could not see your face except the lovely

Curve of the pale cheek;

Your head was bent as though your stirless slumber

Was sea-like heavy and deep.

The wind came gently in at the wide window,

Shaking the candle-light

And shadows on the wall; and there was silence,

Or sound but far and weak.

By the bedside your daytime toys were gathered:

The bright bell-ringing wheel,

Dolls clad in violent yellow and vermilion,

Strings of gay-coloured beads....

But you were far and far from these beside you,

Entranced with other joys

In fresh fields, among other children running:

Your voice, I knew, must peal

Purely among their high unearthly voices

Over green daisied meads,

While I stood watching your scarce-heaving slumber

Beside your human toys——

And heard, faint from the woods all through the night,

The cry of some hurt thing that moaned for light.

THE WAITS

Frost in the air and music in the air,

And the singing is sweet in the street.

She wakes from a dream to a dream—O hark!

The singing so faint in the dark.

The musicians come and stand at the door,

A fiddler and singers three,

And one with a bright lamp thrusts at the dark,

And the music comes sudden—O hark!

She hears the singing as sweet as a dream

And the fiddle that climbs to the sky,

With head 'neath the curtain she stares out—O hark!

The music so strange in the dark.

She listens and looks and sees but the sky,

While the fiddle is sweet in the porch,

And she sings back into the singing dark

Hark, herald angels, hark!

IN THE LANE

The birds return,

The blossom brightens again the cherry bough.

The hedges are green again

In the airless lane,

And hedge and blossom and bird call, Now, now, now!

O birds, return!

Who will care if the blossom die on the bough,

Or the hedge be bare again

In the screaming lane?

For what they were these are not, are not now.

The one gone makes

All that remain seem strange and lonely now.

She will not walk here again

In the blossoming lane:—

And there's a dead bough in every blossoming bough.

THE LAST TIME

For the last time,

The last, last time,

The last ...

All those last times have I lived through again,

And every "last" renews itself in pain—

Yes, each returns, and each returns in vain:

You return not, the last remains the last,

And I remain to cast

Weak anchors of my love in shifting sands

Of faith:—

The anchors drag, nothing I see save death.

Together we

Talked and were glad. I could not see

That one black gesture menaced you and me!

We kissed, and parted;

I left you, and was even merry-hearted....

And now my love is thwarted

That reaches back to you and searches round,

And dares not look on that harsh turfless mound.

And that last time

We walked together and the air acold

Hummed shrill around; the time that you

Walked heavily,

And I dared not to see,

Nor dared you then to speak of what must be.

We knew not what the shut days would unfold—

Nay, could not know till all the days were told....

But that last time we walked together, and

—And walk no more together, nor clasp hand

In hand, just stiffly as we used to do.

Never in dreams,

O happy, never in stealing dreams

We meet; never again

I live by night the day's slow-dying pain ...

The last, last time,

The last—

That time is past; yet in too-golden day

My heart goes from me whispering,

"Where are you—you—you—you?"

And comes back easeless to an easeless breast.

But at night I rest

Dreamless as derelict ships ride out to sea

Empty, and no bird even on the snapp'd mast

Pauses: into oblivion her shadow's cast;

Into the empty night goes lonely she,

And into sleep go—oh, more lonely I.

YOU THAT WERE

You that were

Half my life ere life was mine;

You that on my shape the sign

Set of yours;

You that my young lips did kiss

When your kiss summed up my bliss....

Ah, once more

You to kiss were all my bliss!

You whom I

Could forget—strange, could forget

Even for days (ah, now the fret

Of my grief!);

You who loved me though forgot;

Welcomed still, reproaching not....

Ah, that now

That forgetting were forgot!

You that now

On my shoulder as I go

Put your hand that wounds me so;

You that brush

Yet my lips with that one last

Kiss that bitters all things past....

How shall I

Yet endure that kiss the last?

You that are

Where the feet of my blind grief

Find you not, nor find relief;

You that are

Where my thought flying after you

Broken falls and flies anew,

Now you're gone

My love accusing aches for you.

March 4, 1911.

"THE LIGHT THAT NEVER WAS ON SEA OR LAND"

O gone are now those eager great glad days of days, but I remember

Yet even yet the light that turned the saddest of sad hours to mirth;

I remember how elate I swung upon the thrusting bowsprits,

And how the sun in setting burned and made the earth all unlike earth.

O gone are now those mighty ships I haunted days and days together,

And gone the mighty men that sang as crawled the tall craft out to sea;

And fallen ev'n the forest tips and changed the eyes that watched their burning,

But still I hear that shout and clang, and still the old spell stirs in me.

And as to some poor ship close locked in water dense and dark and vile

The wind comes garrulous from afar and sets the idle masts a-quiver;

And ev'n to her so foully docked, swift as the sun's first beam at dawn

The sea-bird comes and like a star wheels by and down along the river;—

So to me the full wind blows from far strange waters echoingly,

And faint forgotten longings break the fast-sealed pools within my breast;

So to me when sunset glows the scream comes of the white sea-bird,

And all those ancient raptures wake and wakes again the old unrest.

I see again the masts that crowd and part lie trees in living wind,

I hear again the shouts and cries and lip-lap of the waveless pool;

I see again the smalling cloud of sail that into distance fades,

I am again the boy whose eyes with tears of grief and hope are full.

AT EVENING'S HUSH

Now pipe no more, glad Shepherd,

Your joys from this fair hill

Through golden eves and still:

There sounds from yon dense quarry

A burden harsh and sorry.

No piping now, poor Shepherd.

Men strive with violent hand,

And anger stirs the bland

Blithe heaven that ne'er yet trembled,

Save with great spirits assembled.

No more, no more, sad Shepherd,

Let thy bright fingers stray

Idly in the old way;

No more their nimble glancing

Set gleeful spirits a-dancing.

Put by thy pipe, O Shepherd!

There needs no note of thine

For men deaf, undivine....

And lest brute hands should take it,

O sorrowful Shepherd, break it!

HAPPY DEATH

Bugle and battle-cry are still,

The long strife's over;

Low o'er the corpse-encumbered hill

The sad stars hover.

It is in vain, O stars! you look

On these forsaken:

Awhile with blows on blows they shook,

Or struck unshaken.

Needs now no pity of God or man ...

Tears for the living!

They have 'scaped the confines of life's plan

That holds us grieving.

The unperturbed soft moon, the stars,

The breeze that lingers,

Wake not to ineffectual wars

Their hearts and fingers.

Warriors o'ercoming and o'ercome,

Alike contented,

Have marched now to the last far drum,

Praised, unlamented.

Bugle and battle-cry are still,

The long strife's over;

Oh, that with them I had fought my fill

And found like cover!

WISDOM AND A MOTHER

Why, mourner, do you mourn, nor see

The heavenly Earth's felicity?

I mourn for him, my Dearest, lost,

Who lived a frail life at my cost.

A grief like yours how many have known!

Were that a balm to ease my own!

Or rather might I not accuse

The Hand that does not even choose,

But, taking blindly, took my best,

And as indifferently takes the rest ...

Like mine? Is there denied to me

Even Sorrow's singularity?

THE THRUSH SINGS

Singeth the Thrush, forgetting she is dead....

How could you, Thrush, forget that she is dead?

Or though forgetting, sing—and she is dead?

O hush,

Untimely, truant Thrush!

Singeth the Thrush, "I sing that she is dead!"

Thou thoughtless Thrush, she loved you who is dead,

Singeth the Thrush, "I sing her praise though dead."

O hush,

Untimely, grievous Thrush!

Singeth the Thrush, "I sing your happy dead,

I sing her who is living, and no more dead,

I sing her joy—she is no longer dead."

O hush,

Enough, thou heavenly Thrush!

TO MY MOTHER

No foreign tribute from a stranger-hand,

Mother, I bring thee, whom not Heaven's songs

Would as an alien reach.... Ah, but how far

From Heaven's least heavenly is the changing note

And changing fancy of these fitful cries!

Mother, forgive them, as the best of me

Has ever pleaded only for thy pardon,

Not for thy praise.

Mother, there is a love

Men give to wives and children, lovers, friends;

There is a love which some men give to God.

Ah! between this, I think, and that last love,

Last and too-late-discovered love of God,

There shines—and nearer to the love of God—

The love a man gives only to his mother,

Whose travail of dear thought has never end

Until the End. Oh that my mouth had words

Comfortable as thy kisses to the boy

Who loved while he forgot thee! Now I love,

Sundered and far, with daily heart's remembrance

The face the wind brings to me, the sun lights,

The birds and waters sing; the face of thee

Whom I love with a love like love of God.

THE UNUTTERED

For so long and so long had I forgot,

Serenely busied

With thousand things; at whiles desire grew hot

And my soul dizzied

With hapless and insatiable salt thirst.

Nor was I humbled

Saving with shame that, running with the worst

My feet yet stumbled.

Pride and delight of life enchained my heart,

My heart enchanted,

And oh, soft subtle fingers had their part,

And eyes love-haunted.

But while my busy mind was thus intent,

Or thus surrendered,

What was it, oh what strange thing was it sent

Through all that hindered

A thrill that woke the buried soul in me?—

It seemed there fluttered

A thought—or was it a sudden fear?—of Thee,

Remote, unuttered.

FAIR EVE

Fair Eve, as fair and still

As fairest thought, climbs the high sheltering hill;

As still and fair

As the white cloud asleep in the deep air.

As cool, as fair and cool,

As starlight swimming in a lonely pool;

Subtle and mild

As through her eyes the soul looks of a child.

A linnet sings and sings,

A shrill swift cleaves the air with blackest wings;

White twinkletails

Run frankly in their meadow as day fails.

On such a night, a night

That seems but the full sleep of tired light,

I look and wait

For what I know not, looking long and late.

Is it for a dream I look,

A vision from the Tree of Heaven shook,

As sweetness shaken

From the fresh limes on lonely ways forsaken?

A dream of one, maybe,

Who comes like sudden wind from oversea?

Or most loved swallow

Whom all fair days and golden musics follow?—

More sudden yet, more strange

Than magic airs on magic hills that range:—

Of one who'll steep

The soul in soft forgetfulness ere it sleep.

Yes, down the hillside road,

Where Eve's unhasty feet so gently trod,

Follow His feet

Whose leaf-like echoes make even spring more sweet.

THE SNARE

Loose me and let me go!

I am not yours.

I do not know

Your dark name ev'n, O Powers

That out of the deep rise

And wave your arms

To weave strange charms.

Though the snare of eyes

You weave for me,

As a pool lies

In wait for the moon when she

Out of the deep will rise;

And though you set

Like mist your net;

And though my feet you catch,

O dark, strange Powers,

You may not snatch

My soul, or call it yours.

Out of your snare I rise

And pass your charms,

Nor feel your harms.

You loose me and I go:

O see the arms

Spread for me! lo,

His lips break your charms.

From the deep did He rise

And round me set

His Love for net.

O HIDE ME IN THY LOVE

O hide me in Thy love, secure

From this earth-clinging meanness.

Lave my uncleanness

In Thy compassionating love!

Bury this treachery as deep

As mercy is enrooted.

My days ill-fruited

Shake till the shrivelled burden fall.

Put by those righteous arrows, Lord,

Put even Thy justice by Thee;

So I come nigh Thee

As came the Magdalen to Thy feet.

And like a heavy stone that's cast

In a pool, on Thee I throw me,

And feel o'erflow me

Ripples of pity, deep waves of love.

PRAYER TO MY LORD

If ever Thou didst love me, love me now,

When round me beat the flattering vans of life,

Kissing with rapid breath my lifted brow.

Love me, if ever, when the murmur of strife,

In each dark byway of my being creeps,

When pity and pride, passion and passion's loss

Wash wavelike round the world's eternal cross,

Till 'mid my fears a new-born love indignant leaps.

If ever Thou canst love me, love me yet,

When sweet, impetuous loves within me stir

And the frail portals of my spirit fret—

The love of love, that makes Heaven heavenlier,

The love of earth, of birds, children and light,

Love of this bitter, lovely native land....

O, love me when sick with all these I stand

And Death's far-rumoured wings beat on the lonely night.

THE TREE

Oh, like a tree

Let me grow up to Thee!

And like a Tree

Send down my roots to Thee.

Let my leaves stir

In each sigh of the air,

My branches be

Lively and glad in Thee;

Each leaf a prayer,

And green fire everywhere ...

And all from Thee

The sap within the Tree.

And let Thy rain

Fall—or as joy or pain

So that I be

Yet unforgot of Thee.

Then shall I sing

The new song of Thy Spring,

Every leaf of me

Whispering Love in Thee!

EARTH TO EARTH

What is the soul? Is it the wind

Among the branches of the mind?

Is it the sea against Time's shore

Breaking and broken evermore?

Is it the shore that breaks Time's sea,

The verge of vast Eternity?

And in the night is it the soul

Sleep needs must hush, must needs kiss whole?

Or does the soul, secure from sleep,

Safe its bright sanctities yet keep?

And oh, before the body's death

Shall the confined soul ne'er gain breath,

But ever to this serpent flesh

Subdue its alien self afresh?

Is it a bird that shuns earth's night,

Or makes with song earth's darkness bright?

Is it indeed a thought of God,

Or merest clod-fellow to clod?

A thought of God, and yet subdued

To any passion's apish mood?

Itself a God—and yet, O God,

As like to earth as clod to clod?

ON A PIECE OF SILVER

So! the fierce acid licks the silver clean,

Unwonted plain the superscription's seen

Round the cleared head; the metal, virgin-bright,

Shines a mild Moon to the Sun candle-light.

And in these floating stains, this evil murk,

All your change-crowded, moment-histories lurk,

Voluble Silverling! Dost yield me now

Your chance-illumined record, and allow

Prying of idle eyes?... you came a boon

To men as weary as any the weak moon

Shines on but cheers not; you were life in death;

Almost a God to give the prize of breath,

Almost a God to give the prize of joy,

Almost a God—but God! the veriest toy

Child's fingers break, from death to buy back life,

Turn the keen trouble of grief's eager knife,

Or sense-confounded hearts heal of the ancient strife.

O Coin that men have toiled for, lacked and mourned,

Sold life for and sold honour, won and scorned;

O Coin that oft hast been a spinning Fate,

Yet impotent her bitterness to abate;

O Coin that Love contemns, reckoning nought

(But with you, ah, Love's best is sold and bought)—

Heart of the harlot, you; the Judas blood

Hell's devils leech on; you the Price of God!

THE ESCAPE

Like one who runs

Fearful at night, he knows not why,

Dreading the loneliness, yet shuns

The highway's casual company;

Wherefore he hastes,

The friendly gloom of ancient trees

Unheeding, and the shining wastes

Lying broad and quiet as the seas;

The beauty of night

Hating for very fear, until

Beyond the bend a lowly light

Beams single from a lowly sill;

And the poor fool,

Flying the sacred, solemn dark,

Leaves gladly the large, cool

Night for that serviceable spark;

And thankful then

To have 'scaped the peril of the way,

Turns not his timid steps again

That night, but waits the common day;—

So I, as weak,

Have fled the great hills of Thy love,

Too faint to hear what Thou dost speak,

Too feeble with fear to look above,

And hasten to win

Some flickering, brief security,

In sinful sleep or waking sin,

From the enfolding thought of Thee!

WONDER

Following upon the faint wind's fickle courses

A feather drifts and strays.

My thought after her thought

Floated—how many ways and days!

She swayed me as the wind swayeth a feather.

I was a leaf upon

Her breath, a dream within

Her dream. The dream how soon was done!

For now all's changed, not Time's change more wondrous,

I am her sun, and she

(Herself doth swear) the moon;

Or she the ship upon my sea.

How should this be? I know not; I so grossly

Mastering her spirit pure.

O, how can her bird's breast

My nervous and harsh hand endure?

Tell me if this be love indeed, fond lovers,

That high stoop to low,

Soul be to flesh subdued;

That the sun around the earth should go?

I know not: I but know that love is misery,

O'erfilled with delight.

Day follows night: her love

Is gay as day, yet strange as night.

LAMBOURN TOWN

The rain beat on me as I walked,

In the roadside it ran and muttered.

It seemed the rain to the wind talked

Of storm: in the wind the wild cloud fluttered.

Across the down, now bleak and loud,

I went and the rain ran with me.

How swift the rain, how low the cloud!

No heavenly comfort could I see,

Nor comfort of low beaming light

From any casement creeping out.

The swift rain on the patient night

Swept, and anon would great winds shout.

Rain, rain, nought else, until I turned

The thrusting shoulder of the down,

And through the mist of rain there burned

The few green lanterns of the town.

And in the rain the night was lit

With my love's eyes burning for me;

Her white face in the dark was sweet,

Her hands like moonflowers quiveringly

Fell upon mine, and each was dashed

With rain blown in from streaming eaves,

While overhead the broad flood plashed

Noisily on the broad plane leaves.

Within we heard the gurgle-glock

In the pipe, the tip-tap on the sill

Like the same ticking of the clock;

We heard the water-butt o'erspill,

The wind come blustering at the door,

The whipped white lilac thrash the wall;

The candle flame upon the floor

Crept between shadows magical....

In the black east a pallid ray

Rose high; and sweeping o'er the down

The slow increase of stormless day

Lit the wet roofs of Lambourn town.

THE LAMP

The lamp shone golden where she slept,

Shining against deep-folded shadows.

There was no stir but her slow breathing

Save when a long sigh crept

Between her lips.

Her hair spread dark in that faint light,

Her shut eyes showed the long dark lashes—

Still now, that with her laughter quivered.

On the white sheet lay white

And limp her hands.

Golden against the shadow shone

The lamp's small flame, till dawn was brightening,

And on the flame a gold beam slanted.

The shadows lingering on

Grew faint and thin.

Sleeping she murmured, stirred and sighed,

A dream from her sleep-vision faded.

Her earthly eyes 'neath languid eyelids

Wakened: her bosom cried,

"Come back, come back,

"Come back, my dream!" Rising she drest

Her beauty's lamp with cunning fingers.

She had the look of birds a-flutter

Round dewy trees with breast

Throbbing with song.

WHO IS IT THAT ANSWERS?

The clouds no more are flocking

After the flushing sun;

Bees end their long droning,

The bat's hunt is begun;

And the tired wind that went flittering

Up and down the hill

Lies like a shadow still,

Like a shadow still.

Who is it that's calling

Out of the deepening dark,

Calling, calling, calling?—

No!—yet hark!

The sleepy wind wakes, carrying

Up and down the hill

A voice how small and still,

How sweet and still!

Who is it that answers

Out of a quiet cloud—

"Stay, oh stay! I come, I come!"

Cried at last aloud?

My voice, my heart went answering

Up and down the hill—

Mine so strange and still,

Mine grave and still.

WAITING

Rich in the waning light she sat

While the fierce rain on the window spat.

The yellow lamp-glow lit her face,

Shadows cloaked the narrow place

She sat adream in. Then she'd look

Idly upon an idle book;

Anon would rise and musing peer

Out at the misty street and drear;

Or with her loosened dark hair play,

Hiding her fingers' snow away;

And, singing softly, would sing on

When the desire of song had gone.

"O lingering day!" her bosom sighed,

"O laggard Time!" each motion cried.

Last she took the lamp and stood

Rich in its flood,

And looked and looked again at what

Her longing fingers' zeal had wrought;

And turning then did nothing say,

Hiding her thoughts away.

ABSENCE

Distance no grace can lend you, but for me

Distance yet magnifies your mystery.

With you, and soon content, I ask how should

In your two eyes be hid my heaven of good?

How should your own mere voice the strange words speak

That tease me with the sense of what's to seek

In all the world beside? How your brown hair,

That simply and neglectfully you wear,

Bind my wild thoughts in its abundant snare?

With you, I wonder how you're stranger than

Another woman to another man;

But parted—and you're as a ship unknown

That to poor castaways at dawn is shown

As strange as dawn, so strange they fear a trick

Of eyes long-vexed and hope with falseness sick.

Parted, and like the riddle of a dream,

Dark with rich promise, does your beauty seem.

I wonder at your patience, stirless peace,

Your subtle pride, mute pity's quick release.

Then are you strange to me and sweet as light

Or dew; as strange and dark as starless night.

Then let this restless parting be forgiven:

I go from you to find in you strange heaven.

SLEEP

Not a dream brush your sleep,

Not a thought wake and creep

In upon your spirit's slumber;

Not a memory encumber,

Nor a thievish care unbar

Sleep's portcullis that no star

Nor sentry hath. I'll not speak

With my soul even: no, nor seek

Other happiness for you

When you this happy sleep sleep through.

Let no least desire waver

Between us, nor impatience quaver;

No sudden nearness of me flush

Your veins with welcome.... Hush, hush!

Be still, my thoughts, lest you creep

Unawares into her sleep.

YOUR SHADOW

From Swindon out to White Horse Hill

I walked, in morning rain,

And saw your shadow lying there.

As clear and plain

As lies the White Horse on the Hill

I saw your shadow lying there.

Over the wide green downs and bleak,

Unthinking, free I walked,

And saw your shadow fluttering by.

Almost it talked,

Answering what I dared not speak

While thoughts of you ran fluttering by....

So on to Baydon sauntered, teased

With that pure native air.

Sometimes the sweetness of wild thyme

The strings of care

Did pluck; sometimes my soul was eased

With more than sweetness of wild thyme.

Sometimes within a pool I caught

Your face, upturned to mine.

And where sits Chilton by the waters

Your look did shine

Wildly in the mill foam that sought

To hide you in those angry waters.

And yet, O Sweet, you never knew

Those downs, the thymy air

That with your spirit haunted is—

Yes, everywhere!

Ah, but my heart is full of you,

And with your shadow haunted is.

THE FULL TIDE

Now speaks the wave, whispering me of you;

In all his murmur your music murmurs too.

O 'tis your voice, my love, whispering in

The wave's voice, even your voice so far and thin;

And mine to yours answering clear is heard

In the high lonely voice of the last bird.

And when, my love, the full tide runneth again,

Shall yet the seabird call, call, call in vain?

Will not the tide wake in my heart and stir

The old rich happiness that's sunken there?

Thou moon of love, bid the retreated tide

Return, for which the wandering bird has cried.

HANDS

Your hands, your hands,

Fall upon mine as waves upon the sands.

O, soft as moonlight on the evening rose,

That but to moonlight will its sweet unclose,

Your hands, your hands,

Fall upon mine, and my hands open as

That evening primrose opens when the hot hours pass.

Your hands, your hands,

They are like towers that in far southern lands

Look at pale dawn over gloom-valley'd miles,

White temple towers that gleam through mist at whiles.

Your hands, your hands,

With the south wind fall kissing on my brow,

And all past joy and future is summed in this great "Now!"

THE NIGHT WATCH

Beneath the trees with heedful step and slow

At night I go,

Fearful upon their whispering to break

Lest they awake

Out of those dreams of heavenly light that fill

Their branches still

With a soft murmur of memoried ecstasy.

There 'neath each tree

Nightlong a spirit watches, and I feel

His breath unseal

The fast-shut thoughts and longings of tired day,

That flutter away

Mothlike on luminous soft wings and frail

And moonlike pale.

There in the flowering chestnuts' bowering gloom

And limes' perfume

Wandering wavelike through the moondrawn night

That heaves toward light,

There hang I my dark thoughts and deeper prayers;

And as the airs

Of star-kissed dawn come stirring and o'er-creep

The ford of sleep,

Thy shape, great Love, grows shadowy in the East,

Thine accents least

Of all those warring voices of false morn:

And oh, forlorn

Thy hope, thy courage vanishing, thine eyes

Sad with surprise.

Oh, with the dawn I know, I know how vain

Is love that's fain

To beat and beat against her obstinate door.

For as once more

It groans, she passes out not heeding me,

Nay, will not see:—

As when a man, rich and of high estate,

Sees at his gate

(Or will not see) a famishing poor wretch,

Whose longings fetch

Old anger from his pain-imprisoning breast,

Till sad despair his anger puts to rest.

THE HAUNTED SHADOW

Fair Trees, O keep from chattering so

When I with my more fair do go

Beneath your branches;

For if I laugh with her your sigh

Her rare and sudden mirth puts by,

Or your too noisy glee will take

Persuasion from my lips and make

Her deaf as winter.

O be not as the pines—that keep

The shadow-charmèd light asleep—

Perverse and sombre!

For when we in the pinewood walked

And of young love and far age talked,

Their solemn haunted shadow broke

Her peace—ah, how the sharp sob shook

Her shadowed bosom!

ALONE AND COLD

Do not, O do not use me

As you have used others.

Better you did refuse me:

You have refused others.

Better, far better hope to banish

A small child than, grown old,

Hope should decay, his vigour vanish,

And I be left alone and

Cold, cold.

Ah, use no guile nor cunning

If you should even yet love me.

Hark, Time with Love is running,

Death cloud-like floats above me.

Love me with such simplicity

As children, frankly bold,

Do love with; oh, never pity me,

Though I be left alone and

Cold, cold.

INEVITABLE CHANGE

Young as the Spring seemed life when she

Came from her silent East to me;

Unquiet as Autumn was my breast

When she declined into her West.

Such tender, such untroubling things

She taught me, daughter of all Springs;

Such dusty deathly lore I learned

When her last embers redly burned.

How should it hap (Love, canst thou say?)

Such end should be to so pure day?

Such shining chastity give place

To this annulling grave's disgrace?

Such hopes be quenched in this despair,

Grace chilled to granite everywhere?

How should—in vain I cry—how should

That be, alas, which only could!

LONELINESS

How green and strange the light is,

Creeping through the window.

Lying alone in bed,

How strange the night is!

How still and chill the air is.

It seems no sound could live

Here in my room

That now so bare is.

All bright and still the room is,

But easeless here am I.

Deep in my heart

Cold lonely gloom is!

I HEARD A VOICE UPON THE WINDOW BEAT

I heard a voice upon the window beat

And then grow dim, grow still.

Opening I saw the snowy sill

Marked with the robin's feet.

Chill was the air and chill

The thoughts that in my bosom beat.

I thought of all that wide and hopeless snow

Crusting the frozen lands.

Of small birds that in famished bands

A-chill and silent grow.

And how Earth's myriad hands

Clutched only hills of frosted snow.

And then I thought of Love that beat and cried

Famishing at my breast;

How I, by chilling care distrest,

Denied him, and Love died....

O, with what sore unrest

Love's ghost woke with the bird that cried!

FIRST LOVE

I

"No, no! Leave me not in this dark hour,"

She cried. And I,

"Thou foolish dear, but call not dark this hour;

What night doth lour?"

And nought did she reply,

But in her eye

The clamorous trouble spoke, and then was still.

O that I heard her once more speak,

Or even with troubled eye

Teach me her fear, that I might seek

Poppies for misery.

The hour was dark, although I knew it not,

But when the livid dawn broke then I knew,

How while I slept the dense night through

Treachery's worm her fainting fealty slew.

O that I heard her once more speak

As then—so weak—

"No, no! Leave me not in this dark hour."

That I might answer her,

"Love, be at rest, for nothing now shall stir

Thy heart, but my heart beating there."

II

Come back, come back—ah, never more to leave me!

Come back, even though your constant longing grieve me,

Longing for other looks and hands than mine.

By all that's most divine

In your frank human beauty, come and cover

With that deceiving smile the love your lover

Has taught you, and the light that in your eyes

Tells of the painful joys that make your ruinous Paradise.

Come back, that so, upon the shining meadow

When the sun draws the magic of your shadow,

Or when the red fire's gradual sinking light

Yields up the room to night;

Seeing you thus or thus I may recapture

The very sharpness of remembered rapture:—

So it may seem, by exquisite deceit,

You are yet mine, I yours, and life yet rare and sweet.

Come back—no, come not back now, come back never;

That day you went I knew it was for ever.

I know you, how the spectre of cold shame

Would chill you if you came.

Lo, here first love's first memory abideth;

Here in my heart the image of you yet hideth.

But though you should come back and hope thrilled me anew,

First love would yet be dead—oh, it would not be you!

III

O but what grace if I could but forget you!

You have made league with all familiar things—

The thrush that still, evening and morning, sings,

The aspen leaves that sigh

"My dear!" with your true voice when I pass by....

O, and that too-long-dying flush of tender sky

That minds me, and with sense too grave for tears,

Of those forever dead too-blissful years.

Yet 'twere a miracle could I forget you,

Since even dead things, once sensible of you,

Yield up your ghost; as all the garden through

Murmurs the rose, "'Twas she

Shook in her palm the dew that shone in me;"

And on the stairs your recent footstep echoingly

Sounds yet again, and each dark doorway speaks

Of you toward whom my sharpened longing seeks.

O that I could forget or not regret you!

Could I but see you as I have seen a fair

Child under apple-burdened boughs that bear

Morn's autumn beauty, and

Seeing her saw all heaven at my hand,

And all day long that happy child before me stand....

Not thus I see you, but as one drowning sees

Home, friends—and loves his very enemies!

THE CALL

Is it the wind that stirs the trees,

Is it the trees that scratch the wall,

Is it the wall that shakes and mutters,

Is it a dumb ghost's call?

The wind steals in and twirls the candle,

The branches heave and brush the wall,

But more than tree or wild wind mutters

This night, this night of all.

"Open!" a cry sounds, and I gasp.

"Open!" and hands beat door and wall.

"Open!" and each dark echo mutters.

I rise, a shape and shadow tall.

"Open!" Across the room I falter,

And near the door crouch by the wall;

Thrice bolt the door as the voice mutters

"Open!" and frail strokes fall.

"Open!" The light's out, and I shrink

Quaking and blind against the wall;

"Open!" no sound is, yet it mutters

Within me now, this night of all.

Was it the wind that stirred the trees,

Was it the trees that scratched the wall,

Was it the wall that shook and muttered.

Or Love's last, ghostly call?

THE SHADE

I saw him as he went

With merry voice and eye.

I met him when he came

Back, tired but the same—

The same clear voice, bright eye,

Merry laugh, quick reply.

And now, if I but look

Unnoting at a book,

Or from the window stare

At dark woods newly bare,

I see that shining eye,

The same as when he went:

—But whose is the low sigh,

The cold shade o'er me bent?

HAPPY IS ENGLAND NOW

There is not anything more wonderful

Than a great people moving towards the deep

Of an unguessed and unfeared future; nor

Is aught so dear of all held dear before

As the new passion stirring in their veins

When the destroying Dragon wakes from sleep.

Happy is England now, as never yet!

And though the sorrows of the slow days fret

Her faithfullest children, grief itself is proud.

Ev'n the warm beauty of this spring and summer

That turns to bitterness turns then to gladness

Since for this England the beloved ones died.

Happy is England in the brave that die

For wrongs not hers and wrongs so sternly hers;

Happy in those that give, give, and endure

The pain that never the new years may cure;

Happy in all her dark woods, green fields, towns,

Her hills and rivers and her chafing sea.

Whate'er was dear before is dearer now.

There's not a bird singing upon his bough

But sings the sweeter in our English ears:

There's not a nobleness of heart, hand, brain

But shines the purer; happiest is England now

In those that fight, and watch with pride and tears.

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES

And now, while the dark vast earth shakes and rocks

In this wild dream-like snare of mortal shocks,

How look (I muse) those cold and solitary stars

On these magnificent, cruel wars?—

Venus, that brushes with her shining lips

(Surely!) the wakeful edge of the world and mocks

With hers its all ungentle wantonness?—

Or the large moon (pricked by the spars of ships

Creeping and creeping in their restlessness),

The moon pouring strange light on things more strange,

Looks she unheedfully on seas and lands

Trembling with change and fear of counterchange?

O, not earth trembles, but the stars, the stars!

The sky is shaken and the cool air is quivering.

I cannot look up to the crowded height

And see the fair stars trembling in their light,

For thinking of the starlike spirits of men

Crowding the earth and with great passion quivering:—

Stars quenched in anger and hate, stars sick with pity.

I cannot look up to the naked skies

Because a sorrow on dark midnight lies,

Death, on the living world of sense;

Because on my own land a shadow lies

That may not rise;

Because from bare grey hillside and rich city

Streams of uncomprehending sadness pour,

Thwarting the eager spirit's pure intelligence ...

How look (I muse) those cold and solitary stars

On these magnificent, cruel wars?

Stars trembled in broad heaven, faint with pity.

An hour to dawn I looked. Beside the trees

Wet mist shaped other trees that branching rose,

Covering the woods and putting out the stars.

There was no murmur on the seas,

No wind blew—only the wandering air that grows

With dawn, then murmurs, sighs,

And dies.

The mist climbed slowly, putting out the stars,

And the earth trembled when the stars were gone;

And moving strangely everywhere upon

The trembling earth, thickened the watery mist.

And for a time the holy things are veiled.

England's wise thoughts are swords; her quiet hours

Are trodden underfoot like wayside flowers,

And every English heart is England's wholly.

In starless night

A serious passion streams the heaven with light.

A common beating is in the air—

The heart of England throbbing everywhere.

And all her roads are nerves of noble thought,

And all her people's brain is but her brain;

And all her history, less her shame,

Is part of her requickened consciousness.

Her courage rises clean again.

Even in victory there hides defeat;

The spirit's murdered though the body survives,

Except the cause for which, a people strives

Burn with no covetous, foul heat.

Fights she against herself who infamously draws

The sword against man's secret spiritual laws.

But thou, England, because a bitter heel

Hath sought to bruise the brain, the sensitive will,

The conscience of the world,

For this, England, art risen, and shalt fight

Purely through long profoundest night,

Making their quarrel thine who are grieved like thee;

And (if to thee the stars yield victory)

Tempering their hate of the great foe that hurled

Vainly her strength against the conscience of the world.

I looked again, or dreamed I looked, and saw

The stars again and all their peace again.

The moving mist had gone, and shining still

The moon went high and pale above the hill.

Not now those lights were trembling in the vast

Ways of the nervy heaven, nor trembled earth:

Profound and calm they gazed as the soft-shod hours passed.

And with less fear (not with less awe,

Remembering, England, all the blood and pain)

How look, I cried, you stern and solitary stars

On these disastrous wars!

August, 1914.

SWEET ENGLAND

I heard a boy that climbed up Dover's Hill

Singing Sweet England, sweeter for his song.

The notes crept muffled through the copse, but still

Sharply recalled the things forgotten long,

The music that my own boy's lips had known,

Singing, and old airs on a wild flute blown;

And other hills, more grim and lonely far,

And valleys empty of these orchard trees;

A sheep-pond filled with the moon, a single star

I had watched by night searching the wreckful seas;

And all the streets and streets that childhood knew

In years when London streets were all my view.

And I remembered how that song I heard,

Sweet England, sung by children on May-day,

Nor any song was sweeter of a bird

Than that half-grievous air from children gay—

For then, as now, youth made the sadness bright,

Till the words, Sweet, Sweet England, shone with light.

Now, listening, I forgot how men yet fought

For this same England, till the song was done

And no sound lingered but the lark's, that brought

New music down from fields of cloud and sun,

Or the sad lapwing's over fields of green

Crying beneath the copse, near but unseen.

Then I remembered. All wide England spread

Before me, hill and wood and meadow and stream

And ancient roads and homes of men long dead,

And all the beauty a familiar dream.

On the green hills a cloud of silver grey

Gave gentle light stranger than light of day.

And clear between the hills, past the near crest

And many hills, the hungry cities crept,

Noble and mean, oppressive and oppressed,

Where dreams unrealized of England slept:

And they too England, packed in dusty street

With men that half forgot England was sweet.

Now men were far, but like a living brain

Quick with their thought, the earth, hills, air and light

Were quivering as though a shining rain

Falling all round made even the light more bright;

And trees and water and heath and hedge-flowers fair

With more than natural sweetness washed the air.

From hill to hill a sparkling web it swung,

A snare for happiness, lit with lovely dews.

The very smoke of cities now was hung

But like a grave girl's dress of tranquil hues:

And how (I thought) can England, seen thus bright,

Lifting her clear frank head, but love the light?—

No, not her brain! that bright web was the shadow

Of the high spirit in their spirit shining

Who on scarred foreign hill and trenchèd meadow

Kept the faith yet, unfearful, unrepining;—

Her faith that with the dark world's liberty

Mingles as earth's great rivers with the sea.

O with what gilding ray was the land agleam!

It was not sun and dew, bush, bough and leaf,

But human spirits visible as in a dream

That turns from glad to aching, being too brief:

Courage and beauty shining in such brightness

That all the thoughtful woods were no more lightless.

But most the hills a splendour had put on

Of golden honour, bright and high and calm

And like old heroes young men dream upon

When midnight stirs with magic sword and palm;—

With the fled mist all meanness put away

And the air clear and keen as salt sea-spray....

And yet no dream; no dream! I saw the whole,

The reap'd fields, idle kine and wandering sheep.

A weak wind through the near tall hedge-tree stole,

And died where Dover's Hill rose bare and steep;

I saw yet what I saw an hour ago,

But knew what save by dreams I did not know—

Sweet England!—wild proud heart of things unspoken

Spirit that men bear shyly and love purely;

That dies to live anew a life unbroken

As spring from every winter rising surely:

Sweet England unto generations sped,

Now bitter-sweetest for her daily dead.

September, 1916.

PRESAGE OF VICTORY

I

Then first I knew, seeing that bent grey head,

How England honours all her thousand dead.

Then first I knew how faith through black grief burns,

Until the ruined heart glows while it yearns

For one that never more returns—

Glows in the spent embers of its pride

For one that careless lived and fearless died.

And then I knew, then first,

How everywhere Hope from her prison had burst—

On every hill, wide dale, soft valley's lap,

In lonely cottage clutch'd between huge downs,

And streets confused with streets in clanging towns—

Like spring from winter's jail pouring her sap

Into the idle wood of last year's trees.

Then first I knew how the vast world-disease

Would die away, and England upon her seas

Shake every scab of sickness; toward new skies

Lifting a little holier her head,

With honesty the brighter in her eyes,

And all that urgent horror well forgot,

The dark remembered not;

Only remembered then, with bosom yet hot,

The blood that on how many a far field lies,

The bones enriching not our English earth

That brought them to such splendid birth

And the last sacrifice.

II

Then first I knew, seeing that head bent low,

How gravely all her days she needs must go,

Bearing an image in her faded breast....

O, the dark unrest

Of thoughts that never cease their flight,

Never vanishing, yet never still,

Like birds that wail round the bewildering nest!

But other nestlings never shall be hers,

Only a painful image his place fill,

Only a memory remain for her thin bosom to nurse

In all that dark unrest

Of sleepless and tormented night.

III

Yet from her eyes presage of victory

Looked steadfast out at mine.

It is not to be thought of (said her eyes)

That only a foul blotch the sun may shine

On England, through low poisonous thick skies!

Never, O never again

This pain, this pain!

Else from that foreign earth his bones would rise

And thrust in anger at the bitter skies.

It is not to be thought of that such prayer

Should fall unheeded back through heavy air.

But I have heard, in the night I have heard,

When not a leaf in all the orchard stirred,

And even the water of the bourne hung still,

And the old twitching, creaking house was still,

And all was still,

What was it I heard?

It could not be his voice, come from so far;

I know 'twas not a bird.

It was his voice, or that lone watchful star

Creeping above the casement bar,

Saying: Fear thou no ill,

No ill!

Then all the silence was an echoing round,

The water and dumb trees their antique murmur found,

And clear as music came the repeated Sound:

Fear thou no ill, no ill!

Was it her eyes or her tongue told me this?

IV

Yet but sad comfort from such pain is caught....

I went out from the house and climbed the coombe,

And where the first light of sweet morning hung

I found the light I sought.

From somewhere south a bugle's note was flung,

From somewhere north a sombre boom;

On the opposing hills white flecks and grey

Spotted the misty green,

And blue smoke wraiths around the tall trees clung.

Presently rose thick dust clouds from the green:

Came up, or seemed to come, the instant beat

Of marching feet;

Then with the clouds the beating died away,

And nothing was seen

But broken hills and the new flush of day.

V

All round the folding hills were like green waves,

Tossing awhile together ere they fall

And fling their salt on the steep stony beach.

The sound I heard was sound of Roman feet—

I saw the sparkling light on Roman glaives,

I heard the Roman speech

Answering the wild Iberian battle-call:

They passed from sight on the long street.

And I saw then the Mercian Kings that strode

Proudly from the small city of grey stone

And climbed the folding hills,

Past the full springs that bubbled and flowed

Through the soft valley and on to Avon stream.

They passed—as all things pass and seem

No other than a dream,

All but the shining and the echo gone.

But still I listened and looked. Their voice it was

Blown through the valley grass;

Their dust it was that sprang from the hard road

Where now these English legions flowed,

Waking the quiet like a steady wind.

That ancient soldiery before me passed

With all that followed them, and these the last

Of my own generation, my own mind;

Their strength and courage rooted deep in the earth

That brings men to such splendid birth

And no vain sacrifice ...

It was as when the land all darkness lies,

And shades, nor only shades, move freely out

And through the trees are heard and all about

Their ancient ways, 'neath the old stars and skies.

So now in morning's light I knew them there

Leading the men that marched and marched away,

And mounted up the hill, and down the hill

Passed from my eyes and ears, and left the air

Trembling everywhere,

And then how still!

VI

Then first I knew the joy that yet should be

Ringing from camped hill and guarded sea

With England's victory.

The dust had stirred, the infinite dust had stirred,

It was the courage of the past I heard,

The virtue of those buried bones again

Animate in these marching Englishmen;

And nothing wanted if the dead but nerved

The living hands that the same England served.

With new-washed eyes I saw as I went down

On the hill crest the oak-grove's crown,

With new delighted ear heard the lark sing—

That mad delighted thing;

The very smoke that rose was strangely blue,

But most the orchard brightened wonderfully new,

Where the wild spring, ere winter snow well gone,

Scattered her whiter, briefer snow-cloud down.

And England lovelier looked than when

Her dead roused not her living men.

May, 1916.

THE RETURN

I heard the rumbling guns. I saw the smoke,

The unintelligible shock of hosts that still,

Far off, unseeing, strove and strove again:

And Beauty flying naked down the hill.

From morn to eve: and then stern night cried Peace!

And shut the strife in darkness; all was still.

Then slowly crept a triumph on the dark—

And I heard Beauty singing up the hill.

ENGLISH HILLS

O that I were

Where breaks the pure cold light

On English hills,

And peewits rising cry,

And gray is all the sky.

Or at evening there

When the faint slow light stays,

And far below

Sleeps the last lingering sound,

And night leans all round.

O then, O there

'Tis English haunted ground.

The diligent stars

Creep out, watch, and smile;

The wise moon lingers awhile.

For surely there

Heroic shapes are moving,

Visible thoughts,

Passions, things divine,

Clear beneath clear star-shine.

O that I were

Again on English hills,

Seeing between

Laborious villages

Her cool dark loveliness.

HOMECOMING

When I came home from wanderings

In a tall chattering ship,

I thought a hundred happy things,

Of people, places, and such things

As I came sailing home.

The tall ship moved how slowly on

With me and hundreds more,

That thought not then of wanderings,

But of unwhispered, longed-for things,

Familiar things of home.

For not in miles seemed other lands

Far off, but in long years

As we came near to England then;

Even the tall ship heard secret things

As she moved trembling home.

It was at dawn. The chattering ship

Was strangely hushed; faint mist

Crept everywhere, and we crept on,

And every eye was creeping on

The mist, as we moved home....

Until we saw, far, very far,

Or dreamed we saw, her cliffs,

And thought of sweet, intolerable things,

Of England—dark, unwhispered things,

Such things, as we crept home.

ENGLAND'S ENEMY

She stands like one with mazy cares distraught.

Around her sudden angry storm-clouds rise,

Dark, dark! and comes the look into her eyes

Of eld. All that herself herself hath taught

She cons anew, that courage new be caught

Of courage old. Yet comfortless still lies

Snake-like in her warm bosom (vexed with sighs)

Fear of the greatness that herself hath wrought.

No glory but her memory teems with it,

No beauty that's not hers; more nobly none

Of all her sisters runs with her; but she

For her old destiny dreams herself unfit,

And fumbling at the future doubtfully

Muses how Rome of Romans was undone.

FROM PICCADILLY IN AUGUST

Now the trees rest: the moon has taught them sleep,

Like drowsy wings of bats are all their leaves,

Clinging together. Girls at ease who fold

Fair hands upon white necks and through dusk fields

Walk all content,—of them the trees have taken

Their way of evening rest; the yellow moon

With her pale gold has lit their dreams that lisp

On the wind's murmuring lips.

And low beyond

Burn those bright lamps beneath the moon more bright,

Lamps that but flash and sparkle and light not

The inward eye and musing thought, nor reach

Where, poplar-like, that tall-built campanile

Lifts to the neighbouring moon her head and feels

The pale gold like an ocean laving her.

EVENING BEAUTY: BLACKFRIARS

Nought is but beauty weareth, near and far,

Under the pale, blue sky and lonely star.

This is that quick hour when the city turns

Her troubled harsh distortion and blind care

Into brief loveliness seen everywhere,

While in the fuming west the low sun smouldering burns.

Not brick nor marble the rich beauty owns,

Not this is held in starward-pointing stones.

Sun, wind and smoke the threefold magic stir,

Kissing each favourless poor ruin with kiss

Like that when lovers lovers lure to bliss,

And earth than towered heaven awhile is heavenlier.

Tall shafts that show the sky how far away!

The thousand-window'd house gilded with day

That fades to night; the arches low, the streamer

Everywhere of the ruddy'd smoke.... Is aught

Of loveliness so rich e'er sold and bought?

Look visions fairer in the eyes of any dreamer?

Needs must so rare a beauty be so brief!

Night comes, of this delight the subtle thief.

Thou canst not, Night, this same rich thievery keep;

Seize it and look! 'tis gone, ere seized is gone—

Only in our warm bosoms lingering on,

A nest of precious dreams when our lids droop in sleep.

So in her darkening loveliness is she seen

Like an autumnal passion-haunted queen,

Who hears, "A captain-king is at the gate"—

"'Tis Antony, Antony!" Then hastens she,

Beauty to beauty adding yet, till—see,

A queen within the queen perilous with love and fate!

SAILING OF THE GLORY

Merrily shouted all the sailors

As they left the town behind;

Merrily shouted they and gladdened

At the slip-slap of the wind.

But envious were those faint home-keepers,

Faint land-lovers, as they saw

How the Glory dipped and staggered—

Envying saw

Pass the ship while all her sailors

Merrily shouted.

Far and far on eastern waters

Sailed the ship and yet sailed on,

While the townsmen, faint land-lovers,

Thought, "How long is't now she's gone?

Now, maybe, Bombay she touches,

Now strange craft about her throng";

Till she grew but half-remembered,

Gone so long:

Quite forgot how all her sailors

Merrily shouted.

Far in unfamiliar waters

Ship and shipmen harbourage found,

Where the rocks creep out like robbers

After travellers tempest-bound.

Then those faint land-lovers murmured

Doleful thanks not dead were they:—

Ah, yet envious, though the Glory

Sunken lay,

Hearing again those farewell voices

Merrily shouting.

AT THE DOCK

They loiter round the Dock that holds yon Ship

Shuddering at the dark pool's defiled lip

From springing bows to foam-deriding stern;

They have left her, and await her call "Return!"

Like any human mistress she has cast

Careless her ancient lovers, till at last

Perforce she calls them, and perforce they come

Like any human lovers.... Ah, what home

Know these, save in the Ship, the Ship! She groans

Day and night with travail of their strenuous bones.

They know her for their mother, sister, spouse,

Heart of their passion, idol of their vows;

They ward her, and she is their sure defence

'Gainst the sad waters' leagued malevolence.

The Ship, the Ship: they are her slaves, and she

Their Liege, their Faith, their Fate, their History.

Lo! they have bought her buoyancy with their blood

And their ribs cling the keel that cleaves the flood.

Their watches in the night, their loneliness,

Their toil, hunger and thirst, their heart's distress,

Their hands, their feet, far eye and smitten head

Whereon the Sea's upgathered weight is shed;

With these the Ship, the Ship is laid and rigged,

Launched and steered out; with these her living grave is digged,

They lean close over her—and long, perhaps,

For the broad seas and the loud wind that claps

Boisterous hands on the Ship's course; and wait

Her call who calls them with the voice of Fate.

"THE MEN WHO LOVED THE CAUSE THAT NEVER DIES"

O come you down from the far hills

Whereon you fought, triumphed and died,

Men at whose names the quick blood thrills

And the heart's troubled in our side.

Your shadows o'er our fields ere night

Draw from the shadow of old trees;

Ghost-hallowed run the streams, and light

Hangs halo-wise in the great peace.

Warriors of England whom we praise

(Ah, vain all praise!), your spirit is not

Lost in the meanness of these days,

Not wholly is your charge forgot.

And this perplexity of strife

Not all estrangèd leaves our heart;

England is ours yet, and her life

Has yet in ours the purest part.

But come you down and stand you yet

A little closer to our side,

Or in the darkness we forget

The cause for which Earth's noblest died.

Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey.

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Table of Contents

POEMS NEW AND OLD

PRESS NOTICES

POEMS NEW AND OLD

London: Selwyn and Blount, Ltd. 21, York Buildings, Adelphi, W.C. 2 1920

NOTE.

CONTENTS

PART I

THE EVENING SKY

BEECHWOOD

THY HILL LEAVE NOT

THE CAVES

I WILL ASK

IN THOSE OLD DAYS

THE ASH

IMAGINATION

NO MORE ADIEU

THE VISIT

TRAVELLING

THE SONG OF THE FOREST

OUT OF THE EAST

PART II

THE WAKERS

MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD

THE SHOCK

THE UNLOOSENING

WILD HEART

THE BODY

THE TOSSING MOUNTAINS

THE POND

TEN O'CLOCK NO MORE [A]

FROM WEAR TO THAMES

TIME FROM HIS GRAVE

WILDER MUSIC

GRASSES

FAIR AND BRIEF

NIGHTFALL

THE SLAVES

THE FUGITIVE

THE UNTHRIFT

THE WREN

THE WINDS

THE WANDERER

MERRILL'S GARDEN

THE LIME TREE

DARK CHESTNUT

LONELY AIRS

THE CREEPER

SMOKE

QUEENS

THE RED HOUSE

THE BEAM

LAST HOURS

THE WISH

NOWHERE, EVERYWHERE

TAKE CARE, TAKE CARE

NEARNESS

THE SECOND FLOOD

THE GLASS

BUT MOST THY LIGHT

IN THAT DARK SILENT HOUR

ONCE THERE WAS TIME

SCATTER THE SILVER ASH LIKE SNOW

JUSTIFICATION

I HAVE NEVER LOVED YOU YET

THE PIGEONS

AND THESE FOR YOU

JUDGMENT DAY

LIGHTING THE FIRE

RECOVERY

EYES

FULFILMENT

BRING YOUR BEAUTY

MEMORIAL

THE HUMAN MUSIC

THE CANDLE

OLD FIRES

THE CROWNS

THE BRIGHT RIDER

TO THE HEAVENLY POWER

SNOWS

THE THORN

CHANGE

BEYOND THE BARN

LET HONOUR SPEAK

TALK

THE UNDYING

THE NATIVE COUNTRY

PART III

STONE TREES

IT WAS THE LOVELY MOON

THE HOUNDS

HECTOR

LISTENING

STONES

THE ENEMIES

THE SILVERY ONE

THE FLUTE

STARS

TEN O'CLOCK AND FOUR O'CLOCK

THE YEW

NOVEMBER SKIES

DELIGHT

CHANGE

SLEEPING SEA

THE WEAVER OF MAGIC

THE DARKSOME NIGHTINGALE

UNDER THE LINDEN BRANCHES

STRIFE

FOREBODING

DISCOVERY

MORE THAN SWEET

THE BRIGHTNESS

THE HOLY MOUNTAINS

RAPTURE

MUSIC COMES

THE IDIOT

THE MOUSE

HAPPINESS

COMFORTABLE LIGHT

HALLO!

FEAR

WAKING

THE FALL

STAY

SHADOWS

WALKING AT EVE

THE PHYSICIAN

VISION AND ECHO

REVISITATION

UNPARDONED

SOME HURT THING

THE WAITS

IN THE LANE

THE LAST TIME

YOU THAT WERE

"THE LIGHT THAT NEVER WAS ON SEA OR LAND"

AT EVENING'S HUSH

HAPPY DEATH

WISDOM AND A MOTHER

THE THRUSH SINGS

TO MY MOTHER

THE UNUTTERED

FAIR EVE

THE SNARE

O HIDE ME IN THY LOVE

PRAYER TO MY LORD

THE TREE

EARTH TO EARTH

ON A PIECE OF SILVER

THE ESCAPE

WONDER

LAMBOURN TOWN

THE LAMP

WHO IS IT THAT ANSWERS?

WAITING

ABSENCE

SLEEP

YOUR SHADOW

THE FULL TIDE

HANDS

THE NIGHT WATCH

THE HAUNTED SHADOW

ALONE AND COLD

INEVITABLE CHANGE

LONELINESS

I HEARD A VOICE UPON THE WINDOW BEAT

FIRST LOVE

THE CALL

THE SHADE

HAPPY IS ENGLAND NOW

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES

SWEET ENGLAND

PRESAGE OF VICTORY

THE RETURN

ENGLISH HILLS

HOMECOMING

ENGLAND'S ENEMY

FROM PICCADILLY IN AUGUST

EVENING BEAUTY: BLACKFRIARS

SAILING OF THE GLORY

AT THE DOCK

"THE MEN WHO LOVED THE CAUSE THAT NEVER DIES"

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE