Chapter 606

The City of the smoky fray; A prodded ox, it drags and moans: Its Morrow no man's child; its Day A vulture's morsel beaked to bones.

It strives without a mark for strife; It feasts beside a famished host: The loose restraint of wanton life, That threatened penance in the ghost!

Yet there our battle urges; there Spring heroes many: issuing thence, Names that should leave no vacant air For fresh delight in confidence.

Life was to them the bag of grain, And Death the weedy harrow's tooth. Those warriors of the sighting brain Give worn Humanity new youth.

Our song and star are they to lead The tidal multitude and blind From bestial to the higher breed By fighting souls of love divined,

They scorned the ventral dream of peace, Unknown in nature. This they knew: That life begets with fair increase Beyond the flesh, if life be true.

Just reason based on valiant blood, The instinct bred afield would match To pipe thereof a swelling flood, Were men of Earth made wise in watch.

Though now the numbers count as drops An urn might bear, they father Time. She shapes anew her dusty crops; Her quick in their own likeness climb.

Of their own force do they create; They climb to light, in her their root. Your brutish cry at muffled fate She smites with pangs of worse than brute.

She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears A Mother whom no cry can melt; But read her past desires and fears, The letters on her breast are spelt.

A slayer, yea, as when she pressed Her savage to the slaughter-heaps, To sacrifice she prompts her best: She reaps them as the sower reaps.

But read her thought to speed the race, And stars rush forth of blackest night: You chill not at a cold embrace To come, nor dread a dubious might.

Her double visage, double voice, In oneness rise to quench the doubt. This breath, her gift, has only choice Of service, breathe we in or out.

Since Pain and Pleasure on each hand Led our wild steps from slimy rock To yonder sweeps of gardenland, We breathe but to be sword or block.

The sighting brain her good decree Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith, By reason hourly fed, that she, To some the clod, to some the wraith,

Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream. Flame, stream, are we, in mid career From torrent source, delirious dream, To heaven-reflecting currents clear.

And why the sons of Strength have been Her cherished offspring ever; how The Spirit served by her is seen Through Law; perusing love will show.

Love born of knowledge, love that gains Vitality as Earth it mates, The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains, The Life, the Death, illuminates.

For love we Earth, then serve we all; Her mystic secret then is ours: We fall, or view our treasures fall, Unclouded, as beholds her flowers

Earth, from a night of frosty wreck, Enrobed in morning's mounted fire, When lowly, with a broken neck, The crocus lays her cheek to mire.

THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER

I

Demeter devastated our good land, In blackness for her daughter snatched below. Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand, Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw The wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer's ray. Now whether night advancing, whether day, Scarce did the baldness show: The hand of man was a defeated hand.

II

Necessity, the primal goad to growth, Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one; Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth; Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun, Or why men drew the breath to carry pain. High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain, Idly the flax-wheel spun Unridered: starving lords were wasp and moth.

III

Lean grassblades losing green on their bent flags, Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags; Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees, More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled. Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world, Careless to lure or please. A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags.

IV

No smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw, Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom, In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw, Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom, And whose pale place of habitation mute, She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruit Anciently, gaped for bloom: Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl's claw.

V

The wrathful Queen descended on a vale, That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved. Iambe, maiden of the merry tale, Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved. It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn. Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone. More than for her who grieved, She could for this waste home have piped the wail.

VI

Iambe, her dear mountain-rivulet To waken laughter from cold stones, beheld A riven wheatfield cracking for the wet, And seed like infant's teeth, that never swelled, Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round. Teeth of the giants marked she where thin ground Rocky in spikes rebelled Against the hand here slack as rotted net.

VII

The valley people up the ashen scoop She beckoned, aiming hopelessly to win Her Mistress in compassion of yon group So pinched and wizened; with their aged grin, For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe, White as in chalk outlining little O, Dumb, from a falling chin; Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop.

VIII

Their tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced as when Dark underwaters the recesses choke; With cluck and upper quiver of a hen In grasp, past peeking: cry before the croak. Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fount Bountiful of old days, heard them recount This and that cruel stroke: Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men.

IX

A figure of black rock by sunbeams crowned Through stormclouds, where the volumed shades enfold An earth in awe before the claps resound And woods and dwellings are as billows rolled, The barren Nourisher unmelted shed Death from the looks that wandered with the dead Out of the realms of gold, In famine for her lost, her lost unfound.

X

Iambe from her Mistress tripped; she raised The cattle-call above the moan of prayer; And slowly out of fields their fancy grazed, Among the droves, defiled a horse and mare: The wrecks of horse and mare: such ribs as view Seas that have struck brave ships ashore, while through Shoots the swift foamspit: bare They nodded, and Demeter on them gazed.

XI

Howbeit the season of the dancing blood, Forgot was horse of mare, yea, mare of horse: Reversed, each head at either's flank, they stood. Whereat the Goddess, in a dim remorse, Laid hand on them, and smacked; and her touch pricked. Neighing within, at either's flank they licked; Played on a moment's force At courtship, withering to the crazy nod.

XII

The nod was that we gather for consent; And mournfully amid the group a dame, Interpreting the thing in nature meant, Her hands held out like bearers of the flame, And nodded for the negative sideways. Keen at her Mistress glanced Iambe: rays From the Great Mother came: Her lips were opened wide; the curse was rent.

XIII

She laughed: since our first harvesting heard none Like thunder of the song of heart: her face, The dreadful darkness, shook to mounted sun, And peal on peal across the hills held chase. She laughed herself to water; laughed to fire; Laughed the torrential laugh of dam and sire Full of the marrowy race. Her laughter, Gods! was flesh on skeleton.

XIV

The valley people huddled, broke, afraid, Assured, and taking lightning in the veins, They puffed, they leaped, linked hands, together swayed, Unwitting happiness till golden rains Of tears in laughter, laughter weeping, smote Knowledge of milky mercy from that throat Pouring to heal their pains: And one bold youth set mouth at a shy maid.

XV

Iambe clapped to see the kindly lusts Inspire the valley people, still on seas, Like poplar-tops relieved from stress of gusts, With rapture in their wonderment; but these, Low homage being rendered, ran to plough, Fed by the laugh, as by the mother cow Calves at the teats they tease: Soon drove they through the yielding furrow-crusts.

XVI

Uprose the blade in green, the leaf in red, The tree of water and the tree of wood: And soon among the branches overhead Gave beauty juicy issue sweet for food. O Laughter! beauty plumped and love had birth. Laughter! O thou reviver of sick Earth! Good for the spirit, good For body, thou! to both art wine and bread!

EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN

I

The shepherd, with his eye on hazy South, Has told of rain upon the fall of day. But promise is there none for Susan's drouth, That he will come, who keeps in dry delay. The freshest of the village three years gone, She hangs as the white field-rose hangs short-lived; And she and Earth are one In withering unrevived. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!

II

Ah, what is Marriage, says each pouting maid, When she who wedded with the soldier hides At home as good as widowed in the shade, A lighthouse to the girls that would be brides: Nor dares to give a lad an ogle, nor To dream of dancing, but must hang and moan, Her husband in the war, And she to lie alone. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!

III

They have not known; they are not in the stream; Light as the flying seed-ball is their play, The silly maids! and happy souls they seem; Yet Grief would not change fates with such as they. They have not struck the roots which meet the fires Beneath, and bind us fast with Earth, to know The strength of her desires, The sternness of her woe. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!

IV

Now, shepherd, see thy word, where without shower A borderless low blotting Westward spreads. The hall-clock holds the valley on the hour; Across an inner chamber thunder treads: The dead leaf trips, the tree-top swings, the floor Of dust whirls, dropping lumped: near thunder speaks, And drives the dames to door, Their kerchiefs flapped at cheeks. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! And welcome waterspouts of blessed rain!

V

Through night, with bedroom window wide for air, Lay Susan tranced to hear all heaven descend: And gurgling voices came of Earth, and rare, Past flowerful, breathings, deeper than life's end, From her heaved breast of sacred common mould; Whereby this lone-laid wife was moved to feel Unworded things and old To her pained heart appeal. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! And down in deluges of blessed rain!

VI

At morn she stood to live for ear and sight, Love sky or cloud, or rose or grasses drenched. A lureful devil, that in glow-worm light Set languor writhing all its folds, she quenched. But she would muse when neighbours praised her face, Her services, and staunchness to her mate: Knowing by some dim trace, The change might bear a date. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! Thrice beauteous is our sunshine after rain!

MOTHER TO BABE

I

Fleck of sky you are, Dropped through branches dark, O my little one, mine! Promise of the star, Outpour of the lark; Beam and song divine.

II

See this precious gift, Steeping in new birth All my being, for sign Earth to heaven can lift, Heaven descend on earth, Both in one be mine!

III

Life in light you glass When you peep and coo, You, my little one, mine! Brooklet chirps to grass, Daisy looks in dew Up to dear sunshine.

WOODLAND PEACE

Sweet as Eden is the air, And Eden-sweet the ray. No Paradise is lost for them Who foot by branching root and stem, And lightly with the woodland share The change of night and day.

Here all say, We serve her, even as I: We brood, we strive to sky, We gaze upon decay, We wot of life through death, How each feeds each we spy; And is a tangle round, Are patient; what is dumb We question not, nor ask The silent to give sound, The hidden to unmask, The distant to draw near.

And this the woodland saith: I know not hope or fear; I take whate'er may come; I raise my head to aspects fair, From foul I turn away.

Sweet as Eden is the air, And Eden-sweet the ray.

THE QUESTION WHITHER

I

When we have thrown off this old suit, So much in need of mending, To sink among the naked mute, Is that, think you, our ending? We follow many, more we lead, And you who sadly turf us, Believe not that all living seed Must flower above the surface.

II

Sensation is a gracious gift, But were it cramped to station, The prayer to have it cast adrift Would spout from all sensation. Enough if we have winked to sun, Have sped the plough a season; There is a soul for labour done, Endureth fixed as reason.

III

Then let our trust be firm in Good, Though we be of the fasting; Our questions are a mortal brood, Our work is everlasting. We children of Beneficence Are in its being sharers; And Whither vainer sounds than Whence, For word with such wayfarers.

OUTER AND INNER

I

From twig to twig the spider weaves At noon his webbing fine. So near to mute the zephyrs flute That only leaflets dance. The sun draws out of hazel leaves A smell of woodland wine. I wake a swarm to sudden storm At any step's advance.

II

Along my path is bugloss blue, The star with fruit in moss; The foxgloves drop from throat to top A daily lesser bell. The blackest shadow, nurse of dew, Has orange skeins across; And keenly red is one thin thread That flashing seems to swell.

III

My world I note ere fancy comes, Minutest hushed observe: What busy bits of motioned wits Through antlered mosswork strive. But now so low the stillness hums, My springs of seeing swerve, For half a wink to thrill and think The woods with nymphs alive.

IV

I neighbour the invisible So close that my consent Is only asked for spirits masked To leap from trees and flowers. And this because with them I dwell In thought, while calmly bent To read the lines dear Earth designs Shall speak her life on ours.

V

Accept, she says; it is not hard In woods; but she in towns Repeats, accept; and have we wept, And have we quailed with fears, Or shrunk with horrors, sure reward We have whom knowledge crowns; Who see in mould the rose unfold, The soul through blood and tears.

NATURE AND LIFE

I

Leave the uproar: at a leap Thou shalt strike a woodland path, Enter silence, not of sleep, Under shadows, not of wrath; Breath which is the spirit's bath In the old Beginnings find, And endow them with a mind, Seed for seedling, swathe for swathe. That gives Nature to us, this Give we her, and so we kiss.

II

Fruitful is it so: but hear How within the shell thou art, Music sounds; nor other near Can to such a tremor start. Of the waves our life is part; They our running harvests bear: Back to them for manful air, Laden with the woodland's heart! That gives Battle to us, this Give we it, and good the kiss.

DIRGE IN WOODS

A wind sways the pines, And below Not a breath of wild air; Still as the mosses that glow On the flooring and over the lines Of the roots here and there. The pine-tree drops its dead; They are quiet, as under the sea. Overhead, overhead Rushes life in a race, As the clouds the clouds chase; And we go, And we drop like the fruits of the tree, Even we, Even so.

A FAITH ON TRIAL

On the morning of May, Ere the children had entered my gate With their wreaths and mechanical lay, A metal ding-dong of the date! I mounted our hill, bearing heart That had little of life save its weight: The crowned Shadow poising dart Hung over her: she, my own, My good companion, mate, Pulse of me: she who had shown Fortitude quiet as Earth's At the shedding of leaves. And around The sky was in garlands of cloud, Winning scents from unnumbered new births, Pointed buds, where the woods were browned By a mouldered beechen shroud; Or over our meads of the vale, Such an answer to sun as he, Brave in his gold; to a sound, None sweeter, of woods flapping sail, With the first full flood of our year, For their voyage on lustreful sea: Unto what curtained haven in chief, Will be writ in the book of the sere. But surely the crew are we, Eager or stamped or bowed; Counted thinner at fall of the leaf. Grief heard them, and passed like a bier. Due Summerward, lo, they were set, In volumes of foliage proud, On the heave of their favouring tides, And their song broadened out to the cheer When a neck of the ramping surf Rattles thunder a boat overrides. All smiles ran the highways wet; The worm drew its links from the turf; The bird of felicity loud Spun high, and a South wind blew. Weak out of sheath downy leaves Of the beech quivered lucid as dew, Their radiance asking, who grieves; For nought of a sorrow they knew: No space to the dread wrestle vowed, No chamber in shadow of night. At times as the steadier breeze Flutter-huddled their twigs to a crowd, The beam of them wafted my sight To league-long sun upon seas: The golden path we had crossed Many years, till her birthland swung Recovered to vision from lost, A light in her filial glance. And sweet was her voice with the tongue, The speechful tongue of her France, Soon at ripple about us, like rills Ever busy with little: away Through her Normandy, down where the mills Dot at lengths a rivercourse, grey As its bordering poplars bent To gusts off the plains above. Old stone chateau and farms, Home of her birth and her love! On the thread of the pasture you trace, By the river, their milk, for miles, Spotted once with the English tent, In days of the tocsin's alarms, To tower of the tallest of piles, The country's surveyor breast-high. Home of her birth and her love! Home of a diligent race; Thrifty, deft-handed to ply Shuttle or needle, and woo Sun to the roots of the pear Frogging each mud-walled cot. The elders had known her in arms. There plucked we the bluet, her hue Of the deeper forget-me-not; Well wedding her ripe-wheat hair.

I saw, unsighting: her heart I saw, and the home of her love There printed, mournfully rent: Her ebbing adieu, her adieu, And the stride of the Shadow athwart. For one of our Autumns there! . . . Straight as the flight of a dove We went, swift winging we went. We trod solid ground, we breathed air, The heavens were unbroken. Break they, The word of the world is adieu: Her word: and the torrents are round, The jawed wolf-waters of prey. We stand upon isles, who stand: A Shadow before us, and back, A phantom the habited land. We may cry to the Sunderer, spare That dearest! he loosens his pack. Arrows we breathe, not air. The memories tenderly bound To us are a drifting crew, Amid grey-gapped waters for ground. Alone do we stand, each one, Till rootless as they we strew Those deeps of the corse-like stare At a foreign and stony sun.

Eyes had I but for the scene Of my circle, what neighbourly grew. If haply no finger lay out To the figures of days that had been, I gathered my herb, and endured; My old cloak wrapped me about. Unfooted was ground-ivy blue, Whose rustic shrewd odour allured In Spring's fresh of morning: unseen Her favourite wood-sorrel bell As yet, though the leaves' green floor Awaited their flower, that would tell Of a red-veined moist yestreen, With its droop and the hues it wore, When we two stood overnight One, in the dark van-glow On our hill-top, seeing beneath Our household's twinkle of light Through spruce-boughs, gem of a wreath.

Budding, the service-tree, white Almost as whitebeam, threw, From the under of leaf upright, Flecks like a showering snow On the flame-shaped junipers green, On the sombre mounds of the yew. Like silvery tapers bright By a solemn cathedral screen, They glistened to closer view. Turf for a rooks' revel striped Pleased those devourers astute. Chorister blackbird and thrush Together or alternate piped; A free-hearted harmony large, With meaning for man, for brute, When the primitive forces are brimmed. Like featherings hither and yon Of aery tree-twigs over marge, To the comb of the winds, untrimmed, Their measure is found in the vast. Grief heard them, and stepped her way on. She has but a narrow embrace. Distrustful of hearing she passed. They piped her young Earth's Bacchic rout; The race, and the prize of the race; Earth's lustihead pressing to sprout.

But sight holds a soberer space. Colourless dogwood low Curled up a twisted root, Nigh yellow-green mosses, to flush Redder than sun upon rocks, When the creeper clematis-shoot Shall climb, cap his branches, and show, Beside veteran green of the box, At close of the year's maple blush, A bleeding greybeard is he, Now hale in the leafage lush. Our parasites paint us. Hard by, A wet yew-trunk flashed the peel Of our naked forefathers in fight; With stains of the fray sweating free; And him came no parasite nigh: Firm on the hard knotted knee, He stood in the crown of his dun; Earth's toughest to stay her wheel: Under whom the full day is night; Whom the century-tempests call son, Having striven to rend him in vain.