Chapter 2
THEY met inside the gateway that gives the view, A hollow land as vast as heaven. "It is A pleasant day, sir." "A very pleasant day." "And what a view here. If you like angled fields Of grass and grain bounded by oak and thorn, Here is a league. Had we with Germany To play upon this board it could not be More dear than April has made it with a smile. The fields beyond that league close in together And merge, even as our days into the past, Into one wood that has a shining pane Of water. Then the hills of the horizon-- That is how I should make hills had I to show One who would never see them what hills were like." "Yes. Sixty miles of South Downs at one glance. Sometimes a man feels proud at them, as if He had just created them with one mighty thought." "That house, though modern, could not be better planned For its position. I never liked a new House better. Could you tell me who lives in it?" "No one." "Ah--and I was peopling all Those windows on the south with happy eyes, The terrace under them with happy feet; Girls--" "Sir, I know. I know. I have seen that house Through mist look lovely as a castle in Spain, And airier. I have thought: 'Twere happy there To live.' And I have laughed at that Because I lived there then." "Extraordinary." "Yes, with my furniture and family Still in it, I, knowing every nook of it And loving none, and in fact hating it." "Dear me! How could that be? But pardon me." "No offence. Doubtless the house was not to blame, But the eye watching from those windows saw, Many a day, day after day, mist--mist Like chaos surging back--and felt itself Alone in all the world, marooned alone. We lived in clouds, on a cliff's edge almost (You see), and if clouds went, the visible earth Lay too far off beneath and like a cloud. I did not know it was the earth I loved Until I tried to live there in the clouds And the earth turned to cloud." "You had a garden Of flint and clay, too." "True; that was real enough. The flint was the one crop that never failed. The clay first broke my heart, and then my back; And the back heals not. There were other things Real, too. In that room at the gable a child Was born while the wind chilled a summer dawn: Never looked grey mind on a greyer one Than when the child's cry broke above the groans." "I hope they were both spared." "They were. Oh yes. But flint and clay and childbirth were too real For this cloud-castle. I had forgot the wind. Pray do not let me get on to the wind. You would not understand about the wind. It is my subject, and compared with me Those who have always lived on the firm ground Are quite unreal in this matter of the wind. There were whole days and nights when the wind and I Between us shared the world, and the wind ruled And I obeyed it and forgot the mist. My past and the past of the world were in the wind. Now you may say that though you understand And feel for me, and so on, you yourself Would find it different. You are all like that If once you stand here free from wind and mist: I might as well be talking to wind and mist. You would believe the house-agent's young man Who gives no heed to anything I say. Good morning. But one word. I want to admit That I would try the house once more, if I could; As I should like to try being young again."
THE UNKNOWN BIRD
THREE lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard If others sang; but others never sang In the great beech-wood all that May and June. No one saw him: I alone could hear him Though many listened. Was it but four years Ago? or five? He never came again.
Oftenest when I heard him I was alone, Nor could I ever make another hear. La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off-- As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world, As if the bird or I were in a dream. Yet that he travelled through the trees and some- times Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant still He sounded. All the proof is--I told men What I had heard.
I never knew a voice, Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I told The naturalists; but neither had they heard Anything like the notes that did so haunt me, I had them clear by heart and have them still. Four years, or five, have made no difference. Then As now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet: Sad more than joyful it was, if I must say That it was one or other, but if sad 'Twas sad only with joy too, too far off For me to taste it. But I cannot tell If truly never anything but fair The days were when he sang, as now they seem. This surely I know, that I who listened then, Happy sometimes, sometimes suffering A heavy body and a heavy heart, Now straightway, if I think of it, become Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.
THE LOFTY SKY
TO-DAY I want the sky, The tops of the high hills, Above the last man's house, His hedges, and his cows, Where, if I will, I look Down even on sheep and rook, And of all things that move See buzzards only above:-- Past all trees, past furze And thorn, where nought deters The desire of the eye For sky, nothing but sky. I sicken of the woods And all the multitudes Of hedge-trees. They are no more Than weeds upon this floor Of the river of air Leagues deep, leagues wide, where I am like a fish that lives In weeds and mud and gives What's above him no thought. I might be a tench for aught That I can do to-day Down on the wealden clay. Even the tench has days When he floats up and plays Among the lily leaves And sees the sky, or grieves Not if he nothing sees: While I, I know that trees Under that lofty sky Are weeds, fields mud, and I Would arise and go far To where the lilies are.
AFTER RAIN
THE rain of a night and a day and a night Stops at the light Of this pale choked day. The peering sun Sees what has been done. The road under the trees has a border new Of purple hue Inside the border of bright thin grass: For all that has Been left by November of leaves is torn From hazel and thorn And the greater trees. Throughout the copse No dead leaf drops On grey grass, green moss, burnt-orange fern, At the wind's return: The leaflets out of the ash-tree shed Are thinly spread In the road, like little black fish, inlaid, As if they played. What hangs from the myriad branches down there So hard and bare Is twelve yellow apples lovely to see On one crab-tree. And on each twig of every tree in the dell Uncountable Crystals both dark and bright of the rain That begins again.
DIGGING
TO-DAY I think Only with scents,--scents dead leaves yield, And bracken, and wild carrot's seed, And the square mustard field;
Odours that rise When the spade wounds the root of tree, Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed, Rhubarb or celery;
The smoke's smell, too, Flowing from where a bonfire burns The dead, the waste, the dangerous, And all to sweetness turns.
It is enough To smell, to crumble the dark earth. While the robin sings over again Sad songs of Autumn mirth.
BUT THESE THINGS ALSO
BUT these things also are Spring's-- On banks by the roadside the grass Long-dead that is greyer now Than all the Winter it was;
The shell of a little snail bleached In the grass; chip of flint, and mite Of chalk; and the small birds' dung In splashes of purest white:
All the white things a man mistakes For earliest violets Who seeks through Winter's ruins Something to pay Winter's debts,
While the North blows, and starling flocks By chattering on and on Keep their spirits up in the mist, And Spring's here, Winter's not gone.
APRIL
THE sweetest thing, I thought At one time, between earth and heaven Was the first smile When mist has been forgiven And the sun has stolen out, Peered, and resolved to shine at seven On dabbled lengthening grasses, Thick primroses and early leaves uneven, When earth's breath, warm and humid, far sur- passes The richest oven's, and loudly rings "cuckoo" And sharply the nightingale's "tsoo, tsoo, tsoo, tsoo": To say "God bless it" was all that I could do.
But now I know one sweeter By far since the day Emily Turned weeping back To me, still happy me, To ask forgiveness,-- Yet smiled with half a certainty To be forgiven,--for what She had never done; I knew not what it might be, Nor could she tell me, having now forgot, By rapture carried with me past all care As to an isle in April lovelier Than April's self. "God bless you" I said to her.
THE BARN
THEY should never have built a barn there, at all-- Drip, drip, drip!--under that elm tree, Though then it was young. Now it is old But good, not like the barn and me.
To-morrow they cut it down. They will leave The barn, as I shall be left, maybe. What holds it up? 'Twould not pay to pull down. Well, this place has no other antiquity.
No abbey or castle looks so old As this that Job Knight built in '54, Built to keep corn for rats and men. Now there's fowls in the roof, pigs on the floor.
What thatch survives is dung for the grass, The best grass on the farm. A pity the roof Will not bear a mower to mow it. But Only fowls have foothold enough.
Starlings used to sit there with bubbling throats Making a spiky beard as they chattered And whistled and kissed, with heads in air, Till they thought of something else that mattered.
But now they cannot find a place, Among all those holes, for a nest any more. It's the turn of lesser things, I suppose. Once I fancied 'twas starlings they built it for.
THE BARN AND THE DOWN
IT stood in the sunset sky Like the straight-backed down, Many a time--the barn At the edge of the town,
So huge and dark that it seemed It was the hill Till the gable's precipice proved It impossible.
Then the great down in the west Grew into sight, A barn stored full to the ridge With black of night;
And the barn fell to a barn Or even less Before critical eyes and its own Late mightiness.
But far down and near barn and I Since then have smiled, Having seen my new cautiousness By itself beguiled
To disdain what seemed the barn Till a few steps changed It past all doubt to the down; So the barn was avenged.
THE CHILD ON THE CLIFFS
MOTHER, the root of this little yellow flower Among the stones has the taste of quinine. Things are strange to-day on the cliff. The sun shines so bright, And the grasshopper works at his sewing-machine So hard. Here's one on my hand, mother, look; I lie so still. There's one on your book.
But I have something to tell more strange. So leave Your book to the grasshopper, mother dear,-- Like a green knight in a dazzling market-place,-- And listen now. Can you hear what I hear Far out? Now and then the foam there curls And stretches a white arm out like a girl's.
Fishes and gulls ring no bells. There cannot be A chapel or church between here and Devon, With fishes or gulls ringing its bell,--hark.-- Somewhere under the sea or up in heaven. "It's the bell, my son, out in the bay On the buoy. It does sound sweet to-day."
Sweeter I never heard, mother, no, not in all Wales. I should like to be lying under that foam, Dead, but able to hear the sound of the bell, And certain that you would often come And rest, listening happily. I should be happy if that could be.
GOOD-NIGHT.
THE skylarks are far behind that sang over the down; I can hear no more those suburb nightingales; Thrushes and blackbirds sing in the gardens of the town In vain: the noise of man, beast, and machine prevails.
But the call of children in the unfamiliar streets That echo with a familiar twilight echoing, Sweet as the voice of nightingale or lark, completes A magic of strange welcome, so that I seem a king
Among man, beast, machine, bird, child, and the ghost That in the echo lives and with the echo dies. The friendless town is friendly; homeless, I not lost; Though I know none of these doors, and meet but strangers' eyes.
Never again, perhaps, after to-morrow, shall I see these homely streets, these church windows alight, Not a man or woman or child among them all: But it is All Friends' Night, a traveller's good night.
THE WASP TRAP
THIS moonlight makes The lovely lovelier Than ever before lakes And meadows were.
And yet they are not, Though this their hour is, more Lovely than things that were not Lovely before.
Nothing on earth, And in the heavens no star, For pure brightness is worth More than that jar,
For wasps meant, now A star--long may it swing From the dead apple-bough, So glistening.
JULY
NAUGHT moves but clouds, and in the glassy lake Their doubles and the shadow of my boat. The boat itself stirs only when I break This drowse of heat and solitude afloat To prove if what I see be bird or mote, Or learn if yet the shore woods be awake.
Long hours since dawn grew,--spread,--and passed on high And deep below,--I have watched the cool reeds hung Over images more cool in imaged sky: Nothing there was worth thinking of so long; All that the ring-doves say, far leaves among, Brims my mind with content thus still to lie.
A TALE
THERE once the walls Of the ruined cottage stood. The periwinkle crawls With flowers in its hair into the wood.
In flowerless hours Never will the bank fail, With everlasting flowers On fragments of blue plates, to tell the tale.
PARTING
THE Past is a strange land, most strange. Wind blows not there, nor does rain fall: If they do, they cannot hurt at all. Men of all kinds as equals range
The soundless fields and streets of it. Pleasure and pain there have no sting, The perished self not suffering That lacks all blood and nerve and wit,
And is in shadow-land a shade. Remembered joy and misery Bring joy to the joyous equally; Both sadden the sad. So memory made
Parting to-day a double pain: First because it was parting; next Because the ill it ended vexed And mocked me from the Past again,
Not as what had been remedied Had I gone on,--not that, oh no! But as itself no longer woe; Sighs, angry word and look and deed
Being faded: rather a kind of bliss, For there spiritualized it lay In the perpetual yesterday That naught can stir or stain like this.
LOVERS
THE two men in the road were taken aback. The lovers came out shading their eyes from the sun, And never was white so white, or black so black, As her cheeks and hair. "There are more things than one A man might turn into a wood for, Jack," Said George; Jack whispered: "He has not got a gun. It's a bit too much of a good thing, I say. They are going the other road, look. And see her run."-- She ran.--"What a thing it is, this picking may."
THAT GIRL'S CLEAR EYES
THAT girl's clear eyes utterly concealed all Except that there was something to reveal. And what did mine say in the interval? No more: no less. They are but as a seal Not to be broken till after I am dead; And then vainly. Every one of us This morning at our tasks left nothing said, In spite of many words. We were sealed thus, Like tombs. Nor until now could I admit That all I cared for was the pleasure and pain I tasted in the stony square sunlit, Or the dark cloisters, or shade of airy plane, While music blazed and children, line after line, Marched past, hiding the "SEVENTEEN THIRTY- NINE."
THE CHILD IN THE ORCHARD
"HE rolls in the orchard: he is stained with moss And with earth, the solitary old white horse. Where is his father and where is his mother Among all the brown horses? Has he a brother? I know the swallow, the hawk, and the hern; But there are two million things for me to learn.
"Who was the lady that rode the white horse With rings and bells to Banbury Cross? Was there no other lady in England beside That a nursery rhyme could take for a ride? The swift, the swallow, the hawk, and the hern. There are two million things for me to learn.
"Was there a man once who straddled across The back of the Westbury White Horse Over there on Salisbury Plain's green wall? Was he bound for Westbury, or had he a fall? The swift, the swallow, the hawk, and the hern. There are two million things for me to learn.
"Out of all the white horses I know three, At the age of six; and it seems to me There is so much to learn, for men, That I dare not go to bed again. The swift, the swallow, the hawk, and the hern. There are millions of things for me to learn."
THE SOURCE
ALL day the air triumphs with its two voices Of wind and rain As loud as if in anger it rejoices, Drowning the sound of earth That gulps and gulps in choked endeavour vain To swallow the rain.
Half the night, too, only the wild air speaks With wind and rain, Till forth the dumb source of the river breaks And drowns the rain and wind, Bellows like a giant bathing in mighty mirth The triumph of earth.
THE MOUNTAIN CHAPEL
CHAPEL and gravestones, old and few, Are shrouded by a mountain fold From sound and view Of life. The loss of the brook's voice Falls like a shadow. All they hear is The eternal noise Of wind whistling in grass more shrill Than aught as human as a sword, And saying still: "'Tis but a moment since man's birth And in another moment more Man lies in earth For ever; but I am the same Now, and shall be, even as I was Before he came; Till there is nothing I shall be." Yet there the sun shines after noon So cheerfully The place almost seems peopled, nor Lacks cottage chimney, cottage hearth: It is not more In size than is a cottage, less Than any other empty home In homeliness. It has a garden of wild flowers And finest grass and gravestones warm In sunshine hours The year through. Men behind the glass Stand once a week, singing, and drown The whistling grass Their ponies munch. And yet somewhere, Near or far off, there's a man could Be happy here, Or one of the gods perhaps, were they Not of inhuman stature dire, As poets say Who have not seen them clearly; if At sound of any wind of the world In grass-blades stiff They would not startle and shudder cold Under the sun. When gods were young This wind was old.
FIRST KNOWN WHEN LOST
I NEVER had noticed it until 'Twas gone,--the narrow copse Where now the woodman lops The last of the willows with his bill.
It was not more than a hedge overgrown. One meadow's breadth away I passed it day by day. Now the soil was bare as a bone,
And black betwixt two meadows green, Though fresh-cut faggot ends Of hazel made some amends With a gleam as if flowers they had been.
Strange it could have hidden so near! And now I see as I look That the small winding brook, A tributary's tributary, rises there.
THE WORD
THERE are so many things I have forgot, That once were much to me, or that were not, All lost, as is a childless woman's child And its child's children, in the undefiled Abyss of what can never be again. I have forgot, too, names of the mighty men That fought and lost or won in the old wars, Of kings and fiends and gods, and most of the stars. Some things I have forgot that I forget. But lesser things there are, remembered yet, Than all the others. One name that I have not-- Though 'tis an empty thingless name--forgot Never can die because Spring after Spring Some thrushes learn to say it as they sing. There is always one at midday saying it clear And tart--the name, only the name I hear. While perhaps I am thinking of the elder scent That is like food, or while I am content With the wild rose scent that is like memory, This name suddenly is cried out to me From somewhere in the bushes by a bird Over and over again, a pure thrush word.
THESE THINGS THAT POETS SAID
THESE things that poets said Of love seemed true to me When I loved and I fed On love and poetry equally.
But now I wish I knew If theirs were love indeed, Or if mine were the true And theirs some other lovely weed:
For certainly not thus, Then or thereafter, I Loved ever. Between us Decide, good Love, before I die.
Only, that once I loved By this one argument Is very plainly proved: I, loving not, am different.
HOME
NOT the end: but there's nothing more. Sweet Summer and Winter rude I have loved, and friendship and love, The crowd and solitude:
But I know them: I weary not; But all that they mean I know. I would go back again home Now. Yet how should I go?
This is my grief. That land, My home, I have never seen; No traveller tells of it, However far he has been.
Afid could I discover it, I fear my happiness there, Or my pain, might be dreams of return Here, to these things that were.
Remembering ills, though slight Yet irremediable, Brings a worse, an impurer pang Than remembering what was well.
No: I cannot go back, And would not if I could. Until blindness come, I must wait And blink at what is not good.
ASPENS
ALL day and night, save winter, every weather, Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop, The aspens at the cross-roads talk together Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.
Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing-- The sounds that for these fifty years have been.
The whisper of the aspens is not drowned, And over lightless pane and footless road, Empty as sky, with every other sound Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode,
A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor fails In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom, In tempest or the night of nightingales, To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.
And it would be the same were no house near. Over all sorts of weather, men, and times, Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear But need not listen, more than to my rhymes.
Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves We cannot other than an aspen be That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves, Or so men think who like a different tree.
AN OLD SONG
I WAS not apprenticed nor ever dwelt in famous Lincolnshire; I've served one master ill and well much more than seven year; And never took up to poaching as you shall quickly find; But 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year.
I roamed where nobody had a right but keepers and squires, and there I sought for nests, wild flowers, oak sticks, and moles, both far and near. And had to run from farmers, and learnt the Lincolnshire song: "Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year."
I took those walks years after, talking with friend or dear, Or solitary musing; but when the moon shone clear I had no joy or sorrow that could not be expressed By "'Tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year."
Since then I've thrown away a chance to fight a gamekeeper; And I less often trespass, and what I see or hear Is mostly from the road or path by day: yet still I sing: "Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year."
For if I am contented, at home or anywhere, Or if I sigh for I know not what, or my heart beats with some fear, It is a strange kind of delight to sing or whistle just: "Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year."
And with this melody on my lips and no one by to care, Indoors, or out on shiny nights or dark in open air, I am for a moment made a man that sings out of his heart: "Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year."
THERE WAS A TIME
THERE was a time when this poor frame was whole And I had youth and never another care, Or none that should have troubled a strong soul. Yet, except sometimes in a frosty air When my heels hammered out a melody From pavements of a city left behind, I never would acknowledge my own glee Because it was less mighty than my mind Had dreamed of. Since I could not boast of strength Great as I wished, weakness was all my boast. I sought yet hated pity till at length I earned it. Oh, too heavy was the cost. But now that there is something I could use My youth and strength for, I deny the age, The care and weakness that I know--refuse To admit I am unworthy of the wage Paid to a man who gives up eyes and breath For what can neither ask nor heed his death.
AMBITION