Chapter 3
UNLESS it was that day I never knew Ambition. After a night of frost, before The March sun brightened and the South-west blew, Jackdaws began to shout and float and soar Already, and one was racing straight and high Alone, shouting like a black warrior Challenges and menaces to the wide sky. With loud long laughter then a woodpecker Ridiculed the sadness of the owl's last cry. And through the valley where all the folk astir Made only plumes of pearly smoke to tower Over dark trees and white meadows happier Than was Elysium in that happy hour, A train that roared along raised after it And carried with it a motionless white bower Of purest cloud, from end to end close-knit, So fair it touched the roar with silence. Time Was powerless while that lasted. I could sit And think I had made the loveliness of prime, Breathed its life into it and were its lord, And no mind lived save this 'twixt clouds and rime. Omnipotent I was, nor even deplored That I did nothing. But the end fell like a bell: The bower was scattered; far off the train roared. But if this was ambition I cannot tell. What 'twas ambition for I know not well.
NO ONE CARES LESS THAN I
"No one cares less than I, Nobody knows but God, Whether I am destined to lie Under a foreign clod," Were the words I made to the bugle call in the morning.
But laughing, storming, scorning, Only the bugles know What the bugles say in the morning, And they do not care, when they blow The call that I heard and made words to early this morning.
ROADS
I LOVE roads: The goddesses that dwell Far along invisible Are my favourite gods.
Roads go on While we forget, and are Forgotten like a star That shoots and is gone.
On this earth 'tis sure We men have not made Anything that doth fade So soon, so long endure:
The hill road wet with rain In the sun would not gleam Like a winding stream If we trod it not again.
They are lonely While we sleep, lonelier For lack of the traveller Who is now a dream only.
From dawn's twilight And all the clouds like sheep On the mountains of sleep They wind into the night.
The next turn may reveal Heaven: upon the crest The close pine clump, at rest And black, may Hell conceal.
Often footsore, never Yet of the road I weary, Though long and steep and dreary As it winds on for ever.
Helen of the roads, The mountain ways of Wales And the Mabinogion tales, Is one of the true gods,
Abiding in the trees, The threes and fours so wise, The larger companies, That by the roadside be,
And beneath the rafter Else uninhabited Excepting by the dead; And it is her laughter
At morn and night I hear When the thrush cock sings Bright irrelevant things, And when the chanticleer
Calls back to their own night Troops that make loneliness With their light footsteps' press, As Helen's own are light.
Now all roads lead to France And heavy is the tread Of the living; but the dead Returning lightly dance:
Whatever the road bring To me or take from me, They keep me company With their pattering,
Crowding the solitude Of the loops over the downs, Hushing the roar of towns And their brief multitude.
THIS IS NO CASE OF PETTY RIGHT OR WRONG
THIS is no case of petty right or wrong That politicians or philosophers Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers. Beside my hate for one fat patriot My hatred of the Kaiser is love true:-- A kind of god he is, banging a gong. But I have not to choose between the two, Or between justice and injustice. Dinned With war and argument I read no more Than in the storm smoking along the wind Athwart the wood. Two witches' cauldrons roar. From one the weather shall rise clear and gay; Out of the other an England beautiful And like her mother that died yesterday. Little I know or care if, being dull, I shall miss something that historians Can rake out of the ashes when perchance The phoenix broods serene above their ken. But with the best and meanest Englishmen I am one in crying, God save England, lest We lose what never slaves and cattle blessed. The ages made her that made us from the dust: She is all we know and live by, and we trust She is good and must endure, loving her so: And as we love ourselves we hate her foe.
THE CHALK-PIT
"Is this the road that climbs above and bends Round what was once a chalk-pit: now it is By accident an amphitheatre. Some ash-trees standing ankle-deep in brier And bramble act the parts, and neither speak Nor stir." "But see: they have fallen, every one, And brier and bramble have grown over them." "That is the place. As usual no one is here. Hardly can I imagine the drop of the axe, And the smack that is like an echo, sounding here." "I do not understand." "Why, what I mean is That I have seen the place two or three times At most, and that its emptiness and silence And stillness haunt me, as if just before It was not empty, silent, still, but full Of life of some kind, perhaps tragical. Has anything unusual happened here?" "Not that I know of. It is called the Dell. They have not dug chalk here for a century. That was the ash-trees' age. But I will ask." "No. Do not. I prefer to make a tale, Or better leave it like the end of a play, Actors and audience and lights all gone; For so it looks now. In my memory Again and again I see it, strangely dark, And vacant of a life but just withdrawn. We have not seen the woodman with the axe. Some ghost has left it now as we two came." "And yet you doubted if this were the road?" "Well, sometimes I have thought of it and failed To place it. No. And I am not quite sure, Even now, this is it. For another place, Real or painted, may have combined with it. Or I myself a long way back in time . . ." "Why, as to that, I used to meet a man-- I had forgotten,--searching for birds' nests Along the road and in the chalk-pit too. The wren's hole was an eye that looked at him For recognition. Every nest he knew. He got a stiff neck, by looking this side or that, Spring after spring, he told me, with his laugh,-- A sort of laugh. He was a visitor, A man of forty,--smoked and strolled about. At orts and crosses Pleasure and Pain had played On his brown features;--I think both had lost;-- Mild and yet wild too. You may know the kind. And once or twice a woman shared his walks, A girl of twenty with a brown boy's face, And hair brown as a thrush or as a nut, Thick eyebrows, glinting eyes--" "You have said enough. A pair,--free thought, free love,--I know the breed: I shall not mix my fancies up with them." "You please yourself. I should prefer the truth Or nothing. Here, in fact, is nothing at all Except a silent place that once rang loud, And trees and us--imperfect friends, we men And trees since time began; and nevertheless Between us still we breed a mystery."
HEALTH
FOUR miles at a leap, over the dark hollow land, To the frosted steep of the down and its junipers black, Travels my eye with equal ease and delight: And scarce could my body leap four yards.
This is the best and the worst of it-- Never to know, Yet to imagine gloriously, pure health.
To-day, had I suddenly health, I could not satisfy the desire of my heart Unless health abated it, So beautiful is the air in its softness and clearness, while Spring Promises all and fails in nothing as yet; And what blue and what white is I never knew Before I saw this sky blessing the land.
For had I health I could not ride or run or fly So far or so rapidly over the land As I desire: I should reach Wiltshire tired; I should have changed my mind before I could be in Wales. I could not love; I could not command love. Beauty would still be far off However many hills I climbed over; Peace would still be farther.
Maybe I should not count it anything To leap these four miles with the eye; And either I should not be filled almost to bursting with desire, Or with my power desire would still keep pace.
Yet I am not satisfied Even with knowing I never could be satisfied. With health and all the power that lies In maiden beauty, poet and warrior, In Caesar, Shakespeare, Alcibiades, Mazeppa, Leonardo, Michelangelo, In any maiden whose smile is lovelier Than sunlight upon dew, I could not be as the wagtail running up and down The warm tiles of the roof slope, twittering Happily and sweetly as if the sun itself Extracted the song As the hand makes sparks from the fur of a cat:
I could not be as the sun. Nor should I be content to be As little as the bird or as mighty as the sun. For the bird knows not of the sun, And the sun regards not the bird. But I am almost proud to love both bird and sun, Though scarce this Spring could my body leap four yards.
BEAUTY
WHAT does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease, No man, woman, or child alive could please Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh Because I sit and frame an epitaph-- "Here lies all that no one loved of him And that loved no one." Then in a trice that whim Has wearied. But, though I am like a river At fall of evening while it seems that never Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while Cross breezes cut the surface to a file, This heart, some fraction of me, happily Floats through the window even now to a tree Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale, Not like a pewit that returns to wail For something it has lost, but like a dove That slants unswerving to its home and love. There I find my rest, and through the dusk air Flies what yet lives in me. Beauty is there.
SNOW
IN the gloom of whiteness, In the great silence of snow, A child was sighing And bitterly saying: "Oh, They have killed a white bird up there on her nest, The down is fluttering from her breast." And still it fell through that dusky brightness On the child crying for the bird of the snow.
THE NEW YEAR
HE was the one man I met up in the woods That stormy New Year's morning; and at first sight, Fifty yards off, I could not tell how much Of the strange tripod was a man. His body, Bowed horizontal, was supported equally By legs at one end, by a rake at the other: Thus he rested, far less like a man than His wheel-barrow in profile was like a pig. But when I saw it was an old man bent, At the same moment came into my mind The games at which boys bend thus, _High- Cockalorum_, Or _Fly-the-garter_, and _Leap-frog_. At the sound Of footsteps he began to straighten himself; His head rolled under his cape like a tortoise's; He took an unlit pipe out of his mouth Politely ere I wished him "A Happy New Year," And with his head cast upward sideways Muttered-- So far as I could hear through the trees' roar-- "Happy New Year, and may it come fastish, too," While I strode by and he turned to raking leaves.
THE BROOK
SEATED once by a brook, watching a child Chiefly that paddled, I was thus beguiled. Mellow the blackbird sang and sharp the thrush Not far off in the oak and hazel brush, Unseen. There was a scent like honeycomb From mugwort dull. And down upon the dome Of the stone the cart-horse kicks against so oft A butterfly alighted. From aloft He took the heat of the sun, and from below. On the hot stone he perched contented so, As if never a cart would pass again That way; as if I were the last of men And he the first of insects to have earth And sun together and to know their worth. I was divided between him and the gleam, The motion, and the voices, of the stream, The waters running frizzled over gravel, That never vanish and for ever travel. A grey flycatcher silent on a fence And I sat as if we had been there since The horseman and the horse lying beneath The fir-tree-covered barrow on the heath, The horseman and the horse with silver shoes, Galloped the downs last. All that I could lose I lost. And then the child's voice raised the dead. "No one's been here before" was what she said And what I felt, yet never should have found A word for, while I gathered sight and sound.
THE OTHER
THE forest ended. Glad I was To feel the light, and hear the hum Of bees, and smell the drying grass And the sweet mint, because I had come To an end of forest, and because Here was both road and inn, the sum Of what's not forest. But 'twas here They asked me if I did not pass Yesterday this way? "Not you? Queer." "Who then? and slept here?" I felt fear.
I learnt his road and, ere they were Sure I was I, left the dark wood Behind, kestrel and woodpecker, The inn in the sun, the happy mood When first I tasted sunlight there. I travelled fast, in hopes I should Outrun that other. What to do When caught, I planned not. I pursued To prove the likeness, and, if true, To watch until myself I knew.
I tried the inns that evening Of a long gabled high-street grey, Of courts and outskirts, travelling An eager but a weary way, In vain. He was not there. Nothing Told me that ever till that day Had one like me entered those doors, Save once. That time I dared: "You may Recall"--but never-foamless shores Make better friends than those dull boors.
Many and many a day like this Aimed at the unseen moving goal And nothing found but remedies For all desire. These made not whole; They sowed a new desire, to kiss Desire's self beyond control, Desire of desire. And yet Life stayed on within my soul. One night in sheltering from the wet I quite forgot I could forget.
A customer, then the landlady Stared at me. With a kind of smile They hesitated awkwardly: Their silence gave me time for guile. Had anyone called there like me, I asked. It was quite plain the wile Succeeded. For they poured out all. And that was naught. Less than a mile Beyond the inn, I could recall He was like me in general.
He had pleased them, but I less. I was more eager than before To find him out and to confess, To bore him and to let him bore. I could not wait: children might guess I had a purpose, something more That made an answer indiscreet. One girl's caution made me sore, Too indignant even to greet That other had we chanced to meet.
I sought then in solitude. The wind had fallen with the night; as still The roads lay as the ploughland rude, Dark and naked, on the hill. Had there been ever any feud 'Twixt earth and sky, a mighty will Closed it: the crocketed dark trees, A dark house, dark impossible Cloud-towers, one star, one lamp, one peace Held on an everlasting lease:
And all was earth's, or all was sky's; No difference endured between The two. A dog barked on a hidden rise; A marshbird whistled high unseen; The latest waking blackbird's cries Perished upon the silence keen. The last light filled a narrow firth Among the clouds. I stood serene, And with a solemn quiet mirth, An old inhabitant of earth.
Once the name I gave to hours Like this was melancholy, when It was not happiness and powers Coming like exiles home again, And weaknesses quitting their bowers, Smiled and enjoyed, far off from men, Moments of everlastingness. And fortunate my search was then While what I sought, nevertheless, That I was seeking, I did not guess.
That time was brief: once more at inn And upon road I sought my man Till once amid a tap-room's din Loudly he asked for me, began To speak, as if it had been a sin, Of how I thought and dreamed and ran After him thus, day after day: He lived as one under a ban For this: what had I got to say? I said nothing, I slipped away.
And now I dare not follow after Too close. I try to keep in sight, Dreading his frown and worse his laughter. I steal out of the wood to light; I see the swift shoot from the rafter By the inn door: ere I alight I wait and hear the starlings wheeze And nibble like ducks: I wait his flight. He goes: I follow: no release Until he ceases. Then I also shall cease.
HOUSE AND MAN
ONE hour: as dim he and his house now look As a reflection in a rippling brook, While I remember him; but first, his house. Empty it sounded. It was dark with forest boughs That brushed the walls and made the mossy tiles Part of the squirrels' track. In all those miles Of forest silence and forest murmur, only One house--"Lonely!" he said, "I wish it were lonely"-- Which the trees looked upon from every side, And that was his.
He waved good-bye to hide A sigh that he converted to a laugh. He seemed to hang rather than stand there, half Ghost-like, half like a beggar's rag, clean wrung And useless on the brier where it has hung Long years a-washing by sun and wind and rain.
But why I call back man and house again Is that now on a beech-tree's tip I see As then I saw--I at the gate, and he In the house darkness,--a magpie veering about, A magpie like a weathercock in doubt.
THE GYPSY
A FORTNIGHT before Christmas Gypsies were every- where: Vans were drawn up on wastes, women trailed to the fair. "My gentleman," said one, "You've got a lucky face." "And you've a luckier," I thought, "if such a grace And impudence in rags are lucky." "Give a penny For the poor baby's sake." "Indeed I have not any Unless you can give change for a sovereign, my dear." "Then just half a pipeful of tobacco can you spare?" I gave it. With that much victory she laughed content. I should have given more, but off and away she went With her baby and her pink sham flowers to rejoin The rest before I could translate to its proper coin Gratitude for her grace. And I paid nothing then, As I pay nothing now with the dipping of my pen For her brother's music when he drummed the tambourine And stamped his feet, which made the workmen passing grin, While his mouth-organ changed to a rascally Bacchanal dance "Over the hills and far away." This and his glance Outlasted all the fair, farmer and auctioneer, Cheap-jack, balloon-man, drover with crooked stick, and steer, Pig, turkey, goose, and duck, Christmas Corpses to be. Not even the kneeling ox had eyes like the Romany. That night he peopled for me the hollow wooded land, More dark and wild than stormiest heavens, that I searched and scanned Like a ghost new-arrived. The gradations of the dark Were like an underworld of death, but for the spark In the Gypsy boy's black eyes as he played and stamped his tune, "Over the hills and far away," and a crescent moon.
MAN AND DOG
"'TWILL take some getting." "Sir, I think 'twill so." The old man stared up at the mistletoe That hung too high in the poplar's crest for plunder Of any climber, though not for kissing under: Then he went on against the north-east wind-- Straight but lame, leaning on a staff new-skinned, Carrying a brolly, flag-basket, and old coat,-- Towards Alton, ten miles off. And he had not Done less from Chilgrove where he pulled up docks. 'Twere best, if he had had "a money-box," To have waited there till the sheep cleared a field For what a half-week's flint-picking would yield. His mind was running on the work he had done Since he left Christchurch in the New Forest, one Spring in the 'seventies,--navvying on dock and line From Southampton to Newcastle-on-Tyne,-- In 'seventy-four a year of soldiering With the Berkshires,--hoeing and harvesting In half the shires where corn and couch will grow. His sons, three sons, were fighting, but the hoe And reap-hook he liked, or anything to do with trees. He fell once from a poplar tall as these: The Flying Man they called him in hospital. "If I flew now, to another world I'd fall." He laughed and whistled to the small brown bitch With spots of blue that hunted in the ditch. Her foxy Welsh grandfather must have paired Beneath him. He kept sheep in Wales and scared Strangers, I will warrant, with his pearl eye And trick of shrinking off as he were shy, Then following close in silence for--for what? "No rabbit, never fear, she ever got, Yet always hunts. To-day she nearly had one: She would and she wouldn't. 'Twas like that. The bad one! She's not much use, but still she's company, Though I'm not. She goes everywhere with me. So Alton I must reach to-night somehow: I'll get no shakedown with that bedfellow From farmers. Many a man sleeps worse to-night Than I shall." "In the trenches." "Yes, that's right. But they'll be out of that--I hope they be-- This weather, marching after the enemy." "And so I hope. Good luck." And there I nodded "Good-night. You keep straight on." Stiffly he plodded; And at his heels the crisp leaves scurried fast, And the leaf-coloured robin watched. They passed, The robin till next day, the man for good, Together in the twilight of the wood.
A PRIVATE
THIS ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors Many a frozen night, and merrily Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores: "At Mrs. Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he, "I slept." None knew which bush. Above the town, Beyond "The Drover," a hundred spot the down In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps More sound in France--that, too, he secret keeps.
OUT IN THE DARK
OUT in the dark over the snow The fallow fawns invisible go With the fallow doe; And the winds blow Fast as the stars are slow.
Stealthily the dark haunts round And, when a lamp goes, without sound At a swifter bound Than the swiftest hound, Arrives, and all else is drowned;
And I and star and wind and deer, Are in the dark together,--near, Yet far,--and fear Drums on my ear In that sage company drear.
How weak and little is the light, All the universe of sight, Love and delight, Before the might, If you love it not, of night.
Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey.