Part 6

Austere and clad in sombre robes of grey, With hands upfolded and with silent wings, In unimpassioned mystery the day Passes; a lonely thrush its requiem sings.

The dust of night is tangled in the boughs Of leafless lime and lilac, and the pine Grows blacker, and the star upon the brows Of sleep is set in heaven for a sign.

Earth’s little weary peoples fall on peace And dream of breaking buds and blossoming, Of primrose airs, of days of large increase, And all the coloured retinue of spring.

AT GRAFTON

God laughed when he made Grafton That’s under Bredon Hill, A jewel in a jewelled plain. The seasons work their will On golden thatch and crumbling stone, And every soft-lipped breeze Makes music for the Grafton men In comfortable trees.

God’s beauty over Grafton Stole into roof and wall, And hallowed every pavèd path And every lowly stall, And to a woven wonder Conspired with one accord The labour of the servant, The labour of the Lord.

And momently to Grafton Comes in from vale and wold The sound of sheep unshepherded, The sound of sheep in fold, And, blown along the bases Of lands that set their wide Frank brows to God, comes chanting The breath of Bristol tide.

DOMINION

I went beneath the sunny sky When all things bowed to June’s desire,-- The pansy with its steadfast eye, The blue shells on the lupin spire,

The swelling fruit along the boughs, The grass grown heady in the rain, Dark roses fitted for the brows Of queens great kings have sung in vain;

My little cat with tiger bars, Bright claws all hidden in content; Swift birds that flashed like darkling stars Across the cloudy continent;

The wiry-coated fellow curled Stump-tailed upon the sunny flags; The bees that sacked a coloured world Of treasure for their honey-bags.

And all these things seemed very glad, The sun, the flowers, the birds on wing, The jolly beasts, the furry-clad Fat bees, the fruit, and everything.

But gladder than them all was I, Who, being man, might gather up The joy of all beneath the sky, And add their treasure to my cup,

And travel every shining way, And laugh with God in God’s delight, Create a world for every day, And store a dream for every night.

THE MIRACLE

Come, sweetheart, listen, for I have a thing Most wonderful to tell you--news of spring.

Albeit winter still is in the air, And the earth troubled, and the branches bare,

Yet down the fields to-day I saw her pass-- The spring--her feet went shining through the grass.

She touched the ragged hedgerows--I have seen Her finger-prints, most delicately green;

And she has whispered to the crocus leaves, And to the garrulous sparrows in the eaves.

Swiftly she passed and shyly, and her fair Young face was hidden in her cloudy hair.

She would not stay, her season is not yet, But she has reawakened, and has set

The sap of all the world astir, and rent Once more the shadows of our discontent.

Triumphant news--a miracle I sing-- The everlasting miracle of spring.

MILLERS DALE

Barefoot we went by Millers Dale When meadowsweet was golden gloom And happy love was in the vale Singing upon the summer bloom Of gipsy crop and branches laid Of willows over chanting pools, Barefoot by Millers Dale we made Our summer festival of fools.

Folly bright-eyed, and quick, and young Was there with all his silly plots, And trotty wagtail stepped among The delicate forget-me-nots, And laughter played with us above The rocky shelves and weeded holes And we had fellowship to love The pigeons and the water-voles.

Time soon shall be when we are all Stiller than ever runs the Wye, And every bitterness shall fall To-morrow in obscurity, And wars be done, and treasons fail, Yet shall new friends go down to greet The singing rocks of Millers Dale, And willow pools and meadowsweet.

WRITTEN AT LUDLOW CASTLE

(IN THE HALL WHERE COMUS WAS FIRST PERFORMED)

Where wall and sill and broken window-frame Are bright with flowers unroofed against the skies, And nothing but the nesting jackdaws’ cries Breaks the hushed even, once imperial came The muse that moved transfiguring the name Of Puritan, and beautiful and wise The verses fell, forespeaking Paradise, And poetry set all this hall aflame.

Now silence has come down upon the place Where life and song so wonderfully went, And the mole’s afoot now where that passion rang, Yet Comus now first moves his laurelled pace, For song and life for ever are unspent, And they are more than ghosts who lived and sang.

WORDSWORTH AT GRASMERE

These hills and waters fostered you Abiding in your argument Until all comely wisdom drew About you, and the years were spent.

Now over hill and water stays A world more intimately wise, Built of your dedicated days, And seen in your beholding eyes.

So, marvellous and far, the mind, That slept among them when began Waters and hills, leaps up to find Its kingdom in the thought of man.

SUNRISE ON RYDAL WATER

(TO E. DE S.)

Come down at dawn from windless hills Into the valley of the lake, Where yet a larger quiet fills The hour, and mist and water make With rocks and reeds and island boughs One silence and one element, Where wonder goes surely as once It went By Galilean prows.

Moveless the water and the mist, Moveless the secret air above, Hushed, as upon some happy tryst The poised expectancy of love; What spirit is it that adores What mighty presence yet unseen? What consummation works apace Between These rapt enchanted shores?

Never did virgin beauty wake Devouter to the bridal feast Than moves this hour upon the lake In adoration to the east; Here is the bride a god may know, The primal will, the young consent, Till surely upon the appointed mood Intent The god shall leap--and, lo,

Over the lake’s end strikes the sun, White, flameless fire; some purity Thrilling the mist, a splendour won Out of the world’s heart. Let there be Thoughts, and atonements, and desires, Proud limbs, and undeliberate tongue, Where now we move with mortal oars Among Immortal dews and fires.

So the old mating goes apace, Wind with the sea, and blood with thought, Lover with lover; and the grace Of understanding comes unsought When stars into the twilight steer, Or thrushes build among the may, Or wonder moves between the hills, And day Comes up on Rydal mere.

SEPTEMBER

Wind and the robin’s note to-day Have heard of autumn and betray The green long reign of summer. The rust is falling in the leaves, September stands beside the sheaves, The new, the happy comer.

Not sad my season of the red And russet orchards gaily spread From Cholesbury to Cooming, Nor sad when twilit valley trees Are ships becalmed on misty seas, And beetles go abooming.

Now soon shall come the morning crowds Of starlings, soon the coloured clouds From oak and ash and willow, And soon the thorn and briar shall be Rich in their crimson livery, In scarlet and in yellow.

Spring laughed and thrilled a million veins, And summer shone above her rains To fill September’s faring; September talks as kings who know The world’s way and superbly go In robes of wisdom’s wearing.

OLTON POOLS

(TO G. C. G.)

Now June walks on the waters, And the cuckoo’s last enchantment Passes from Olton pools.

Now dawn comes to my window Breathing midsummer roses, And scythes are wet with dew.

Is it not strange for ever That, bowered in this wonder, Man keeps a jealous heart?...

That June and the June waters, And birds and dawn-lit roses, Are gospels in the wind,

Fading upon the deserts, Poor pilgrim revelations?... Hist ... over Olton pools!

OF GREATHAM

(TO THOSE WHO LIVE THERE)

For peace, than knowledge more desirable Into your Sussex quietness I came, When summer’s green and gold and azure fell Over the world in flame.

And peace upon your pasture-lands I found, Where grazing flocks drift on continually, As little clouds that travel with no sound Across a windless sky.

Out of your oaks the birds call to their mates That brood among the pines, where hidden deep From curious eyes a world’s adventure waits In columned choirs of sleep.

Under the calm ascension of the night We heard the mellow lapsing and return Of night-owls purring in their groundling flight Through lanes of darkling fern.

Unbroken peace when all the stars were drawn Back to their lairs of light, and ranked along From shire to shire the downs out of the dawn Were risen in golden song.

* * * * *

I sing of peace who have known the large unrest Of men bewildered in their travelling, And I have known the bridal earth unblest By the brigades of spring.

I have known that loss. And now the broken thought Of nations marketing in death I know, The very winds to threnodies are wrought That on your downlands blow.

I sing of peace. Was it but yesterday I came among your roses and your corn? Then momently amid this wrath I pray For yesterday reborn.

MAMBLE

I never went to Mamble That lies above the Teme, So I wonder who’s in Mamble, And whether people seem Who breed and brew along there As lazy as the name, And whether any song there Sets alehouse wits aflame.

The finger-post says Mamble, And that is all I know Of the narrow road to Mamble, And should I turn and go To that place of lazy token That lies above the Teme, There might be a Mamble broken That was lissom in a dream.

So leave the road to Mamble And take another road To as good a place as Mamble Be it lazy as a toad; Who travels Worcester county Takes any place that comes When April tosses bounty To the cherries and the plums.

OUT OF THE MOON

Merely the moonlight Piercing the boughs of my may-tree, Falling upon my ferns; Only the night Touching my ferns with silver bloom Of sea-flowers here in the sleeping city-- And suddenly the imagination burns With knowledge of many a dark significant doom Out of antiquity, Sung to hushed halls by troubadours Who knew the ways of the heart because they had seen The moonlight washing the garden’s deeper green To silver flowers, Falling with tidings out of the moon, as now It falls on the ferns under my may-tree bough.

MOONLIT APPLES

At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows, And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes A cloud on the moon in the autumn night.

A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then There is no sound at the top of the house of men Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again Dapples the apples with deep-sea light.

They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams; On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams, And quiet is the steep stair under.

In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep. And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep On moon-washed apples of wonder.

COTTAGE SONG

Morning and night I bring Clear water from the spring, And through the lyric noon I hear the larks in tune, And when the shadows fall There’s providence for all.

My garden is alight With currants red and white; And my blue curtains peep On starry courses deep, When down her silver tides The moon on Cotswold rides.

My path of paven grey Is thoroughfare all day For fellowship, till time Bids us with candles climb The little whitewashed stair Above my lavender.

THE MIDLANDS

Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky Deep as the bedded violets that fill March woods with dusky passion. As I lie Abed between cool walls I watch the host Of the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain, And drowsily the habit of these most Beloved of English lands moves in my brain, While silence holds dominion of the dark, Save when the foxes from the spinneys bark.

I see the valleys in their morning mist Wreathed under limpid hills in moving light, Happy with many a yeoman melodist: I see the little roads of twinkling white Busy with fieldward teams and market gear Of rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tell The many-minded changes of the year, Who know why crops and kine fare ill or well; I see the sun persuade the mist away, Till town and stead are shining to the day.

I see the wagons move along the rows Of ripe and summer-breathing clover-flower, I see the lissom husbandman who knows Deep in his heart the beauty of his power, As, lithely pitched, the full-heaped fork bids on The harvest home. I hear the rickyard fill With gossip as in generations gone, While wagon follows wagon from the hill. I think how, when our seasons all are sealed, Shall come the unchanging harvest from the field.

I see the barns and comely manors planned By men who somehow moved in comely thought, Who, with a simple shippon to their hand, As men upon some godlike business wrought; I see the little cottages that keep Their beauty still where since Plantagenet Have come the shepherds happily to sleep, Finding the loaves and cups of cider set; I see the twisted shepherds, brown and old, Driving at dusk their glimmering sheep to fold.

And now the valleys that upon the sun Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again, And the last light upon the wolds is done, And silence falls on flocks and fields and men; And black upon the night I watch my hill, And the stars shine, and there an owly wing Brushes the night, and all again is still, And, from this land of worship that I sing, I turn to sleep, content that from my sires I draw the blood of England’s midmost shires.

OLD CROW

The bird in the corn Is a marvellous crow. He was laid and was born In the season of snow; And he chants his old catches Like a ghost under hatches.

He comes from the shades Of his wood very early, And works in the blades Of the wheat and the barley, And he’s happy, although He’s a grumbleton crow.

The larks have devices For sunny delight, And the sheep in their fleeces Are woolly and white; But these things are the scorn Of the bird in the corn.

And morning goes by, And still he is there, Till a rose in the sky Calls him back to his lair In the boughs where the gloom Is a part of his plume.

But the boy in the lane With his gun, by and by, To the heart of the grain Will narrowly spy, And the twilight will come, And no crow will fly home.

VENUS IN ARDEN

Now Love, her mantle thrown, Goes naked by, Threading the woods alone, Her royal eye Happy because the primroses again Break on the winter continence of men.

I saw her pass to-day In Warwickshire, With the old imperial way, The old desire, Fresh as among those other flowers they went More beautiful for Adon’s discontent.

Those other years she made Her festival When the blue eggs were laid And lambs were tall, By the Athenian rivers while the reeds Made love melodious for the Ganymedes.

And now through Cantlow brakes, By Wilmcote hill, To Avon-side, she makes Her garlands still, And I who watch her flashing limbs am one With youth whose days three thousand years are done.

ON A LAKE

Sweet in the rushes The reed-singers make A music that hushes The life of the lake; The leaves are dumb, And the tides are still, And no calls come From the flocks on the hill.

Forgotten now Are nightingales, And on his bough The linnet fails,-- Midway the mere My mirrored boat Shall rest and hear A slenderer note.

Though, heart, you measure But one proud rhyme, You build a treasure Confounding time-- Sweet in the rushes The reed-singers make A music that hushes The life of the lake.

HARVEST MOON

“Hush!” was my whisper At the stair-top When the waggoners were down below Home from the barley-crop. Through the high window Looked the harvest moon, While the waggoners sang A harvest tune,-- “Hush!” was my whisper when Marjory stept Down from her attic-room, A true-love-adept.

“Fill a can, fill a can,” Waggoners of heart were they, “Harvest-home, harvest-home, Barleycorn is home to-day.” ... “Marjory, hush now-- Harvest--you hear?”-- Red was the moon’s rose On the full year, The cobwebs shook, so well Did the waggoners sing-- “Hush!”--there was beauty at That harvesting.

AT AN EARTHWORKS

Ringed high with turf the arena lies, The neighbouring world unseen, unheard, Here are but unhorizoned skies, And on the skies a passing bird,

The conies and a wandering sheep, The castings of the chambered mole,-- These, and the haunted years that keep Lost agonies of blood and soul.

They say that in the midnight moon The ghostly legions gather yet, And hear a ghostly timbrel-tune, And see a ghostly combat met.

These are but yeoman’s tales. And here No marvel on the midnight falls, But starlight marvellously clear, Being girdled in these shadowy walls.

Yet now strange glooms of ancestry Creep on me through this morning light, Some spectral self is seeking me ... I will not parley with the night.

INSTRUCTION

I have a place in a little garden, That laurel-leaf and fern Keep a cool place though fires of summer All the green grasses burn. Little cool winds creep there about When winds all else are dead, And tired limbs there find gentle keeping, And humours of sloth are shed.

So do your songs come always to me, Poets of age and age, Clear and cool as rivers of wind Threading my hermitage, Stilling my mind from tribulation Of life half-seen, half-heard, With images made in the brain’s quietness, And the leaping of a word.

HABITATION

High up in the sky there, now, you know, In this May twilight, our cottage is asleep, Tenantless, and no creature there to go Near it but Mrs. Fry’s fat cows, and sheep Dove-coloured, as is Cotswold. No one hears Under that cherry-tree the night-jars yet, The windows are uncurtained; on the stairs Silence is but by tip-toe silence met. All doors are fast there. It is a dwelling put by From use for a little, or long, up there in the sky.

Empty; a walled-in silence, in this twilight of May-- A home for lovers, and friendly withdrawing, and sleep, With none to love there, nor laugh, nor climb from the day To the candles and linen.... Yet in the silence creep, This minute, I know, little ghosts, little virtuous lives, Breathing upon that still, insensible place, Touching the latches, sorting the napkins and knives, And such for the comfort of being, and bowls for the grace, That roses will brim; they are creeping from that room to this, One room, and two, till the four are visited ... they, Little ghosts, little lives, are our thoughts in this twilight of May, Signs that even the curious man would miss, Of travelling lovers to Cotswold, signs of an hour, Very soon, when up from the valley in June will ride Lovers by Lynch to Oakridge up in the wide Bow of the hill, to a garden of lavender flower....

The doors are locked; no foot falls; the hearths are dumb-- But we are there--we are waiting ourselves who come.

WRITTEN IN WINTERBORNE CAME CHURCH

(William Barnes, 1801-1886)

_To Mrs. Thomas Hardy_

I do not use to listen well At sermon time, I ’ld rather hear the plainest rhyme Than tales the parsons tell;

The homespun of experience They will not wear, But walk a transcendental air In dusty rags of sense.

But humbly in your little church Alone I watch; Old rector, lift again the latch, Here is a heart to search.

Come, with a simple word and wise Quicken my brain, And while upon the painted pane The painted butterflies

Beat in the early April beams, You shall instruct My spirit in the knowledge plucked From your still Dorset dreams.

Your word shall strive with no obscure Debated text, Your vision being unperplexed, Your loving purpose pure.

I know you’ll speak of April flowers, Or lambs in pen, Or happy-hearted maids and men Weaving their April hours.

Or rising to your thought will come, For lessoning, Those lovers of an older spring, That now in tombs are dumb.

And brooding in your theme shall be, Half said, half heard, The presage of a poet’s word To mock mortality.

* * * * *

The years are on your grave the while, And yet, almost, I think to see your surpliced ghost Stand hesitant in the aisle,

Find me sole congregation there, Assess my mood, Know mine a kindred solitude, And climb the pulpit-stair.

BUDS

The raining hour is done, And, threaded on the bough, The May-buds in the sun Are shining emeralds now.

As transitory these As things of April will, Yet, trembling in the trees, Is briefer beauty still.

For, flowering from the sky Upon an April day, Are silver buds that lie Amid the buds of May.

The April emeralds now, While thrushes fill the lane, Are linked along the bough With silver buds of rain.

And, straightly though to earth The buds of silver slip, The green buds keep the mirth Of that companionship.

BLACKBIRD

He comes on chosen evenings, My blackbird bountiful, and sings Over the gardens of the town Just at the hour the sun goes down. His flight across the chimneys thick, By some divine arithmetic, Comes to his customary stack, And couches there his plumage black, And there he lifts his yellow bill, Kindled against the sunset, till These suburbs are like Dymock woods Where music has her solitudes, And while he mocks the winter’s wrong Rapt on his pinnacle of song, Figured above our garden plots Those are celestial chimney-pots.

MAY GARDEN

A shower of green gems on my apple-tree This first morning of May Has fallen out of the night, to be Herald of holiday-- Bright gems of green that, fallen there, Seem fixed and glowing on the air.