Chapter 2
"That was her roguery," The next man said. He was a squire's son Who loved wild bird and beast, and dog and gun For killing them. He had loved them from his birth, One with another, as he loved the earth. "The man may be like Button, or Walker, or Like Bottlesford, that you want, but far more He sounds like one I saw when I was a child. I could almost swear to him. The man was wild And wandered. His home was where he was free. Everybody has met one such man as he. Does he keep clear old paths that no one uses But once a life-time when he loves or muses? He is English as this gate, these flowers, this mire. And when at eight years old Lob-lie-by-the-fire Came in my books, this was the man I saw. He has been in England as long as dove and daw, Calling the wild cherry tree the merry tree, The rose campion Bridget-in-her-bravery; And in a tender mood he, as I guess, Christened one flower Love-in-idleness, And while he walked from Exeter to Leeds One April called all cuckoo-flowers Milkmaids. From him old herbal Gerard learnt, as a boy, To name wild clematis the Traveller's-joy. Our blackbirds sang no English till his ear Told him they called his Jan Toy 'Pretty dear.' (She was Jan Toy the Lucky, who, having lost A shilling, and found a penny loaf, rejoiced.) For reasons of his own to him the wren Is Jenny Pooter. Before all other men 'Twas he first called the Hog's Back the Hog's Back. That Mother Dunch's Buttocks should not lack Their name was his care. He too could explain Totteridge and Totterdown and Juggler's Lane: He knows, if anyone. Why Tumbling Bay, Inland in Kent, is called so, he might say.
"But little he says compared with what he does. If ever a sage troubles him he will buzz Like a beehive to conclude the tedious fray: And the sage, who knows all languages, runs away. Yet Lob has thirteen hundred names for a fool, And though he never could spare time for school To unteach what the fox so well expressed, On biting the cock's head off,--Quietness is best,-- He can talk quite as well as anyone After his thinking is forgot and done. He first of all told someone else's wife, For a farthing she'd skin a flint and spoil a knife Worth sixpence skinning it. She heard him speak: 'She had a face as long as a wet week' Said he, telling the tale in after years. With blue smock and with gold rings in his ears, Sometimes he is a pedlar, not too poor To keep his wit. This is tall Tom that bore The logs in, and with Shakespeare in the hall Once talked, when icicles hung by the wall. As Herne the Hunter he has known hard times. On sleepless nights he made up weather rhymes Which others spoilt. And, Hob being then his name, He kept the hog that thought the butcher came To bring his breakfast 'You thought wrong,' said Hob. When there were kings in Kent this very Lob, Whose sheep grew fat and he himself grew merry, Wedded the king's daughter of Canterbury; For he alone, unlike squire, lord, and king, Watched a night by her without slumbering; He kept both waking. When he was but a lad He won a rich man's heiress, deaf, dumb, and sad, By rousing her to laugh at him. He carried His donkey on his back. So they were married. And while he was a little cobbler's boy He tricked the giant coming to destroy Shrewsbury by flood. 'And how far is it yet?' The giant asked in passing. 'I forget; But see these shoes I've worn out on the road And we're not there yet.' He emptied out his load Of shoes for mending. The giant let fall from his spade The earth for damming Severn, and thus made The Wrekin hill; and little Ercall hill Rose where the giant scraped his boots. While still So young, our Jack was chief of Gotham's sages. But long before he could have been wise, ages Earlier than this, while he grew thick and strong And ate his bacon, or, at times, sang a song And merely smelt it, as Jack the giant-killer He made a name. He too ground up the miller, The Yorkshireman who ground men's bones for flour.
"Do you believe Jack dead before his hour? Or that his name is Walker, or Bottlesford, Or Button, a mere clown, or squire, or lord? The man you saw,--Lob-lie-by-the-fire, Jack Cade, Jack Smith, Jack Moon, poor Jack of every trade, Young Jack, or old Jack, or Jack What-d'ye-call, Jack-in-the-hedge, or Robin-run-by-the-wall, Robin Hood, Ragged Robin, lazy Bob, One of the lords of No Man's Land, good Lob,-- Although he was seen dying at Waterloo, Hastings, Agincourt, and Sedgemoor too,-- Lives yet. He never will admit he is dead Till millers cease to grind men's bones for bread, Not till our weathercock crows once again And I remove my house out of the lane On to the road." With this he disappeared In hazel and thorn tangled with old-man's-beard. But one glimpse of his back, as there he stood, Choosing his way, proved him of old Jack's blood Young Jack perhaps, and now a Wiltshireman As he has oft been since his days began.
BRIGHT CLOUDS
BRIGHT clouds of may Shade half the pond. Beyond, All but one bay Of emerald Tall reeds Like criss-cross bayonets Where a bird once called, Lies bright as the sun. No one heeds. The light wind frets And drifts the scum Of may-blossom. Till the moorhen calls Again Naught's to be done By birds or men. Still the may falls.
THE CLOUDS THAT ARE SO LIGHT
THE clouds that are so light, Beautiful, swift and bright, Cast shadows on field and park Of the earth that is so dark,
And even so now, light one! Beautiful, swift and bright one! You let fall on a heart that was dark, Unillumined, a deeper mark.
But clouds would have, without earth To shadow, far less worth: Away from your shadow on me Your beauty less would be,
And if it still be treasured An age hence, it shall be measured By this small dark spot Without which it were not.
SOME EYES CONDEMN
SOME eyes condemn the earth they gaze upon: Some wait patiently till they know far more Than earth can tell them: some laugh at the whole As folly of another's making: one I knew that laughed because he saw, from core To rind, not one thing worth the laugh his soul Had ready at waking: some eyes have begun With laughing; some stand startled at the door.
Others, too, I have seen rest, question, roll, Dance, shoot. And many I have loved watching Some I could not take my eyes from till they turned And loving died. I had not found my goal. But thinking of your eyes, dear, I become Dumb: for they flamed, and it was me they burned.
MAY 23
THERE never was a finer day, And never will be while May is May,-- The third, and not the last of its kind; But though fair and clear the two behind Seemed pursued by tempests overpast; And the morrow with fear that it could not last Was spoiled. To-day ere the stones were warm Five minutes of thunderstorm Dashed it with rain, as if to secure, By one tear, its beauty the luck to endure.
At mid-day then along the lane Old Jack Noman appeared again, Jaunty and old, crooked and tall, And stopped and grinned at me over the wall, With a cowslip bunch in his button-hole And one in his cap. Who could say if his roll Came from flints in the road, the weather, or ale? He was welcome as the nightingale. Not an hour of the sun had been wasted on Jack "I've got my Indian complexion back" Said he. He was tanned like a harvester, Like his short clay pipe, like the leaf and bur That clung to his coat from last night's bed, Like the ploughland crumbling red. Fairer flowers were none on the earth Than his cowslips wet with the dew of their birth, Or fresher leaves than the cress in his basket. "Where did they come from, Jack?" "Don't ask it, And you'll be told no lies." "Very well: Then I can't buy." "I don't want to sell. Take them and these flowers, too, free. Perhaps you have something to give me? Wait till next time. The better the day . . . The Lord couldn't make a better, I say; If he could, he never has done." So off went Jack with his roll-walk-run, Leaving his cresses from Oakshott rill And his cowslips from Wheatham hill.
'Twas the first day that the midges bit; But though they bit me, I was glad of it: Of the dust in my face, too, I was glad. Spring could do nothing to make me sad. Bluebells hid all the ruts in the copse. The elm seeds lay in the road like hops, That fine day, May the twenty-third, The day Jack Noman disappeared.
THE GLORY
THE glory of the beauty of the morning,-- The cuckoo crying over the untouched dew; The blackbird that has found it, and the dove That tempts me on to something sweeter than love; White clouds ranged even and fair as new-mown hay; The heat, the stir, the sublime vacancy Of sky and meadow and forest and my own heart:-- The glory invites me, yet it leaves me scorning All I can ever do, all I can be, Beside the lovely of motion, shape, and hue, The happiness I fancy fit to dwell In beauty's presence. Shall I now this day Begin to seek as far as heaven, as hell, Wisdom or strength to match this beauty, start And tread the pale dust pitted with small dark drops, In hope to find whatever it is I seek, Hearkening to short-lived happy-seeming things That we know naught of, in the hazel copse? Or must I be content with discontent As larks and swallows are perhaps with wings? And shall I ask at the day's end once more What beauty is, and what I can have meant By happiness? And shall I let all go, Glad, weary, or both? Or shall I perhaps know That I was happy oft and oft before, Awhile forgetting how I am fast pent, How dreary-swift, with naught to travel to, Is Time? I cannot bite the day to the core.
MELANCHOLY
THE rain and wind, the rain and wind, raved endlessly. On me the Summer storm, and fever, and melancholy Wrought magic, so that if I feared the solitude Far more I feared all company: too sharp, too rude, Had been the wisest or the dearest human voice. What I desired I knew not, but whate'er my choice Vain it must be, I knew. Yet naught did my despair But sweeten the strange sweetness, while through the wild air All day long I heard a distant cuckoo calling And, soft as dulcimers, sounds of near water falling, And, softer, and remote as if in history, Rumours of what had touched my friends, my foes, or me.
ADLESTROP
YES. I remember Adlestrop-- The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop--only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
THE GREEN ROADS
THE green roads that end in the forest Are strewn with white goose feathers this June,
Like marks left behind by some one gone to the forest To show his track. But he has never come back.
Down each green road a cottage looks at the forest. Round one the nettle towers; two are bathed in flowers.
An old man along the green road to the forest Strays from one, from another a child alone.
In the thicket bordering the forest, All day long a thrush twiddles his song.
It is old, but the trees are young in the forest, All but one like a castle keep, in the middle deep.
That oak saw the ages pass in the forest: They were a host, but their memories are lost,
For the tree is dead: all things forget the forest Excepting perhaps me, when now I see
The old man, the child, the goose feathers at the edge of the forest, And hear all day long the thrush repeat his song.
THE MILL-POND
THE sun blazed while the thunder yet Added a boom: A wagtail flickered bright over The mill-pond's gloom:
Less than the cooing in the alder Isles of the pool Sounded the thunder through that plunge Of waters cool.
Scared starlings on the aspen tip Past the black mill Outchattered the stream and the next roar Far on the hill.
As my feet dangling teased the foam That slid below A girl came out. "Take care!" she said-- Ages ago.
She startled me, standing quite close Dressed all in white: Ages ago I was angry till She passed from sight.
Then the storm burst, and as I crouched To shelter, how Beautiful and kind, too, she seemed, As she does now!
IT WAS UPON
IT was upon a July evening. At a stile I stood, looking along a path Over the country by a second Spring Drenched perfect green again. "The lattermath Will be a fine one." So the stranger said, A wandering man. Albeit I stood at rest, Flushed with desire I was. The earth outspread, Like meadows of the future, I possessed.
And as an unaccomplished prophecy The stranger's words, after the interval Of a score years, when those fields are by me Never to be recrossed, now I recall, This July eve, and question, wondering, What of the lattermath to this hoar Spring?
TALL NETTLES
TALL nettles cover up, as they have done These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough Long worn out, and the roller made of stone: Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.
This corner of the farmyard I like most: As well as any bloom upon a flower I like the dust on the nettles, never lost Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.
HAYMAKING
AFTER night's thunder far away had rolled The fiery day had a kernel sweet of cold, And in the perfect blue the clouds uncurled, Like the first gods before they made the world And misery, swimming the stormless sea In beauty and in divine gaiety. The smooth white empty road was lightly strewn With leaves--the holly's Autumn falls in June-- And fir cones standing stiff up in the heat. The mill-foot water tumbled white and lit With tossing crystals, happier than any crowd Of children pouring out of school aloud. And in the little thickets where a sleeper For ever might lie lost, the nettle-creeper And garden warbler sang unceasingly; While over them shrill shrieked in his fierce glee The swift with wings and tail as sharp and narrow As if the bow had flown off with the arrow. Only the scent of woodbine and hay new-mown Travelled the road. In the field sloping down, Park-like, to where its willows showed the brook, Haymakers rested. The tosser lay forsook Out in the sun; and the long waggon stood Without its team, it seemed it never would Move from the shadow of that single yew. The team, as still, until their task was due, Beside the labourers enjoyed the shade That three squat oaks mid-field together made Upon a circle of grass and weed uncut, And on the hollow, once a chalk-pit, but Now brimmed with nut and elder-flower so clean. The men leaned on their rakes, about to begin, But still. And all were silent. All was old, This morning time, with a great age untold, Older than Clare and Cobbett, Morland and Crome, Than, at the field's far edge, the farmer's home, A white house crouched at the foot of a great tree. Under the heavens that know not what years be The men, the beasts, the trees, the implements Uttered even what they will in times far hence-- All of us gone out of the reach of change-- Immortal in a picture of an old grange.
HOW AT ONCE
How at once should I know, When stretched in the harvest blue I saw the swift's black bow, That I would not have that view Another day Until next May Again it is due?
The same year after year-- But with the swift alone. With other things I but fear That they will be over and done Suddenly And I only see Them to know them gone.
GONE, GONE AGAIN
GONE, gone again, May, June, July, And August gone, Again gone by,
Not memorable Save that I saw them go, As past the empty quays The rivers flow.
And now again, In the harvest rain, The Blenheim oranges Fall grubby from the trees,
As when I was young-- And when the lost one was here-- And when the war began To turn young men to dung.
Look at the old house, Outmoded, dignified, Dark and untenanted, With grass growing instead
Of the footsteps of life, The friendliness, the strife; In its beds have lain Youth, love, age and pain:
I am something like that; Only I am not dead, Still breathing and interested In the house that is not dark:--
I am something like that: Not one pane to reflect the sun, For the schoolboys to throw at-- They have broken every one.
THE SUN USED TO SHINE
THE sun used to shine while we two walked Slowly together, paused and started Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked As either pleased, and cheerfully parted
Each night. We never disagreed Which gate to rest on. The to be And the late past we gave small heed. We turned from men or poetry
To rumours of the war remote Only till both stood disinclined For aught but the yellow flavorous coat Of an apple wasps had undermined;
Or a sentry of dark betonies, The stateliest of small flowers on earth, At the forest verge; or crocuses Pale purple as if they had their birth
In sunless Hades fields. The war Came back to mind with the moonrise Which soldiers in the east afar Beheld then. Nevertheless, our eyes
Could as well imagine the Crusades Or Caesar's battles. Everything To faintness like those rumours fades-- Like the brook's water glittering
Under the moonlight--like those walks Now--like us two that took them, and The fallen apples, all the talks And silences--like memory's sand
When the tide covers it late or soon, And other men through other flowers In those fields under the same moon Go talking and have easy hours.
OCTOBER
THE green elm with the one great bough of gold Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one,-- The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white, Harebell and scabious and tormentil, That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun, Bow down to; and the wind travels too light To shake the fallen birch leaves from the fern; The gossamers wander at their own will. At heavier steps than birds' the squirrels scold.
The rich scene has grown fresh again and new As Spring and to the touch is not more cool Than it is warm to the gaze; and now I might As happy be as earth is beautiful, Were I some other or with earth could turn In alternation of violet and rose, Harebell and snowdrop, at their season due, And gorse that has no time not to be gay. But if this be not happiness,--who knows? Some day I shall think this a happy day, And this mood by the name of melancholy Shall no more blackened and obscured be.
THE LONG SMALL ROOM
THE long small room that showed willows in the west Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled, Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed What need or accident made them so build.
Only the moon, the mouse and the sparrow peeped In from the ivy round the casement thick. Of all they saw and heard there they shall keep The tale for the old ivy and older brick.
When I look back I am like moon, sparrow and mouse That witnessed what they could never understand Or alter or prevent in the dark house. One thing remains the same--this my right hand
Crawling crab-like over the clean white page, Resting awhile each morning on the pillow, Then once more starting to crawl on towards age. The hundred last leaves stream upon the willow.
LIBERTY
THE last light has gone out of the world, except This moonlight lying on the grass like frost Beyond the brink of the tall elm's shadow It is as if everything else had slept Many an age, unforgotten and lost The men that were, the things done, long ago, All I have thought; and but the moon and I Live yet and here stand idle over the grave Where all is buried. Both have liberty To dream what we could do if we were free To do some thing we had desired long, The moon and I. There's none less free than who Does nothing and has nothing else to do, Being free only for what is not to his mind, And nothing is to his mind. If every hour Like this one passing that I have spent among The wiser others when I have forgot To wonder whether I was free or not, Were piled before me, and not lost behind, And I could take and carry them away I should be rich; or if I had the power To wipe out every one and not again Regret, I should be rich to be so poor. And yet I still am half in love with pain, With what is imperfect, with both tears and mirth, With things that have an end, with life and earth, And this moon that leaves me dark within the door.
NOVEMBER
NOVEMBER'S days are thirty: November's earth is dirty, Those thirty days, from first to last; And the prettiest things on ground are the paths With morning and evening hobnails dinted, With foot and wing-tip overprinted Or separately charactered, Of little beast and little bird. The fields are mashed by sheep, the roads Make the worst going, the best the woods Where dead leaves upward and downward scatter. Few care for the mixture of earth and water, Twig, leaf, flint, thorn, Straw, feather, all that men scorn, Pounded up and sodden by flood, Condemned as mud.
But of all the months when earth is greener Not one has clean skies that are cleaner. Clean and clear and sweet and cold, They shine above the earth so old, While the after-tempest cloud Sails over in silence though winds are loud, Till the full moon in the east Looks at the planet in the west And earth is silent as it is black, Yet not unhappy for its lack. Up from the dirty earth men stare: One imagines a refuge there Above the mud, in the pure bright Of the cloudless heavenly light: Another loves earth and November more dearly Because without them, he sees clearly, The sky would be nothing more to his eye Than he, in any case, is to the sky; He loves even the mud whose dyes Renounce all brightness to the skies.
THE SHEILING
IT stands alone Up in a land of stone All worn like ancient stairs, A land of rocks and trees Nourished on wind and stone.
And all within Long delicate has been; By arts and kindliness Coloured, sweetened, and warmed For many years has been.
Safe resting there Men hear in the travelling air But music, pictures see In the same daily land Painted by the wild air.
One maker's mind Made both, and the house is kind To the land that gave it peace, And the stone has taken the house To its cold heart and is kind.
THE GALLOWS
THERE was a weasel lived in the sun With all his family, Till a keeper shot him with his gun And hung him up on a tree, Where he swings in the wind and rain, In the sun and in the snow, Without pleasure, without pain, On the dead oak tree bough.
There was a crow who was no sleeper, But a thief and a murderer Till a very late hour; and this keeper Made him one of the things that were, To hang and flap in rain and wind, In the sun and in the snow. There are no more sins to be sinned On the dead oak tree bough.
There was a magpie, too, Had a long tongue and a long tail; He could both talk and do-- But what did that avail? He, too, flaps in the wind and rain Alongside weasel and crow, Without pleasure, without pain, On the dead oak tree bough.
And many other beasts And birds, skin, bone and feather, Have been taken from their feasts And hung up there together, To swing and have endless leisure In the sun and in the snow, Without pain, without pleasure, On the dead oak tree bough.
BIRDS' NESTS
THE summer nests uncovered by autumn wind. Some torn, others dislodged, all dark. Everyone sees them: low or high in tree, Or hedge, or single bush, they hang like a mark.
Since there's no need of eyes to see them with I cannot help a little shame That I missed most, even at eye's level, till The leaves blew off and made the seeing no game.
'Tis a light pang. I like to see the nests Still in their places, now first known, At home and by far roads. Boys knew them not, Whatever jays and squirrels may have done.
And most I like the winter nests deep-hid That leaves and berries fell into; Once a dormouse dined there on hazel-nuts, And grass and goose-grass seeds found soil and grew.
RAIN