Chapter 5
He knew the Hours: they were round him, laden with seed Of hours bestrewn upon vapour, and one by one They winged as ripened in fruit the burden decreed For each to scatter; they flushed like the buds in sun, Bequeathing seed to successive similar rings, Their sisters, bearers to men of what men have earned: He knew them, talked with the yet unreddened; the stings, The sweets, they warmed at their bosoms divined, discerned.
X
Not unsolicited, sought by diligent feet, By riddling fingers expanded, oft watched in growth With brooding deep as the noon-ray’s quickening wheat, Ere touch’d, the pendulous flower of the plants of sloth, The plants of rigidness, answered question and squeeze, Revealing wherefore it bloomed, uninviting, bent, Yet making harmony breathe of life and disease, The deeper chord of a wonderful instrument.
XI
So passed he luminous-eyed for earth and the fates We arm to bruise or caress us: his ears were charged With tones of love in a whirl of voluble hates, With music wrought of distraction his heart enlarged. Celestial-shining, though mortal, singer, though mute, He drew the Master of harmonies, voiced or stilled, To seek him; heard at the silent medicine-root A song, beheld in fulfilment the unfulfilled.
XII
Him Phoebus, lending to darkness colour and form Of light’s excess, many lessons and counsels gave, Showed Wisdom lord of the human intricate swarm, And whence prophetic it looks on the hives that rave, And how acquired, of the zeal of love to acquire, And where it stands, in the centre of life a sphere; And Measure, mood of the lyre, the rapturous lyre, He said was Wisdom, and struck him the notes to hear.
XIII
Sweet, sweet: ’twas glory of vision, honey, the breeze In heat, the run of the river on root and stone, All senses joined, as the sister Pierides Are one, uplifting their chorus, the Nine, his own. In stately order, evolved of sound into sight, From sight to sound intershifting, the man descried The growths of earth, his adored, like day out of night, Ascend in song, seeing nature and song allied.
XIV
And there vitality, there, there solely in song, Resides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs, Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong, The Master said: and the studious eye that reads, (Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount), In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound. Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of a fount To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground.
XV
Melampus dwelt among men: physician and sage, He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed, Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage Outran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed. He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on strings Melodious: as the God did he drive and check, Through love exceeding a simple love of the things That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.
LOVE IN THE VALLEY
UNDER yonder beech-tree single on the greensward, Couched with her arms behind her golden head, Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly, Lies my young love sleeping in the shade. Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her, Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow, Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me: Then would she hold me and never let me go?
* * *
Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow, Swift as the swallow along the river’s light Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets, Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight. Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops, Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun, She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer, Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won!
* * *
When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror, Tying up her laces, looping up her hair, Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, More love should I have, and much less care. When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror, Loosening her laces, combing down her curls, Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, I should miss but one for the many boys and girls.
* * *
Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon. No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder: Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon. Deals she an unkindness, ’tis but her rapid measure, Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less: Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless.
* * *
Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, Brooding o’er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar. Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.
* * *
Stepping down the hill with her fair companions, Arm in arm, all against the raying West, Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches, Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed. Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking Whispered the world was; morning light is she. Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless; Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.
* * *
Happy happy time, when the white star hovers Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew, Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness, Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew. Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells. Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret; Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells.
* * *
Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along, Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter Chill as a dull face frowning on a song. Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feathered bosom Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascend Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset Rich, deep like love in beauty without end.
* * *
When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams, Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams. When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May, Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lily Pure from the night, and splendid for the day.
* * *
Mother of the dews, dark eye-lashed twilight, Low-lidded twilight, o’er the valley’s brim, Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark, Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him. Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet, Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers. Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers.
* * *
All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose; Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands. My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters, Eyes bent anemones, and hangs her hands. Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping, Coming the rose: and unaware a cry Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour, Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why.
* * *
Kerchiefed head and chin, she darts between her tulips, Streaming like a willow grey in arrowy rain: Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again. Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gate-way: She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth. So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder, Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth.
* * *
Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden, Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please. I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones. O my wild ones! they tell me more than these. You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose, Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they, They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness, You are of life’s, on the banks that line the way.
* * *
Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose, Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three. Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me. Sweeter unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetest Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes, Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths.
* * *
Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades; Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf: Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow; Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf. Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle; Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine: Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens, Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine.
* * *
This I may know: her dressing and undressing Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port White sails furl; or on the ocean borders White sails lean along the waves leaping green. Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen.
* * *
Front door and back of the mossed old farmhouse Open with the morn, and in a breezy link Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard, Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink. Busy in the grass the early sun of summer Swarms, and the blackbird’s mellow fluting notes Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge: Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats!
* * *
Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school, Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine; O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool! Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak. Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe, Said, ‘I will kiss you’: she laughed and leaned her cheek.
* * *
Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy road-way Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue. Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river, Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere, Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky.
* * *
O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful! O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! O the treasure-tresses one another over Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist! Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet Quick amid the wheatears: wound about the waist, Gathered, see these brides of earth one blush of ripeness! O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!
* * *
Large and smoky red the sun’s cold disk drops, Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow: Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moon-rise, Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow. Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I. Here may life on death or death on life be painted. Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die!
* * *
Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber Where there is no window, read not heaven or her. ‘When she was a tiny,’ one aged woman quavers, Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear. Faults she had once as she learnt to run and tumbled: Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete. Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet.
* * *
Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers, Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger; Yet am I the light and living of her eyes. Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming, Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames.— Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting, Arms up, she dropped: our souls were in our names.
* * *
Soon will she lie like a white-frost sunrise. Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye, Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher, Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly. Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset. Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring! Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants, Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing.
* * *
Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields, Youngest green transfused in silver shining through: Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry: Fair as in image my seraph love appears Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eye-lids: Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears.
* * *
Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need. Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood, Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October; Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown; Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam: All seem to know what is for heaven alone.
THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD
CAROLS nature, counsel men. Different notes as rook from wren Hear we when our steps begin, And the choice is cast within, Where a robber raven’s tale Urges passion’s nightingale.
Hark to the three. Chimed they in one, Life were music of the sun. Liquid first, and then the caw, Then the cry that knows not law.
I
As the birds do, so do we, Bill our mate, and choose our tree. Swift to building work addressed, Any straw will help a nest. Mates are warm, and this is truth, Glad the young that come of youth. They have bloom i’ the blood and sap Chilling at no thunder-clap. Man and woman on the thorn Trust not Earth, and have her scorn. They who in her lead confide, Wither me if they spread not wide! Look for aid to little things, You will get them quick as wings, Thick as feathers; would you feed, Take the leap that springs the need.
II
Contemplate the rutted road: Life is both a lure and goad. Each to hold in measure just, Trample appetite to dust. Mark the fool and wanton spin: Keep to harness as a skin. Ere you follow nature’s lead, Of her powers in you have heed; Else a shiverer you will find You have challenged humankind. Mates are chosen marketwise: Coolest bargainer best buys. Leap not, nor let leap the heart: Trot your track, and drag your cart. So your end may be in wool, Honoured, and with manger full.
III
O the rosy light! it fleets, Dearer dying than all sweets. That is life: it waves and goes; Solely in that cherished Rose Palpitates, or else ’tis death. Call it love with all thy breath. Love! it lingers: Love! it nears: Love! O Love! the Rose appears, Blushful, magic, reddening air. Now the choice is on thee: dare! Mortal seems the touch, but makes Immortal the hand that takes. Feel what sea within thee shames Of its force all other claims, Drowns them. Clasp! the world will be Heavenly Rose to swelling sea.
THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH
I CHANCED upon an early walk to spy A troop of children through an orchard gate: The boughs hung low, the grass was high; They had but to lift hands or wait For fruits to fill them; fruits were all their sky.
They shouted, running on from tree to tree, And played the game the wind plays, on and round. ’Twas visible invisible glee Pursuing; and a fountain’s sound Of laughter spouted, pattering fresh on me.
I could have watched them till the daylight fled, Their pretty bower made such a light of day. A small one tumbling sang, ‘Oh! head!’ The rest to comfort her straightway Seized on a branch and thumped down apples red.
The tiny creature flashing through green grass, And laughing with her feet and eyes among Fresh apples, while a little lass Over as o’er breeze-ripples hung: That sight I saw, and passed as aliens pass.
My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes, Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers; Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains, Across a heath I walked for hours, And met its rival tenants, rays and rains.
Still in my view mile-distant firs appeared, When, under a patched channel-bank enriched With foxglove whose late bells drooped seared, Behold, a family had pitched Their camp, and labouring the low tent upreared.
Here, too, were many children, quick to scan A new thing coming; swarthy cheeks, white teeth: In many-coloured rags they ran, Like iron runlets of the heath. Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can.
Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at sea Tipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid From either ridge unequally), Lean, swift and voluble, bestrid A starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee.
They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and broke In act to follow, but as one they snuffed Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke Of provender, its pale flame puffed, And rolled athwart dwarf furzes grey-blue smoke.
Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam, The mother-pot perusing, all, stretched flat, Paused for its bubbling-up supreme: A dog upright in circle sat, And oft his nose went with the flying steam.
I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where now The moor-faced sunset broadened with red light; Threw high aloft a golden bough, And seemed the desert of the night Far down with mellow orchards to endow.
EARTH AND MAN
I
ON her great venture, Man, Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breast Which is his well of strength, his home of rest, And fair to scan.
II
More aid than that embrace, That nourishment, she cannot give: his heart Involves his fate; and she who urged the start Abides the race.
III
For he is in the lists Contentious with the elements, whose dower First sprang him; for swift vultures to devour If he desists.
IV
His breath of instant thirst Is warning of a creature matched with strife, To meet it as a bride, or let fall life On life’s accursed.
V
No longer forth he bounds The lusty animal, afield to roam, But peering in Earth’s entrails, where the gnome Strange themes propounds.
VI
By hunger sharply sped To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use, In each new ring he bears a giant’s thews, An infant’s head.
VII
And ever that old task Of reading what he is and whence he came, Whither to go, finds wilder letters flame Across her mask.
VIII
She hears his wailful prayer, When now to the Invisible he raves To rend him from her, now of his mother craves Her calm, her care.
IX
The thing that shudders most Within him is the burden of his cry. Seen of his dread, she is to his blank eye The eyeless Ghost.
X
Or sometimes she will seem Heavenly, but her blush, soon wearing white, Veils like a gorsebush in a web of blight, With gold-buds dim.
XI
Once worshipped Prime of Powers, She still was the Implacable: as a beast, She struck him down and dragged him from the feast She crowned with flowers.
XII
Her pomp of glorious hues, Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile, Her songs, her peeping faces, lure awhile With symbol-clues.
XIII
The mystery she holds For him, inveterately he strains to see, And sight of his obtuseness is the key Among those folds.
XIV
He may entreat, aspire, He may despair, and she has never heed. She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need, Not his desire.
XV
She prompts him to rejoice, Yet scares him on the threshold with the shroud. He deems her cherishing of her best-endowed A wanton’s choice.
XVI
Albeit thereof he has found Firm roadway between lustfulness and pain; Has half transferred the battle to his brain, From bloody ground;
XVII
He will not read her good, Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures; Through that old devil of the thousand lures, Through that dense hood:
XVIII
Through terror, through distrust; The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live: Through all that makes of him a sensitive Abhorring dust.
XIX
Behold his wormy home! And he the wind-whipped, anywhither wave Crazily tumbled on a shingle-grave To waste in foam.
XX
Therefore the wretch inclined Afresh to the Invisible, who, he saith, Can raise him high: with vows of living faith For little signs.
XXI
Some signs he must demand, Some proofs of slaughtered nature; some prized few, To satisfy the senses it is true, And in his hand,
XXII
This miracle which saves Himself, himself doth from extinction clutch, By virtue of his worth, contrasting much With brutes and knaves.
XXIII
From dust, of him abhorred, He would be snatched by Grace discovering worth. ‘Sever me from the hollowness of Earth! Me take, dear Lord!’
XXIV
She hears him. Him she owes For half her loveliness a love well won By work that lights the shapeless and the dun, Their common foes.
XXV
He builds the soaring spires, That sing his soul in stone: of her he draws, Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws, Her purest fires.
XXVI
Through him hath she exchanged, For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown, Her haggard quarry-features and thick frown Where monsters ranged.
XXVII
And order, high discourse, And decency, than which is life less dear, She has of him: the lyre of language clear, Love’s tongue and source.
XXVIII
She hears him, and can hear With glory in his gains by work achieved: With grief for grief that is the unperceived In her so near.
XXIX
If he aloft for aid Imploring storms, her essence is the spur. His cry to heaven is a cry to her He would evade.
XXX
Not elsewhere can he tend. Those are her rules which bid him wash foul sins; Those her revulsions from the skull that grins To ape his end.
XXXI
And her desires are those For happiness, for lastingness, for light. ’Tis she who kindles in his haunting night The hoped dawn-rose.
XXXII
Fair fountains of the dark Daily she waves him, that his inner dream May clasp amid the glooms a springing beam, A quivering lark:
XXIII