Chapter 3

The minting of the sun is on The gravel everywhere, The yellow walls are fleeces washed In pools of sunny air, That coming to that castle place All men are Jasons there.

Trancelike to stand upon that hill When the deep summer sings, Gold-clad, gold-hearted, and gold-voiced, And sings and sings and sings, Is as to wait a rising world In flight of golden wings.

And I have walked with love that way, And on that golden crest The sun was happy for my love, For she is golden-tressed. Red gold, that of all golden things The great sun marks for best.

O golden castle of the sky Hereafter gold can be Only your image when the sun Transfigured her for me, Till she was golden-clouded Jove, And I her Danae.

Hereafter in the chambered night When linked love is told, One thought shall spare to climb that hill Into the sunbright fold, For a great summer noon when love Was gold, and gold, and gold.

BURNING BUSH

From babyhood I have known the beauty of earth-- I learnt it, I think, in the strange months before birth, I learnt it passing and passing by each moon From the harvest month into my natal June. My mother, the dear, the lovely I hardly knew, Bearing me must have walked and wandered through Stubble of silver or gold, as moon or sun Lit earth in the days when my body was begun. And then October with leaves splendid and blown She watched with my little body a little grown, And winter fell, and into our being passed Firm frost and icy rivers and the blast Of winds that on the iron clods of plough Beat with an unseen charging. Then the bough Of spring came green, and her glad body stirred With a son's wombed leaping, and she heard Songs of the air and woods and waterways, And with them singing the coming of my days. And nesting time drew on to summer flowers, And me unborn she taught through patient hours. Then on that first June day, with spices blown Of roses over clover crops unmown, And grey wind-lifted leaves and blossom of bean, She gave her dear white beauty to the keen Anguish of women, and brought my body to birth Already skilled in the sculptures of the earth.

Then in the days when her breasts nourished me, Daily she walked, that happy girl, to see How summer prospered to bring the harvest on, And how the gardens and how the orchards shone With scarlet and blue and yellow flowers and fruit, And hear with equal love the lonely flute Of legendary satyrs in the wood, Or the still voice of Christ in bachelorhood. And she would come I know to me her son With lovely secret gossip of journeys done In fields where some day my own feet should go. It was not gossip in words that I could not know, Mere ease and pleasure for her mother wit, But such as I could feel the joy of it Beating about my baby blood and sense, Maternal tending of intelligence In the unwhispered rites of bosom and lip, Divinings worded in bodily fellowship. And every shape and colour and scent she knew, Were intimations winding, folding, through My infancies of flesh and thought, each one To find its unblemished record and copy done In little moods drawn from the suckling-breast... That now, in manhood, when I find the nest Of the chaffinch moulded in the elder tree, And looking on that lichen cup can see The images of eternity and space Lavished upon a small bird's dwelling-place: Or when from some blue passage of the sky I know that also colour can prophesy: Or, ghosted on the brushing tides of wheat, The gossip of a Galilean street, So many Sabbaths gone, I hear again, And his hands plucking that immortal grain: Or when by spectral ancestries I pass Again to Eden, as the orchard grass Gives out the scent of mellow apples blown From windy boughs--all these, I know, were known By that dear mother when the boy to come Was the zeal and gospel of her martyrdom.

Then came the time when I could walk with her, We pilgrims of the fields, with everywhere Strange leaves, and spreading of earth, and hedgerow themes, And mossy walls, and bubbling of the streams, And the way of clouds, and the full moon to wane, The bird-song in the lilacs after rain, And month by month the coming of the flowers, for me to learn in speech, as had been ours Knowledge unspoken while she fashioned me... And then she died; and I went on to be Through lonely boyhood her disciple still, A wanderer by many a Berkshire hill, By water-meadows of the Oxford plain, By the thick oaks of Avon, with the strain Of an old yeoman wisdom dreaming on New beauty ever following beauty gone, Until I knew my earth and her raiment fair In every difference of the seasons' wear, Long years her scholar, with learning of her ways To slip unleasht all singing into praise Should learning yet by some enchantment be Bidden to passion's better husbandry.

And the enchanted bidding fell. And you, O Love, it was that spelt the earth anew.

O Love, you silent wayfarer, How many years all unaware By blackthorn hedge, and spinney green With larch, I wandered, while unseen You in my shadow walked, nor made Even a whisper in the shade.

O Love, on many an evening hill I watched the day go down, the still Dark woods, the far great rivers wind, Thin threads of light. And I was blind, Or seeing knew not, for you were Beside me still, yet hidden there.

O Love, as year by year went on, And budding primroses were gone, And berries fell, and still the bright Crocuses came in the night, You left me to my task alone, O Love, so near me and unknown.

O Love, though she who bore me set Earth's love for ever on me, yet Some word withheld still troubled me, Some presence that I could not see, Till you, dear alien, should come, And doctrine be no longer dumb.

O Love, one April night I heard The doctrine's everlasting word, And you beneath that starry sky, Unknown, were with me suddenly, Yet there was no new meeting then, But some old marriage come again.

O Love, and now is earth my friend, Telling me all, until the end When I shall in the earth be laid With all my maps and fancies made, And you, Love, were the secret earth Of my blind following from birth.

O Love, you happy wayfarer, Be still my fond interpreter, Of all the glory that can be As once on starlit Winchelsea, Finding upon my pilgrim way A burning bush for every day.

TO MY SON

(AGED SIXTEEN)

Dear boy unborn: the son but of my dream, Promise of yet unrisen day, Come, sit beside me; let us talk, and seem To take such cares and courage for your way, As some year yet we may.

As some year yet, when you, my son to be, Look out on life, and turn to go, And I, grown grey, shall wish you well, and see Myself imprinted as but she could know To make amendment so.

I see you then, your sixteen years alight With limbs all true and golden hair, And you, unborn, I will, this April night, Tell of the faith and honour you must wear For love, whose light you bear.

Beauty you have; as, mothered so, could face Or limbs or hair be otherwise? Years gone, dear boy, there was a virgin grace Worth Homer's laurel under western skies To wander and devise.

Beauty you have. Cherish it as divine, Wash it with dews of diligence, Not vainly, but because it is the sign Of inward light, the spirit's excellence Made visible to sense.

Athlete be you; strong runner to the goal, Glad though the game be lost or won: Fleet limbs that chronicle a fleeter soul, In every winter valiantly to run, Till the last race be done.

Love wisdom that is suited in a rhyme, And be in all your learning known Old minstrels chanting out of faded time, Since he who counts all years gone by alone Makes any year his own.

And when one day you are a lover too, Come back to her who bore you, dear, Tell out your tale; you shall the better woo For every word that from her lips you hear, For she made love most clear.

Most clear for him who sits beside you now; There was a certain frost that fell Before its time upon a summer bough,-- And how at last that reckoning was well, She for your love shall tell.

Labour to build your house, but ever keep That greater garden fresh in mind, That England with its bird-song buried deep In cool great woods where chivalry can find The province of its kind.

Be great or little your inheritance, Know there shall number in that dower No treasure from the treasuries of chance So rare as that you came the perfect flower Of love's most perfect hour.

Go now, my son. Be all I might have been. (Ask her. She knows, and none but she.) Her beauty and her wisdom weathered clean Some part of me in you, that you might be Her own eternity.

INTERLUDE

What love is; how I love; how builders' clay By love is lit into a golden spending; How love calls beautiful ghosts back to the day; How life because of love shall have no ending-- These with the dawn I have begun to sing, These with the million-budded noon that's rising Shall be a theme, with love's consent, to bring My song to some imperishable devising. And may the petals of this garland fall On every quarrel, and in fragrance bless Old friendship; and a little comfort all The weary loves that walk the wilderness, While still my song I consecrate alone To her who taking it shall take her own.