Part 11

I know you: You are light as dreams, Tough as oak, Precious as gold, As poppies and corn, Or an old cloak: Sweet as our birds To the ear, As the linnet note In the heat Of Midsummer: Strange as the races Of dead and unborn: Strange and sweet Equally. And familiar, To the eye, As the dearest faces That a man knows, And as lost homes are: But though older far Than oldest yew,-- As our hills are, old,-- Worn new Again and again: Young as our streams After rain: And as dear As the earth which you prove That we love.

Make me content With some sweetness From Wales Whose nightingales Have no wings,-- From Wiltshire and Kent And Herefordshire, And the villages there,-- From the names, and the things, No less. Let me sometimes dance With you, Or climb Or stand perchance In ecstasy, Fixed and free In a rhyme, As poets do.

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.

THE PATH

Running along a bank, a parapet That saves from the precipitous wood below The level road, there is a path. It serves Children for looking down the long smooth steep, Between the legs of beech and yew, to where A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women Content themselves with the road, and what they see Over the bank, and what the children tell. The path, winding like silver, trickles on, Bordered and ever invaded by thinnest moss That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain. The children wear it. They have flattened the bank On top, and silvered it between the moss With the current of their feet, year after year. But the road is houseless, and leads not to school. To see a child is rare there, and the eye Has but the road, the wood that overhangs And underyawns it, and the path that looks As if it led on to some legendary Or fancied place where men have wished to go And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.

SWEDES

They have taken the gable from the roof of clay On the long swede pile. They have let in the sun To the white and gold and purple of curled fronds Unsunned. It is a sight more tender-gorgeous At the wood-corner where Winter moans and drips Than when, in the Valley of the Tombs of Kings, A boy crawls down into a Pharaoh's tomb And, first of Christian men, beholds the mummy, God and monkey, chariot and throne and vase, Blue pottery, alabaster, and gold.

But dreamless long-dead Amen-hotep lies. This is a dream of Winter, sweet as Spring.

W. J. TURNER

ROMANCE

When I was but thirteen or so I went into a golden land, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi Took me by the hand.

My father died, my brother too, They passed like fleeting dreams. I stood where Popocatapetl In the sunlight gleams.

I dimly heard the Master's voice And boys far-off at play, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi Had stolen me away.

I walked in a great golden dream To and fro from school-- Shining Popocatapetl The dusty streets did rule.

I walked home with a gold dark boy And never a word I'd say, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi Had taken my speech away:

I gazed entranced upon his face Fairer than any flower-- O shining Popocatapetl It was thy magic hour:

The houses, people, traffic seemed Thin fading dreams by day, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi They had stolen my soul away!

THE CAVES OF AUVERGNE

He carved the red deer and the bull Upon the smooth cave rock, Returned from war with belly full, And scarred with many a knock, He carved the red deer and the bull Upon the smooth cave rock.

The stars flew by the cave's wide door, The clouds wild trumpets blew, Trees rose in wild dreams from the floor, Flowers with dream faces grew Up to the sky, and softly hung Golden and white and blue.

The woman ground her heap of corn, Her heart a guarded fire; The wind played in his trembling soul Like a hand upon a lyre, The wind drew faintly on the stone Symbols of his desire:

The red deer of the forest dark, Whose antlers cut the sky, That vanishes into the mirk And like a dream flits by, And by an arrow slain at last Is but the wind's dark body.

The bull that stands in marshy lakes As motionless and still As a dark rock jutting from a plain Without a tree or hill; The bull that is the sign of life, Its sombre, phallic will.

And from the dead, white eyes of them The wind springs up anew, It blows upon the trembling heart, And bull and deer renew Their flitting life in the dim past When that dead Hunter drew.

I sit beside him in the night, And, fingering his red stone, I chase through endless forests dark Seeking that thing unknown, That which is not red deer or bull, But which by them was shown:

By those stiff shapes in which he drew His soul's exalted cry, When flying down the forest dark He slew and knew not why, When he was filled with song, and strength Flowed to him from the sky.

The wind blows from red deer and bull, The clouds wild trumpets blare. Trees rise in wild dreams from the earth, Flowers with dream faces stare, _O Hunter, your own shadow stands_ _Within your forest lair!_

ECSTASY

I saw a frieze on whitest marble drawn Of boys who sought for shells along the shore, Their white feet shedding pallor in the sea, The shallow sea, the spring-time sea of green That faintly creamed against the cold, smooth pebbles.

The air was thin, their limbs were delicate, The wind had graven their small eager hands To feel the forests and the dark nights of Asia Behind the purple bloom of the horizon, Where sails would float and slowly melt away.

Their naked, pure, and grave, unbroken silence Filled the soft air as gleaming, limpid water Fills a spring sky those days when rain is lying In shattered bright pools on the wind-dried roads, And their sweet bodies were wind-purified.

One held a shell unto his shell-like ear And there was music carven in his face, His eyes half-closed, his lips just breaking open To catch the lulling, mazy, coralline roar Of numberless caverns filled with singing seas.

And all of them were hearkening as to singing Of far off voices thin and delicate, Voices too fine for any mortal mind To blow into the whorls of mortal ears-- And yet those sounds flowed from their grave, sweet faces.

And as I looked I heard that delicate music, And I became as grave, as calm, as still As those carved boys. I stood upon that shore, I felt the cool sea dream around my feet, My eyes were staring at the far horizon:

And the wind came and purified my limbs, And the stars came and set within my eyes, And snowy clouds rested upon my shoulders, And the blue sky shimmered deep within me, And I sang like a carven pipe of music.

KENT IN WAR

The pebbly brook is cold to-night, Its water soft as air, A clear, cold, crystal-bodied wind Shadowless and bare, Leaping and running in this world Where dark-horned cattle stare:

Where dark-horned cattle stare, hoof-firm On the dark pavements of the sky, And trees are mummies swathed in sleep, And small dark hills crowd wearily: Soft multitudes of snow-grey clouds Without a sound march by.

Down at the bottom of the road I smell the woody damp Of that cold spirit in the grass, And leave my hill-top camp-- Its long gun pointing in the sky--And take the Moon for lamp.

I stop beside the bright cold glint Of that thin spirit of the grass, So gay it is, so innocent! I watch its sparkling footsteps pass Lightly from smooth round stone to stone, Hid in the dew-hung grass.

My lamp shines in the globes of dew, And leaps into that crystal wind Running along the shaken grass To each dark hole that it can find-- The crystal wind, the Moon my lamp, Have vanished in a wood that's blind.

High lies my small, my shadowy camp, Crowded about by small dark hills; With sudden small white flowers the sky Above the woods' dark greenness fills; And hosts of dark-browed, muttering trees In trance the white Moon stills.

I move among their tall grey forms, A thin moon-glimmering, wandering Ghost, Who takes his lantern through the world In search of life that he has lost, While watching by that long lean gun Upon his small hill post.

DEATH

When I am dead a few poor souls shall grieve As I grieved for my brother long ago. Scarce did my eyes grow dim, I had forgotten him; I was far-off hearing the spring winds blow, And many summers burned When, though still reeling with my eyes aflame, I heard that faded name Whispered one Spring amid the hurrying world From which, years gone, he turned.

I looked up at my windows and I saw The trees, thin spectres sucked forth by the moon. The air was very still Above a distant hill; It was the hour of night's full silver moon. "O art thou there my brother?" my soul cried; And all the pale stars down bright rivers wept, As my heart sadly crept About the empty hills, bathed in that light That lapped him when he died.

Ah! it was cold, so cold; do I not know How dead my heart on that remembered day! Clear in a far-away place I see his delicate face Just as he called me from my solitary play, Giving into my hands a tiny tree. We planted it in the dark, blossomless ground Gravely, without a sound; Then back I went and left him standing by His birthday gift to me.

In that far land perchance it quietly grows Drinking the rain, making a pleasant shade; Birds in its branches fly Out of the fathomless sky Where worlds of circling light arise and fade, Blindly it quivers in the bright flood of day, Or drowned in multitudinous shouts of rain Glooms o'er the dark-veiled plain--Buried below, the ghost that's in his bones Dreams in the sodden clay.

And, while he faded, drunk with beauty's eyes I kissed bright girls and laughed deep in dumb trees, That stared fixt in the air Like madmen in despair Gaped up from earth with the escaping breeze. I saw earth's exaltation slowly creep Out of their myriad sky-embracing veins. I laughed along the lanes, Meeting Death riding in from the hollow seas Through black-wreathed woods asleep.

I laughed, I swaggered on the cold, hard ground Through the grey air trembled a falling wave-- "Thou'rt pale, O Death!" I cried, Mocking him in my pride; And passing I dreamed not of that lonely grave, But of leaf-maidens whose pale, moon-like hands Above the tree-foam waved in the icy air, Sweeping with shining hair Through the green-tinted sky, one moment fled Out of immortal lands.

One windless Autumn night the Moon came out In a white sea of cloud, a field of snow; In darkness shaped of trees, I sank upon my knees And watched her shining, from the small wood below-- Faintly Death flickered in an owl's far cry-- We floated soundless in the great gulf of space, Her light upon my face--Immortal, shining in that dark wood I knelt And knew I could not die.

And knew I could not die--O Death did'st thou Heed my vain glory, standing pale by thy dead? There is a spirit who grieves Amid earth's dying leaves; Was't thou that wept beside my brother's bed? For I did never mourn nor heed at all Him passing on his temporal elm-wood bier; I never shed a tear. The drooping sky spread grey-winged through my soul, While stones and earth did fall.

That sound rings down the years--I hear it yet-- All earthly life's a winding funeral-- And though I never wept, But into the dark coach stept, Dreaming by night to answer the blood's sweet call, She who stood there, high breasted, with small wise lips, And gave me wine to drink and bread to eat, Has not more steadfast feet, But fades from my arms as fade from mariners' eyes The sea's most beauteous ships.

The trees and hills of earth were once as close As my own brother, they are becoming dreams And shadows in my eyes; More dimly lies Guaya deep in my soul, the coastline gleams Faintly along the darkening crystalline seas. Glimmering and lovely still, 'twill one day go; The surging dark will flow Over my hopes and joys, and blot out all Earth's hills and skies and trees.

I shall look up one night and see the Moon For the last time shining above the hills, And thou, silent, wilt ride Over the dark hillside. 'Twill be, perchance, the time of daffodils-- _"How come those bright immortals in the woods?_ _Their joy being young, did'st thou not drag them all_ _Into dark graves ere Fall?"_ Shall life thus haunt me, wondering, as I go To thy deep solitudes?

There is a figure with a down-turned torch Carved on a pillar in an olden time, A calm and lovely boy Who comes not to destroy But to lead age back to its golden prime. Thus did an antique sculptor draw thee, Death, With smooth and beauteous brow and faint sweet smile, Nor haggard, gaunt and vile, And thou perhaps art Him to whom men may Unvexed, give up their breath.

But in my soul thou sittest like a dream Among earth's mountains, by her dim-coloured seas; A wild unearthly Shape In thy dark-glimmering cape, Piping a tune of wavering melodies, Thou sittest, ay, thou sittest at the feast Of my brief life among earth's bright-wreathed flowers, Stemming the dancing hours With sombre gleams until abrupt, thou risest And all, at once, is ceased.

SOLDIERS IN A SMALL CAMP

There is a camp upon a rounded hill Where men do sleep more closely to the stars, And tree-like shapes stand at its entrances, Beside the small, dark, shadow-soldiery.

Deep in the gloom of days of isolation, Withdrawn, high up from the low, murmuring town, Those shadows sit, drooping around their fires, Or move as winds dark-waving in a wood.

Staring at cattle on a neighbouring hill They are oblivious as is stone or grass--The clouds passed voiceless over, and the sun Rose, and lit trees, and vanished utterly.

Then in the awful beauty of the world, When stars are singing in dark ecstasy, Those ox-like soldiers sit collected round A thin, metallic echo of human song:

And click their feet and clap their hands in time, And wag their heads, and make the white ghost owl Flit from its branch--but still those tree-like shapes Stand like archangels dark-winged in the sky.

And presently the soldiers cease to stir; The thin voice sinks and all at once is dead; They lie down on their planks and hear the wind, And feel the darkness fumbling at their souls.

They lie in rows as stiff as tombs or trees, Their eyeballs imageless, like marble still; And secretly they feel that roof and walls Are gone and that they stare into the sky.

It is so black, so black, so black, so black, Those black-winged shapes have stretched across the world, Have swallowed up the stars, and if the sun Rises again, it will be black, black, black.

A RITUAL DANCE

I--THE DANCE

In the black glitter of night the grey vapour forest Lies a dark Ghost in the water, motionless, dark, Like a corpse by the bank fallen, and hopelessly rotting Where the thin silver soul of the stars silently dances.

The flowers are closed, the birds are carved on the trees, When out of the forest glide hundreds of spear-holding shadows, In smooth dark ivory bodies their eyeballs gleaming Forming a gesturing circle beneath the Moon. The bright-eyed shadows, the tribe in ritual gathered, Are dancing and howling, the embryo soul of a nation: In loud drum-beating monotonous the tightly stretched skins Of oxen that stared at the stars are singing wild paeans:

Wild paeans for food that magically grew in the clearings When he that was slain was buried and is resurrected, And a green mist arose from the mud and shone in the Moon, A great delirium of faces, a new generation.

The thin wafer Moon it is there, it is there in the sky, The hand-linked circle raise faces of mad exaltation-- Dance, O you Hunters, leap madly upon the flung shields, Shoot arrows into the sky, thin moon-seeking needles:

Now you shall have a harvest, a belly-full rapture, There shall be many fat women, full grown, and smoother than honey, Their limbs like ivory rounded, and firm as a berry, Their lips full of food and their eyes full of hunger for men!

The heat of the earth arises, a faint love mist Wan with over-desiring, and in the marshes Blindly the mud stirs, clouding the dark shining water, And troubling the still soft swarms of fallen stars.

There is bright sweat upon the bodies of cattle, Great vials of life motionless in the moonlight, Breathing faint mists over the warm, damp ground; And the cry of a dancer rings through the shadowy forest.

The tiger is seeking his mate and his glassy eyes Are purple and shot with starlight in the grass shining, The fiery grass tortured out of the mud and writhing Under the sun, now shivering and pale in the Moon.

The shadows are dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing: The grey vapour amis of the forest lie dreaming around them; The cold, shining moonlight falls from their bodies and faces, But caught in their eyes lies prisoned and faintly gleaming:

And they return to their dwellings within the grey forest, Into their dark huts, burying the moonlight with them, Burying the trees and the stars and the flowing river, And the glittering spears, and their dark, evocative gestures.

II--SLEEP

Hollow the world in the moonlit hour when the birds are shadows small, Lost in the swarm of giant leaves and myriad branches tall; When vast thick boughs hang across the sky like solid limbs of night, Dug from still quarries of grey-black air by the pale transparent light, And the purple and golden blooms of the sun, each crimson and spotted flower, Are folded up or have faded away, as the still intangible power Floats out of the sky, falls shimmering down, a silver-shadowy bloom, On the spear-pointed forest a fragile crown, in the soul a soft, bright gloom; Hollow the world when the shadow of man lies prone and still on its floor, And the moonlight shut from his empty heart weeps softly against his door, And his terror and joy but a little dream in the corner of his house, And his voice dead in the darkness 'mid the twittering of a mouse.

III.

Hollow the world! hollow the world! And its dancers shadow-grey; And the Moon a silver-shadowy bloom Fading and fading away; And the forest's grey vapour, and all the trees Shadows against the sky; And the soul of man and his ecstasies A night-forgotten cry. Hollow the world! hollow the world!

IOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS

FROM A FLEMISH GRAVEYARD

JANUARY 1915

A year hence may the grass that waves O'er English men in Flemish graves, Coating this clay with green of peace And softness of a year's increase, Be kind and lithe as English grass To bend and nod as the winds pass; It was for grass on English hills These bore too soon the last of ills.

And may the wind be brisk and clean, And singing cheerfully between The bents a pleasant-burdened song To cheer these English dead along; For English songs and English winds Are they that bred these English minds.

And may the circumstantial trees Dip, for these dead ones, in the breeze, And make for them their silver play Of spangled boughs each shiny day. Thus may these look above, and see And hear the wind in grass and tree, And watch a lark in heaven stand, And think themselves in their own land.

A MONUMENT

(AFTER AN ANCIENT FASHION)

Traveller, turn a mournful eye Where my lady's ashes lie; If thou hast a sweet thine own Pity me, that am alone;-- Yet, if thou no lover be, Nor hast been, I'll pity thee.

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG

SONG OF THE DARK AGES

We digged our trenches on the down Beside old barrows, and the wet White chalk we shovelled from below; It lay like drifts of thawing snow On parados and parapet;

Until a pick neither struck flint Nor split the yielding chalky soil, But only calcined human bone: Poor relic of that Age of Stone Whose ossuary was our spoil.

Home we marched singing in the rain, And all the while, beneath our song, I mused how many springs should wane And still our trenches scar the plain: The monument of an old wrong.

But then, I thought, the fair green sod Will wholly cover that white stain, And soften, as it clothes the face Of those old barrows, every trace Of violence to the patient plain.

And careless people, passing by Will speak of both in casual tone: Saying: "You see the toil they made The age of iron, pick and spade, Here jostles with the Age of Stone."

Yet either from that happier race Will merit but a passing glance; And they will leave us both alone: Poor savages who wrought in stone--Poor Poor savages who fought in France.

BÊTE HUMAINE

Riding through Ruwu swamp, about sunrise, I saw the world awake; and as the ray Touched the tall grasses where they sleeping lay, Lo, the bright air alive with dragonflies: With brittle wings aquiver, and great eyes Piloting crimson bodies, slender and gay. I aimed at one, and struck it, and it lay Broken and lifeless, with fast-fading dyes ... Then my soul sickened with a sudden pain And horror, at my own careless cruelty, That in an idle moment I had slain A creature whose sweet life it is to fly: Like beasts that prey with tooth and claw ... Nay, they Must slay to live, but what excuse had I?

THE GIFT

Marching on Tanga, marching the parch'd plain Of wavering spear-grass past Pangani river, England came to me--me who had always ta'en But never given before--England, the giver, In a vision of three poplar-trees that shiver On still evenings of summer, after rain, By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiver When scarce a ripple moves the upland grain. Then I thanked God that now I had suffered pain And, as the parch'd plain, thirst, and lain awake Shivering all night through till cold daybreak: In that I count these sufferings my gain And her acknowledgment. Nay, more, would fain Suffer as many more for her sweet sake.

THE LEANING ELM