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Chestnut candles are lit againFor the dead that died in spring:Dead lovers walk the orchard ways,And the dead cuckoos sing.Is it they who live and we who are dead?Hardly the springtime knowsFor which today the cuckoo calls,And the white blossom blows.Listen and hear the happy windWhisper and lightly pass:'Your love is sweet as hawthorn is,Your hope green as the grass.'The hawthorn's faint and quickly gone,The grass in autumn dies;Put by your life, and see the springWith everlasting eyes.'
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Daisies are over Nyren, and HambledonHardly remembers any summer gone:And never again the Kentish elms shall seeMynn, or Fuller Pilch, or Colin Blythe.— Nor shall I see them, unless perhaps a ghostWatching the elder ghosts beyond the moon.But here in common sunshine I have seenGeorge Hirst, not yet a ghost, substantial,His off-drives mellow as brown ale, and crispMerry late cuts, and brave Chaucerian pulls;Waddington's fury and the patience of Dipper;And twenty easy artful overs of Rhodes,So many stanzas of the Faerie Queen.
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Mere living wears the most of life away:Even the lilies take thought for many things,For frost in April and for drought in May,And from no careless heart the skylark sings.Those cheap utilities of rain and sunDescribe the foolish circle of our years,Until death takes us, doing all undone,And there's an end at last to hopes and fears.Though song be hollow and no dreams come true,Still songs and dreams are better than the truth:But there's so much to get, so much to do,Mary must drudge like Martha, dainty RuthForget the morning music in the corn,And Rachel grudge when Leah's boys are born.
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Secret and wise as nature, like the windMelancholy or light-hearted without reason,And like the waxing or the waning moonEver pale and lovely: you are like theseBecause you are free and live by your own law;While I, desiring life and half alive,Dream, hope, regret and fear and blunder on.Your beauty is your life and my content,And I will liken you to an apple-tree,Mary and Margaret playing under the branches,And everywhere soft shadows like your eyes,And scattered blossom like your little smiles.
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When I seek the world throughFor images of you,Though apple-blossom is gladAnd the lily stately-sad,Gilliflowers kind of breath,Rosemary true till death;Though the wind can stir the grassTo memories as you pass.And the soft-singing streamsAre music like your dreams;Though constant stars embraceThe quiet of your face,Your smile lights up sunrise,And evening's in your eyes —Each so shadows its part,All cannot show your heart;And weighing the beauty of earthI see it so little worth,When reckoned beside you,That I hold heaven for true— But all my heaven is you.
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Half-awake I walkedA dimly-seen sweet hawthorn laneUntil sleep came;I lingered at a gate and talkedA little with a lonely lamb.He told me of the great still night,Of calm starlight,And of the lady moon, who'd stoopFor a kiss sometimes;Of grass as soft as sleep, of rhymesThe tired flowers sang:The ageless April talesOf how, when sheep grew old,As their faith told,They went without a pangTo far green fields, where fallPerpetual streams that callTo deathless nightingales.And then I saw, hard by,A shepherd lad with shining eyes,And round him gathered one by oneCountless sheep, snow-white;More and more they crowdedWith tender cries,Till all the field was fullOf voices and of coming sheep.Countless they came, and IWatched, until deepAs dream-fields lieI was asleep.
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Under vague silver moonlightThe trees are lovely and ghostly,In the pale blue of the nightThere are few stars to see.The leaves are green still, but brown-blent:They stir not, only knownBy a poignant delicate scentTo the lonely moon blown.The lonely lovely trees sighFor summer spent and gone:A few homing leaves drift by,Poor souls bewildered and wan.
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How shall the living be comforted for the deadWhen they are gone, and nothing's left behindBut a vague music of the words they saidAnd a fast-fading image in the mind?Let no forgetting sully that dim grace;Our heart's infirmity is too easily wonTo set a new love in the old love's placeAnd seek fresh vanity under the sun.Time brings to us at last, as night the stars,The starry silence of eternity:For there is no discharge in our long wars,Nor balm for wounds, nor love's security.Be patient to the end, and you shall sleepPillowed on heartsease and forget to weep.
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A snake came to my water-troughOn a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,To drink there.In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob treeI came down the steps with my pitcherAnd must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloomAnd trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone troughAnd rested his throat upon the stone bottom,And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,He sipped with his straight mouth,Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,Silently.Someone was before me at my water-trough,And I, like a second-comer, waiting.He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,And stooped and drank a little more,Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earthOn the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.The voice of my education said to meHe must be killed,For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.And voices in me said, If you were a manYou would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.But must I confess how I liked him,How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-troughAnd depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,Into the burning bowels of this earth?Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?Was it humility, to feel honoured?I felt so honoured.And yet those voices:If you were not afraid you would kill him.And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,But even so, honoured still moreThat he should seek my hospitalityFrom out the dark door of the secret earth.He drank enoughAnd lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,Seeming to lick his lips,And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,And slowly turned his head,And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,Proceeded to draw his slow length curving roundAnd climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered further,A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,Overcame me now his back was turned.I looked round, I put down my pitcher,I picked up a clumsy logAnd threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.I think it did not hit him,But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,Writhed like lightning, and was goneInto the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.And immediately I regretted it.I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.And I thought of the albatross,And I wished he would come back, my snake.For he seemed to me again like a king,Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,Now due to be crowned again.And so, I missed my chance with one of the lordsOf life.And I have something to expiate:A pettiness.
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This might have been a place for sleep,But, as from that small hollow thereHosts of bright thistledown beginTheir dazzling journey through the air,An idle man can only stare.They grip their withered edge of stalkIn brief excitement for the wind;They hold a breathless final talk,And when their filmy cables partOne almost hears a little cry.Some cling together while they wait,And droop and gaze and hesitate,But others leap along the sky,Or circle round and calmly chooseThe gust they know they ought to use;While some in loving pairs will glide,Or watch the others as they pass,Or rest on flowers in the grass,Or circle through the shining dayLike silvery butterflies at play.Some catch themselves to every mound,Then lingeringly and slowly moveAs if they knew the precious groundWere opening for their fertile love:They almost try to dig, they needSo much to plant their thistle-seed.
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Tell me about that harvest field.Oh! Fifty acres of living bread.The colour has painted itself in my heart;The form is patterned in my head.So now I take it everywhere,See it whenever I look round;Hear it growing through every sound,Know exactly the sound it makes —Remembering, as one must all day,Under the pavement the live earth aches.Trees are at the farther end,Limes all full of the mumbling bee:So there must be a harvest fieldWhenever one thinks of a linden tree.A hedge is about it, very tall,Hazy and cool, and breathing sweet.Round paradise is such a wall,And all the day, in such a way,In paradise the wild birds call.You only need to close your eyesAnd go within your secret mind,And you'll be into paradise:I've learnt quite easily to findSome linden trees and drowsy bees,A tall sweet hedge with the corn behind.I will not have that harvest mown:I'll keep the corn and leave the bread.I've bought that field; it's now my own:I've fifty acres in my head.I take it as a dream to bed.I carry it about all day....Sometimes when I have found a friendI give a blade of corn away.
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Here, in this other world, they come and goWith easy dream-like movements to and fro.They stare through lovely eyes, yet do not seekAn answering gaze, or that a man should speak.Had I a load of gold, and should I comeBribing their friendship, and to buy a home,They would stare harder and would slightly frown:I am a stranger from the distant town.Oh, with what patience I have tried to winThe favour of the hostess of the Inn!Have I not offered toast on frothing toastLooking toward the melancholy host;Praised the old wall-eyed mare to please the groom;Laughed to the laughing maid and fetched her broom;Stood in the background not to interfereWhen the cool ancients frolicked at their beer;Talked only in my turn, and made no claimFor recognition or by voice or name,Content to listen, and to watch the blueOr grey of eyes, or what good hands can do?Sun-freckled lads, who at the dusk of dayStroll through the village with a scent of hayClinging about you from the windy hill,Why do you keep your secret from me still?You loiter at the corner of the street;I in the distance silently entreat.I know too well I'm city-soiled, but thenSo are today ten million other men.My heart is true: I've neither will nor charmsTo lure away your maidens from your arms.Trust me a little. Must I always standLonely, a stranger from an unknown land?There is a riddle here. Though I'm more wiseThan you, I cannot read your simple eyes.I find the meaning of their gentle lookMore difficult than any learned book.I pass: perhaps a moment you may chaffMy walk, and so dismiss me with a laugh.I come: you all, most grave and most polite,Stand silent first, then wish me calm Good-Night.When I go back to town some one will say:'I think that stranger must have gone away.'And 'Surely!' some one else will then reply.Meanwhile, within the dark of London, IShall, with my forehead resting on my hand,Not cease remembering your distant land;Endeavouring to reconstruct arightHow some treed hill has looked in evening light;Or be imagining the blue of skiesNow as in heaven, now as in your eyes;Or in my mind confusing looks or wordsOf yours with dawnlight, or the song of birds:Not able to resist, not even keepMyself from hovering near you in my sleep:You still as callous to my thought and meAs flowers to the purpose of the bee.
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How beautiful it is to wake at night,When over all there reigns the ultimate spellOf complete silence, darkness absolute,To feel the world, tilted on axle-tree,In slow gyration, with no sensible sound,Unless to ears of unimagined beings,Resident incorporeal or stretchedIn vigilance of ecstasy amongEthereal paths and the celestial maze.The rumour of our onward course now bringsA steady rustle, as of some strange shipDarkling with soundless sail all set and amply filledBy volume of an ever-constant air,At fullest night, through seas for ever calm,Swept lovely and unknown for ever on.How beautiful it is to wake at night,Embalmed in darkness watchful, sweet, and still,As is the brain's mood flattered by the swimOf currents circumvolvent in the void,To lie quite still and to become awareOf the dim light cast by nocturnal skiesOn a dim earth beyond the window-ledge,So, isolate from the friendly companyOf the huge universe which turns without,To brood apart in calm and joy awhileUntil the spirit sinks and scarcely knowsWhether self is, or if self only is,For ever....How beautiful to wake at night,Within the room grown strange, and still, and sweet,And live a century while in the darkThe dripping wheel of silence slowly turns;To watch the window open on the night,A dewy silent deep where nothing stirs,And, lying thus, to feel dilate withinThe press, the conflict, and the heavy pulseOf incommunicable sad ecstasy,Growing until the body seems outstretchedIn perfect crucifixion on the armsOf a cross pointing from last void to void,While the heart dies to a mere midway spark.All happiness thou holdest, happy night,For such as lie awake and feel dissolvedThe peaceful spice of darkness and the coolBreath hither blown from the ethereal flowersThat mist thy fields! O happy, happy wounds,Conditioned by existence in humanity,That have such powers to heal them! slow sweet sighsTorn from the bosom, silent wails, the birthOf such long-treasured tears as pain his eyes,Who, waking, hears the divine solicitudesOf midnight with ineffable purport charged.How beautiful it is to wake at night,Another night, in darkness yet more still,Save when the myriad leaves on full-fledged boughs,Filled rather by the perfume's wandering floodThan by dispansion of the still sweet air,Shall from the furthest utter silencesIn glimmering secrecy have gathered upAn host of whisperings and scattered sighs,To loose at last a sound as of the plungeAnd lapsing seethe of some Pacific wave,Which, risen from the star-thronged outer troughs,Rolls in to wreathe with circling foam awayThe flutter of the golden moths that hauntThe star's one glimmer daggered on wet sands.So beautiful it is to wake at night!Imagination, loudening with the surfOf the midsummer wind among the boughs,Gathers my spirit from the haunts remoteOf faintest silence and the shades of sleep,To bear me on the summit of her waveBeyond known shores, beyond the mortal edgeOf thought terrestrial, to hold me poisedAbove the frontiers of infinity,To which in the full reflux of the waveCome soon I must, bubble of solving foam,Borne to those other shores — now never mineSave for a hovering instant, short as thisWhich now sustains me ere I be drawn back —To learn again, and wholly learn, I trust,How beautiful it is to wake at night.
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As I walk the misty hillAll is languid, fogged, and still;Not a note of any birdNor any motion's hint is heard,Save from soaking thickets roundTrickle or water's rushing sound,And from ghostly trees the dripOf runnel dews or whispering slipOf leaves, which in a body launchListlessly from the stagnant branchTo strew the marl, already strown,With litter sodden as its own,A rheum, like blight, hangs on the briars,And from the clammy ground suspiresA sweet frail sick autumnal scentOf stale frost furring weeds long spent;And wafted on, like one who sleeps,A feeble vapour hangs or creeps,Exhaling on the fungus mouldA breath of age, fatigue, and cold.Oozed from the bracken's desolate track,By dark rains havocked and drenched black.A fog about the coppice drifts,Or slowly thickens up and liftsInto the moist, despondent air.Mist, grief, and stillness everywhere....And in me, too, there is no soundSave welling as of tears profound,Where in me cloud, grief, stillness reign,And an intolerable painBegins.Rolled on as in a flood there comeMemories of childhood, boyhood, home,And that which, sudden, pangs me most,Thought of the first-belov'd, long lost,Too easy lost! My cold lips frameTremulously the familiar name,Unheard of her upon my breath:'Elizabeth. Elizabeth.'No voice answers on the hill,All is shrouded, sad, and still ...Stillness, fogged brakes, and fog on high.Only in me the waters cryWho mourn the hours now slipped for ever,Hours of boding, joy, and fever,When we loved, by chance beguiled,I a boy and you a child —Child! but with an angel's air,Astonished, eager, unaware,Or elfin's, wandering with a graceForeign to any fireside race,And with a gaiety unknownIn the light feet and hair backblown,And with a sadness yet more strange,In meagre cheeks which knew to changeOr faint or fired more swift than sight,And forlorn hands and lips pressed white,And fragile voice, and head downcast,Hiding tears, lifted at the lastTo speed with one pale smile the wiseGlance of the grey immortal eyes.How strange it was that we should dareCompound a miracle so rareAs, 'twixt this pace and Time's next pace,Each to discern th' elected's face!Yet stranger that the high sweet fire,In hearts nigh foreign to desire,Could burn, sigh, weep, and burn againAs oh, it never has since then!Most strange of all that we so youngDared learn but would not speak love's tongue,Love pledged but in the reveriesOf our sad and dreaming eyes....Now upon such journey bound me,Grief, disquiet, and stillness round me,As bids me where I cannot tell,Turn I and sigh, unseen, farewell.Breathe the name as soft as mist,Lips, which nor kissed her nor were kissed!And again — a sigh, a death —'Elizabeth. Elizabeth.'No voice answers; but the mistGlows for a moment amethystEre the hid sun dissolves away,And dimness, growing dimmer grey,Hides all ... till nothing can I seeBut the blind walls enclosing me,And no sound and no motion hearBut the vague water throbbing near,Sole voice upon the darkening hillWhere all is blank and dead and still.
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London Bridge is broken down;Green is the grass on Ludgate Hill;I know a farmer in Camden TownKilled a brock by Pentonville.I have heard my grandam tellHow some thousand years agoHouses stretched from CamberwellRight to Highbury and Bow.Down by Shadwell's golden meadsTall ships' masts would stand as thickAs the pretty tufted reedsThat the Wapping children pick.All the kings from end to endOf all the world paid tribute then,And meekly on their knees would bendTo the King of the Englishmen.Thinks I while I dig my plot,What if your grandam's tales be true?Thinks I, be they true or not,What's the odds to a fool like you?Thinks I, while I smoke my pipeHere beside the tumbling Fleet,Apples drop when they are ripe,And when they drop are they most sweet.
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Quiet he lived, and quietly died;Nor, like the unwilling tide,Did once complain or striveTo stay one brief hour more alive.But as a summer waveSerenely for a whileWill lift a crest to the sun,Then sink again, so heBack to the bright heavens gaveAn answering smile;Then quietly, having runHis course, bowed down his head,And sank unmurmuringly,Sank back into the sea,The silent, the unfathomable seaOf all the happy dead.
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They say that I shall find him if I goAlong the dusty highways, or the greenTracks of the downland shepherds, or betweenThe swaying corn, or where cool waters flow;And others say, that speak as if they know,That daily in the cities, in the meanDark streets, amid the crowd he may be seen,With thieves and harlots wandering to and fro.But I am blind. How shall a blind man dareVenture along the roaring crowded street,Or branching roads where I may never hitThe way he has gone? But someday if I sitQuietly at this corner listening, thereMay come this way the slow sound of his feet.
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When all is saidAnd all is doneBeneath the Sun,And Man lies dead;When all the earthIs a cold grave,And no more braveBright things have birth;When cooling sunAnd stone-cold world,Together hurled,Flame up as one —O Sons of Men,When all is flame,What of your fameAnd splendour then?When all is fireAnd flaming air,What of your rareAnd high desireTo turn the clodTo a thing divine,The earth a shrine,And Man the God?
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Dear mother, from the sure sun and warm seasOf Italy, I, sick, remember nowWhat sometimes is forgot in times of ease,Our love, the always felt but unspoken vow.So send I beckoning hands from here to there,And kiss your black once, now white thin-grown hairAnd your stooped small shoulder and pinched brow.Here, mother, there is sunshine every day;It warms the bones and breathes upon the heart;But you I see out-plod a little way,Bitten with cold; your cheeks and fingers smart.Would you were here, we might in temples lie,And look from azure into azure sky,And paradise achieve, slipping death's part.But now 'tis time for sleep: I think no speechThere needs to pass between us what we mean,For we soul-venturing mingle each with each.So, mother, pass across the world unseenAnd share in me some wished-for dream in you;For so brings destiny her pledges true,The mother withered, in the son grown green.
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Met ye my love?Ye might in France have met him;He has a wooing smile,Who sees cannot forget him!Met ye my Love?— We shared full many a mile.Saw ye my Love?In lands far-off he has been,With his yellow-tinted hair —In Egypt such ye have seen;Ye knew my love?— I was his brother there.Heard ye my love?My love ye must have heard,For his voice when he willTinkles like cry of a bird;Heard ye my love?— We sang on a Grecian hill.Behold your love,And how shall I forget him,His smile, his hair, his song?Alas, no maid shall get himFor all her love,Where he sleeps a million strong.
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Comrade, why do you weep?Is it sorrow for a friendWho fell, rifle in hand,His last stand at an end?The thunder-lipped grey gunsLament him, fierce and slow,Where he found his dreamless bed,Head to head with a foe.The sweet lark beats on highFor the peace of those who sleepIn the quiet embrace of earth:Comrade, why do you weep?
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The blue sky arches wideFrom hill to hill;The little grasses standUpright and still.Only these stones to tellThe deadly strife,The all-important schemes,The greed for life.For they are gone, who fought;But still the skiesStretch blue, aloof, unchanged,From rise to rise.
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They come fluttering helpless to the groundLike wreaths of wind-caught snow,Uttering a plaintive, chirping sound,And rise and fall, and know not where they go.So small they are, with feathers ruffled blown,Adrift between earth desolate and leaden sky;Nor have they ever knownAny but frozen earth, and scudding clouds on high.What hand doth guide these hapless creatures smallTo sweet seeds that the withered grasses hold? —The little children of men go hungry all,And stiffen and cry with numbing cold.In a sudden gust the flock are whirled awayUttering a frightened, chirping cry,And are lost like a wraith of departing day,Adrift between earth desolate and leaden sky.
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Morning and evening are mine,And the bright noon-day;But night to no man doth belongWhen the sad ghosts play.From Kelso town I took the roadBy the full-flood Tweed;The black clouds swept across the moonWith devouring greed.Seek ye no peace who tread the night;I felt above my headBlowing the cloud's edge, faces wryIn pale fury spread.Twelve surly elves were digging gravesBeside black Eden brook;Eleven dug and stared at me,But one read in a book.In Birgham trees and hedges rocked,The moon was drowned in black;At Hirsel woods I shrieked to findA fiend astride my back.His legs he closed about my breast,His hands upon my head,Till Coldstream lights beamed in the treesAnd he wailed and fled.Morning and evening are mine,And the bright noon-heat,But at night the sad thin ghostsFor their revels meet.