Yet I am not satisfiedEven with knowing I never could be satisfied.With health and all the power that liesIn maiden beauty, poet and warrior,In Caesar, Shakespeare, Alcibiades,Mazeppa, Leonardo, Michelangelo,In any maiden whose smile is lovelierThan sunlight upon dew,I could not be as the wagtail running up and downThe warm tiles of the roof slope, twitteringHappily and sweetly as if the sun itselfExtracted the songAs the hand makes sparks from the fur of a cat:
I could not be as the sun.Nor should I be content to beAs little as the bird or as mighty as the sun.For the bird knows not of the sun,And the sun regards not the bird.But I am almost proud to love both bird and sun,Though scarce this Spring could my body leapfour yards.
WHAT does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease,No man, woman, or child alive could pleaseMe now. And yet I almost dare to laughBecause I sit and frame an epitaph—"Here lies all that no one loved of himAnd that loved no one." Then in a trice thatwhimHas wearied. But, though I am like a riverAt fall of evening while it seems that neverHas the sun lighted it or warmed it, whileCross breezes cut the surface to a file,This heart, some fraction of me, happilyFloats through the window even now to a treeDown in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale,Not like a pewit that returns to wailFor something it has lost, but like a doveThat slants unswerving to its home and love.There I find my rest, and through the dusk airFlies what yet lives in me. Beauty is there.
IN the gloom of whiteness,In the great silence of snow,A child was sighingAnd bitterly saying: "Oh,They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,The down is fluttering from her breast."And still it fell through that dusky brightnessOn the child crying for the bird of the snow.
HE was the one man I met up in the woodsThat stormy New Year's morning; and at firstsight,Fifty yards off, I could not tell how muchOf the strange tripod was a man. His body,Bowed horizontal, was supported equallyBy legs at one end, by a rake at the other:Thus he rested, far less like a man thanHis wheel-barrow in profile was like a pig.But when I saw it was an old man bent,At the same moment came into my mindThe games at which boys bend thus,High-Cockalorum,OrFly-the-garter, andLeap-frog. At the soundOf footsteps he began to straighten himself;His head rolled under his cape like a tortoise's;He took an unlit pipe out of his mouthPolitely ere I wished him "A Happy New Year,"And with his head cast upward sidewaysMuttered—So far as I could hear through the trees' roar—"Happy New Year, and may it come fastish, too,"While I strode by and he turned to raking leaves.
SEATED once by a brook, watching a childChiefly that paddled, I was thus beguiled.Mellow the blackbird sang and sharp the thrushNot far off in the oak and hazel brush,Unseen. There was a scent like honeycombFrom mugwort dull. And down upon the domeOf the stone the cart-horse kicks against so oftA butterfly alighted. From aloftHe took the heat of the sun, and from below.On the hot stone he perched contented so,As if never a cart would pass againThat way; as if I were the last of menAnd he the first of insects to have earthAnd sun together and to know their worth.I was divided between him and the gleam,The motion, and the voices, of the stream,The waters running frizzled over gravel,That never vanish and for ever travel.A grey flycatcher silent on a fenceAnd I sat as if we had been there sinceThe horseman and the horse lying beneathThe fir-tree-covered barrow on the heath,The horseman and the horse with silver shoes,Galloped the downs last. All that I could loseI lost. And then the child's voice raised the dead."No one's been here before" was what she saidAnd what I felt, yet never should have foundA word for, while I gathered sight and sound.
THE forest ended. Glad I wasTo feel the light, and hear the humOf bees, and smell the drying grassAnd the sweet mint, because I had comeTo an end of forest, and becauseHere was both road and inn, the sumOf what's not forest. But 'twas hereThey asked me if I did not passYesterday this way? "Not you? Queer.""Who then? and slept here?" I felt fear.
I learnt his road and, ere they wereSure I was I, left the dark woodBehind, kestrel and woodpecker,The inn in the sun, the happy moodWhen first I tasted sunlight there.I travelled fast, in hopes I shouldOutrun that other. What to doWhen caught, I planned not. I pursuedTo prove the likeness, and, if true,To watch until myself I knew.
I tried the inns that eveningOf a long gabled high-street grey,Of courts and outskirts, travellingAn eager but a weary way,In vain. He was not there. NothingTold me that ever till that dayHad one like me entered those doors,Save once. That time I dared: "You mayRecall"—but never-foamless shoresMake better friends than those dull boors.
Many and many a day like thisAimed at the unseen moving goalAnd nothing found but remediesFor all desire. These made not whole;They sowed a new desire, to kissDesire's self beyond control,Desire of desire. And yetLife stayed on within my soul.One night in sheltering from the wetI quite forgot I could forget.
A customer, then the landladyStared at me. With a kind of smileThey hesitated awkwardly:Their silence gave me time for guile.Had anyone called there like me,I asked. It was quite plain the wileSucceeded. For they poured out all.And that was naught. Less than a mileBeyond the inn, I could recallHe was like me in general.
He had pleased them, but I less.I was more eager than beforeTo find him out and to confess,To bore him and to let him bore.I could not wait: children might guessI had a purpose, something moreThat made an answer indiscreet.One girl's caution made me sore,Too indignant even to greetThat other had we chanced to meet.
I sought then in solitude.The wind had fallen with the night; as stillThe roads lay as the ploughland rude,Dark and naked, on the hill.Had there been ever any feud'Twixt earth and sky, a mighty willClosed it: the crocketed dark trees,A dark house, dark impossibleCloud-towers, one star, one lamp, one peaceHeld on an everlasting lease:
And all was earth's, or all was sky's;No difference endured betweenThe two. A dog barked on a hidden rise;A marshbird whistled high unseen;The latest waking blackbird's criesPerished upon the silence keen.The last light filled a narrow firthAmong the clouds. I stood serene,And with a solemn quiet mirth,An old inhabitant of earth.
Once the name I gave to hoursLike this was melancholy, whenIt was not happiness and powersComing like exiles home again,And weaknesses quitting their bowers,Smiled and enjoyed, far off from men,Moments of everlastingness.And fortunate my search was thenWhile what I sought, nevertheless,That I was seeking, I did not guess.
That time was brief: once more at innAnd upon road I sought my manTill once amid a tap-room's dinLoudly he asked for me, beganTo speak, as if it had been a sin,Of how I thought and dreamed and ranAfter him thus, day after day:He lived as one under a banFor this: what had I got to say?I said nothing, I slipped away.
And now I dare not follow afterToo close. I try to keep in sight,Dreading his frown and worse his laughter.I steal out of the wood to light;I see the swift shoot from the rafterBy the inn door: ere I alightI wait and hear the starlings wheezeAnd nibble like ducks: I wait his flight.He goes: I follow: no releaseUntil he ceases. Then I also shall cease.
ONE hour: as dim he and his house now lookAs a reflection in a rippling brook,While I remember him; but first, his house.Empty it sounded. It was dark with forest boughsThat brushed the walls and made the mossy tilesPart of the squirrels' track. In all those milesOf forest silence and forest murmur, onlyOne house—"Lonely!" he said, "I wish it werelonely"—Which the trees looked upon from every side,And that was his.
He waved good-bye to hideA sigh that he converted to a laugh.He seemed to hang rather than stand there, halfGhost-like, half like a beggar's rag, clean wrungAnd useless on the brier where it has hungLong years a-washing by sun and wind and rain.
But why I call back man and house againIs that now on a beech-tree's tip I seeAs then I saw—I at the gate, and heIn the house darkness,—a magpie veering about,A magpie like a weathercock in doubt.
A FORTNIGHT before Christmas Gypsies were every-where:Vans were drawn up on wastes, women trailed tothe fair."My gentleman," said one, "You've got a luckyface.""And you've a luckier," I thought, "if such a graceAnd impudence in rags are lucky." "Give a pennyFor the poor baby's sake." "Indeed I have not anyUnless you can give change for a sovereign, mydear.""Then just half a pipeful of tobacco can youspare?"I gave it. With that much victory she laughedcontent.I should have given more, but off and away shewentWith her baby and her pink sham flowers to rejoinThe rest before I could translate to its proper coinGratitude for her grace. And I paid nothing then,As I pay nothing now with the dipping of my penFor her brother's music when he drummed thetambourineAnd stamped his feet, which made the workmenpassing grin,While his mouth-organ changed to a rascallyBacchanal dance"Over the hills and far away." This and his glanceOutlasted all the fair, farmer and auctioneer,Cheap-jack, balloon-man, drover with crookedstick, and steer,Pig, turkey, goose, and duck, Christmas Corpsesto be.Not even the kneeling ox had eyes like the Romany.That night he peopled for me the hollow woodedland,More dark and wild than stormiest heavens, that Isearched and scannedLike a ghost new-arrived. The gradations of thedarkWere like an underworld of death, but for the sparkIn the Gypsy boy's black eyes as he played andstamped his tune,"Over the hills and far away," and a crescent moon.
"'TWILL take some getting." "Sir, I think 'twillso."The old man stared up at the mistletoeThat hung too high in the poplar's crest for plunderOf any climber, though not for kissing under:Then he went on against the north-east wind—Straight but lame, leaning on a staff new-skinned,Carrying a brolly, flag-basket, and old coat,—Towards Alton, ten miles off. And he had notDone less from Chilgrove where he pulled up docks.'Twere best, if he had had "a money-box,"To have waited there till the sheep cleared a fieldFor what a half-week's flint-picking would yield.His mind was running on the work he had doneSince he left Christchurch in the New Forest, oneSpring in the 'seventies,—navvying on dock andlineFrom Southampton to Newcastle-on-Tyne,—In 'seventy-four a year of soldieringWith the Berkshires,—hoeing and harvestingIn half the shires where corn and couch will grow.His sons, three sons, were fighting, but the hoeAnd reap-hook he liked, or anything to do withtrees.He fell once from a poplar tall as these:The Flying Man they called him in hospital."If I flew now, to another world I'd fall."He laughed and whistled to the small brown bitchWith spots of blue that hunted in the ditch.Her foxy Welsh grandfather must have pairedBeneath him. He kept sheep in Wales and scaredStrangers, I will warrant, with his pearl eyeAnd trick of shrinking off as he were shy,Then following close in silence for—for what?"No rabbit, never fear, she ever got,Yet always hunts. To-day she nearly had one:She would and she wouldn't. 'Twas like that. Thebad one!She's not much use, but still she's company,Though I'm not. She goes everywhere with me.So Alton I must reach to-night somehow:I'll get no shakedown with that bedfellowFrom farmers. Many a man sleeps worse to-nightThan I shall." "In the trenches." "Yes, that'sright.But they'll be out of that—I hope they be—This weather, marching after the enemy.""And so I hope. Good luck." And there I nodded"Good-night. You keep straight on." Stiffly heplodded;And at his heels the crisp leaves scurried fast,And the leaf-coloured robin watched. Theypassed,The robin till next day, the man for good,Together in the twilight of the wood.
THIS ploughman dead in battle slept out of doorsMany a frozen night, and merrilyAnswered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and allbores:"At Mrs. Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he,"I slept." None knew which bush. Above thetown,Beyond "The Drover," a hundred spot the downIn Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleepsMore sound in France—that, too, he secret keeps.
OUT in the dark over the snowThe fallow fawns invisible goWith the fallow doe;And the winds blowFast as the stars are slow.
Stealthily the dark haunts roundAnd, when a lamp goes, without soundAt a swifter boundThan the swiftest hound,Arrives, and all else is drowned;
And I and star and wind and deer,Are in the dark together,—near,Yet far,—and fearDrums on my earIn that sage company drear.
How weak and little is the light,All the universe of sight,Love and delight,Before the might,If you love it not, of night.
Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey.