The Project Gutenberg eBook ofLast PoemsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Last PoemsAuthor: Edward ThomasRelease date: September 23, 2007 [eBook #22732]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Lewis Jones*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST POEMS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Last PoemsAuthor: Edward ThomasRelease date: September 23, 2007 [eBook #22732]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Lewis Jones
Title: Last Poems
Author: Edward Thomas
Author: Edward Thomas
Release date: September 23, 2007 [eBook #22732]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Lewis Jones
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST POEMS ***
Produced by Lewis Jones
Edward Thomas (1918)Last Poems
By
LONDON: SELWYN & BLOUNT, 12, YORK BUILDINGS, ADELPHI, W.C. 2. 1918.
I never saw that Land beforeThe Dark ForestCelandineThe Ash GroveOld ManThe ThrushI built myself a House of GlassFebruary AfternoonDiggingTwo HousesThe Mill-waterA DreamSedge-WarblersUnder the WoodsWhat will they do?To-nightA CatThe UnknownSongShe dotesFor TheseMarch the ThirdThe New HouseMarchThe CuckooOver the HillsHomeThe Hollow WoodWind and MistThe Unknown BirdThe Lofty SkyAfter RainDiggingBut these things alsoAprilThe BarnThe Barn and the DownThe Child on the CliffsGood-nightThe Wasp TrapJulyA TalePartingLoversThat Girl's Clear EyesThe Child in the OrchardThe SourceThe Mountain ChapelFirst known when lostThe WordThese things that Poets saidHomeAspensAn Old SongThere was a TimeAmbitionNo one cares less than IRoadsThis is no case of petty Right or WrongThe Chalk-PitHealthBeautySnowThe New YearThe BrookThe OtherHouse and ManThe GypsyMan and DogA PrivateOut in the Dark
I NEVER saw that land before,And now can never see it again;Yet, as if by acquaintance hoarEndeared, by gladness and by pain,Great was the affection that I bore
To the valley and the river small,The cattle, the grass, the bare ash trees,The chickens from the farmsteads, allElm-hidden, and the tributariesDescending at equal interval;
The blackthorns down along the brookWith wounds yellow as crocusesWhere yesterday the labourer's hookHad sliced them cleanly; and the breezeThat hinted all and nothing spoke.
I neither expected anythingNor yet remembered: but some goalI touched then; and if I could singWhat would not even whisper my soulAs I went on my journeying,
I should use, as the trees and birds did,A language not to be betrayed;And what was hid should still be hidExcepting from those like me madeWho answer when such whispers bid.
DARK is the forest and deep, and overheadHang stars like seeds of lightIn vain, though not since they were sown was bredAnything more bright.
And evermore mighty multitudes rideAbout, nor enter in;Of the other multitudes that dwell insideNever yet was one seen.
The forest foxglove is purple, the margueriteOutside is gold and white,Nor can those that pluck either blossom greetThe others, day or night.
THINKING of her had saddened me at first,Until I saw the sun on the celandines lieRedoubled, and she stood up like a flame,A living thing, not what before I nursed,The shadow I was growing to love almost,The phantom, not the creature with bright eyeThat I had thought never to see, once lost.
She found the celandines of FebruaryAlways before us all. Her nature and nameWere like those flowers, and now immediatelyFor a short swift eternity back she came,Beautiful, happy, simply as when she woreHer brightest bloom among the winter huesOf all the world; and I was happy too,Seeing the blossoms and the maiden whoHad seen them with me Februarys before,Bending to them as in and out she trodAnd laughed, with locks sweeping the mossy sod.
But this was a dream: the flowers were not true,Until I stooped to pluck from the grass thereOne of five petals and I smelt the juiceWhich made me sigh, remembering she was no more,Gone like a never perfectly recalled air.
HALF of the grove stood dead, and those that yetlived madeLittle more than the dead ones made of shade.If they led to a house, long before they had seenits fall:But they welcomed me; I was glad without causeand delayed.
Scarce a hundred paces under the trees was the Interval— Paces each sweeter than sweetest miles—but nothing at all, Not even the spirits of memory and fear with restless wing, Could climb down in to molest me over the wall
That I passed through at either end withoutnoticing.And now an ash grove far from those hills can bringThe same tranquillity in which I wander a ghostWith a ghostly gladness, as if I heard a girl sing
The song of the Ash Grove soft as love uncrossed,And then in a crowd or in distance it were lost,But the moment unveiled something unwillingto dieAnd I had what most I desired, without search ordesert or cost.
OLD Man, or Lad's-love,—in the name there'snothingTo one that knows not Lad's-love, or Old Man,The hoar-green feathery herb, almost a tree,Growing with rosemary and lavender.Even to one that knows it well, the namesHalf decorate, half perplex, the thing it is:At least, what that is clings not to the namesIn spite of time. And yet I like the names.
The herb itself I like not, but for certainI love it, as some day the child will love itWho plucks a feather from the door-side bushWhenever she goes in or out of the house.Often she waits there, snipping the tips andshrivellingThe shreds at last on to the path, perhapsThinking, perhaps of nothing, till she sniffsHer fingers and runs off. The bush is stillBut half as tall as she, though it is as old;So well she clips it. Not a word she says;And I can only wonder how much hereafterShe will remember, with that bitter scent,Of garden rows, and ancient damson-treesTopping a hedge, a bent path to a door,A low thick bush beside the door, and meForbidding her to pick.
As for myself,Where first I met the bitter scent is lost.I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,Sniff them and think and sniff again and tryOnce more to think what it is I am remembering,Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,Yet I would rather give up others more sweet,With no meaning, than this bitter one.
I have mislaid the key. I sniff the sprayAnd think of nothing; I see and I hear nothing;Yet seem, too, to be listening, lying in waitFor what I should, yet never can, remember:No garden appears, no path, no hoar-green bushOf Lad's-love, or Old Man, no child beside,Neither father nor mother, nor any playmate;Only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end.
WHEN Winter's ahead,What can you read in NovemberThat you read in AprilWhen Winter's dead?
I hear the thrush, and I seeHim alone at the end of the laneNear the bare poplar's tip,Singing continuously.
Is it more that you knowThan that, even as in April,So in November,Winter is gone that must go?
Or is all your loreNot to call November November,And April April,And Winter Winter—no more?
But I know the months all,And their sweet names, April,May and June and October,As you call and call
I must rememberWhat died into AprilAnd consider what will be bornOf a fair November;
And April I love for whatIt was born of, and NovemberFor what it will die in,What they are and what they are not,
While you love what is kind,What you can sing inAnd love and forget inAll that's ahead and behind.
I BUILT myself a house of glass:It took me years to make it:And I was proud. But now, alas,Would God someone would break it.But it looks too magnificent.No neighbour casts a stoneFrom where he dwells, in tenementOr palace of glass, alone.
MEN heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw,A thousand years ago even as now,Black rooks with white gulls following the ploughSo that the first are last until a cawCommands that last are first again,—a lawWhich was of old when one, like me, dreamedhowA thousand years might dust lie on his browYet thus would birds do between hedge and shaw.
Time swims before me, making as a dayA thousand years, while the broad ploughlandoakRoars mill-like and men strike and bear thestrokeOf war as ever, audacious or resigned,And God still sits aloft in the arrayThat we have wrought him, stone-deaf andstone-blind.
WHAT matter makes my spade for tears or mirth,Letting down two clay pipes into the earth?The one I smoked, the other a soldierOf Blenheim, Ramillies, and MalplaquetPerhaps. The dead man's immortalityLies represented lightly with my own,A yard or two nearer the living airThan bones of ancients who, amazed to seeAlmighty God erect the mastodon,Once laughed, or wept, in this same light of day.
BETWEEN a sunny bank and the sunThe farmhouse smilesOn the riverside plat:No other oneSo pleasant to look atAnd remember, for many miles,So velvet-hushed and cool under the warm tiles.
Not far from the road it lies, yet caughtFar out of reachOf the road's dustAnd the dusty thoughtOf passers-by, though eachStops, and turns, and mustLook down at it like a wasp at the muslined peach.
But another house stood there long before:And as if above gravesStill the turf heavesAbove its stones:Dark hangs the sycamore,Shadowing kennel and bonesAnd the black dog that shakes his chain and moans.
And when he barks, over the riverFlashing fast,Dark echoes reply,And the hollow pastHalf yields the dead that neverMore than half hidden lie:And out they creep and back again for ever.
ONLY the sound remainsOf the old mill;Gone is the wheel;On the prone roof and walls the nettle reigns.
Water that toils no moreDangles white locksAnd, falling, mocksThe music of the mill-wheel's busy roar.
Pretty to see, by dayIts sound is naughtCompared with thoughtAnd talk and noise of labour and of play.
Night makes the difference.In calm moonlight,Gloom infinite,The sound comes surging in upon the sense:
Solitude, company,—When it is night,—Grief or delightBy it must haunted or concluded be.
Often the silentnessHas but this oneCompanion;Wherever one creeps in the other is:
Sometimes a thought is drownedBy it, sometimesOut of it climbs;All thoughts begin or end upon this sound,
Only the idle foamOf water fallingChangelessly calling,Where once men had a work-place and a home.
OVER known fields with an old friend in dreamI walked, but came sudden to a strange stream.Its dark waters were bursting out most brightFrom a great mountain's heart into the light.They ran a short course under the sun, then backInto a pit they plunged, once more as blackAs at their birth; and I stood thinking thereHow white, had the day shone on them, they were,Heaving and coiling. So by the roar and hissAnd by the mighty motion of the abyssI was bemused, that I forgot my friendAnd neither saw nor sought him till the end,When I awoke from waters unto menSaying: "I shall be here some day again."
THIS beauty made me dream there was a timeLong past and irrecoverable, a climeWhere any brook so radiant racing clearThrough buttercup and kingcup bright as brassBut gentle, nourishing the meadow grassThat leans and scurries in the wind, would bearAnother beauty, divine and feminine,Child to the sun, a nymph whose soul unstainedCould love all day, and never hate or tire,A lover of mortal or immortal kin.
And yet, rid of this dream, ere I had drainedIts poison, quieted was my desireSo that I only looked into the water,Clearer than any goddess or man's daughter,And hearkened while it combed the dark green hairAnd shook the millions of the blossoms whiteOf water-crowfoot, and curdled to one sheetThe flowers fallen from the chestnuts in the parkFar off. And sedge-warblers, clinging so lightTo willow twigs, sang longer than the lark,Quick, shrill, or grating, a song to match the heatOf the strong sun, nor less the water's cool,Gushing through narrows, swirling in the pool.Their song that lacks all words, all melody,All sweetness almost, was dearer then to meThan sweetest voice that sings in tune sweet words.This was the best of May—the small brown birdsWisely reiterating endlesslyWhat no man learnt yet, in or out of school.
WHEN these old woods were youngThe thrushes' ancestorsAs sweetly sungIn the old years.
There was no garden here,Apples nor mistletoe;No children dearRan to and fro.
New then was this thatched cot,But the keeper was old,And he had notMuch lead or gold.
Most silent beech and yew:As he went round aboutThe woods to viewSeldom he shot.
But now that he is goneOut of most memories,Still lingers on,A stoat of his,
But one, shrivelled and green,And with no scent at all,And barely seenOn this shed wall.
What will they do when I am gone? It is plainThat they will do without me as the rainCan do without the flowers and the grassThat profit by it and must perish without.I have but seen them in the loud street pass;And I was naught to them. I turned aboutTo see them disappearing carelessly.But what if I in them as they in meNourished what has great value and no price?Almost I thought that rain thirsts for a draughtWhich only in the blossom's chalice lies,Until that one turned back and lightly laughed.
HARRY, you know at nightThe larks in Castle AlleySing from the attic's heightAs if the electric lightWere the true sun above a summer valley:Whistle, don't knock, to-night.
I shall come early, Kate:And we in Castle AlleyWill sit close out of sightAlone, and ask no lightOf lamp or sun above a summer valley:To-night I can stay late.
She had a name among the children;But no one loved though someone ownedHer, locked her out of doors at bedtimeAnd had her kittens duly drowned.
In Spring, nevertheless, this catAte blackbirds, thrushes, nightingales,And birds of bright voice and plume and flight,As well as scraps from neighbours' pails.
I loathed and hated her for this;One speckle on a thrush's breastWas worth a million such; and yetShe lived long, till God gave her rest.
SHE is most fair,And when they see her passThe poets' ladiesLook no more in the glassBut after her.
On a bleak moorRunning under the moonShe lures a poet,Once proud or happy, soonFar from his door.
Beside a train,Because they saw her go,Or failed to see her,Travellers and watchers knowAnother pain.
The simple lackOf her is more to meThan others' presence,Whether life splendid beOr utter black.
I have not seen,I have no news of her;I can tell onlyShe is not here, but thereShe might have been.
She is to be kissedOnly perhaps by me;She may be seekingMe and no other; sheMay not exist.
AT poet's tears,Sweeter than any smiles but hers,She laughs; I sigh;And yet I could not live if she should die.
And when in JuneOnce more the cuckoo spoils his tune,She laughs at sighs;And yet she says she loves me till she dies.
SHE dotes on what the wild birds sayOr hint or mock at, night and day,—Thrush, blackbird, all that sing in May,And songless plover,Hawk, heron, owl, and woodpecker.They never say a word to herAbout her lover.
She laughs at them for childishness,She cries at them for carelessnessWho see her going loverlessYet sing and chatterJust as when he was not a ghost,Nor ever ask her what she has lostOr what is the matter.
Yet she has fancied blackbirds hideA secret, and that thrushes chideBecause she thinks death can divideHer from her lover;And she has slept, trying to translateThe word the cuckoo cries to his mateOver and over.
AN acre of land between the shore and the hills,Upon a ledge that shows my kingdoms three,The lovely visible earth and sky and sea,Where what the curlew needs not, the farmer tills:
A house that shall love me as I love it,Well-hedged, and honoured by a few ash-treesThat linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinchesShall often visit and make love in and flit:
A garden I need never go beyond,Broken but neat, whose sunflowers every oneAre fit to be the sign of the Rising Sun:A spring, a brook's bend, or at least a pond:
For these I ask not, but, neither too lateNor yet too early, for what men call content,And also that something may be sentTo be contented with, I ask of fate.
HERE again (she said) is March the thirdAnd twelve hours singing for the bird'Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past sixTo half past six, never unheard.
'Tis Sunday, and the church-bells endWhen the birds do. I think they blendNow better than they will when passedIs this unnamed, unmarked godsend.
Or do all mark, and none dares say,How it may shift and long delay,Somewhere before the first of Spring,But never fails, this singing day?
And when it falls on Sunday, bellsAre a wild natural voice that dwellsOn hillsides; but the birds' songs haveThe holiness gone from the bells.
This day unpromised is more dearThan all the named days of the yearWhen seasonable sweets come in,Because we know how lucky we are.
* The author's birthday.
Now first, as I shut the door,I was aloneIn the new house; and the windBegan to moan.
Old at once was the house,And I was old;My ears were teased with the dreadOf what was foretold,
Nights of storm, days of mist, without end;Sad days when the sunShone in vain: old griefs and griefsNot yet begun.
All was foretold me; naughtCould I foresee;But I learned how the wind would soundAfter these things should be.
Now I know that Spring will come again,Perhaps to-morrow: however late I've patienceAfter this night following on such a day.
While still my temples ached from the cold burningOf hail and wind, and still the primrosesTorn by the hail were covered up in it,The sun filled earth and heaven with a great lightAnd a tenderness, almost warmth, where the haildripped,As if the mighty sun wept tears of joy.But 'twas too late for warmth. The sunset piledMountains on mountains of snow and ice in thewest:Somewhere among their folds the wind was lost,And yet 'twas cold, and though I knew thatSpringWould come again, I knew it had not come,That it was lost too in those mountains chill.
What did the thrushes know? Rain, snow, sleet,hail,Had kept them quiet as the primroses.They had but an hour to sing. On boughs theysang,On gates, on ground; they sang while theychanged perchesAnd while they fought, if they remembered tofight:So earnest were they to pack into that hourTheir unwilling hoard of song before the moonGrew brighter than the clouds. Then 'twasno timeFor singing merely. So they could keep off silenceAnd night, they cared not what they sang orscreamed;Whether 'twas hoarse or sweet or fierce or soft;And to me all was sweet: they could do no wrong.Something they knew—I also, while they sangAnd after. Not till night had half its starsAnd never a cloud, was I aware of silenceStained with all that hour's songs, a silenceSaying that Spring returns, perhaps to-morrow.
THAT'S the cuckoo, you say. I cannot hear it.When last I heard it I cannot recall; but I knowToo well the year when first I failed to hear it—It was drowned by my man groaning out to hissheep "Ho! Ho!"
Ten times with an angry voice he shouted"Ho! Ho!" but not in anger, for that was hisway.He died that Summer, and that is how I rememberThe cuckoo calling, the children listening, and mesaying, "Nay."
And now, as you said, "There it is," I was hearingNot the cuckoo at all, but my man's "Ho! Ho!"instead.And I think that even if I could lose my deafnessThe cuckoo's note would be drowned by the voiceof my dead.
OFTEN and often it came back againTo mind, the day I passed the horizon ridgeTo a new country, the path I had to findBy half-gaps that were stiles once in the hedge,The pack of scarlet clouds running acrossThe harvest evening that seemed endless thenAnd after, and the inn where all were kind,All were strangers. I did not know my lossTill one day twelve months later suddenlyI leaned upon my spade and saw it all,Though far beyond the sky-line. It becameAlmost a habit through the year for meTo lean and see it and think to do the sameAgain for two days and a night. RecallWas vain: no more could the restless brookEver turn back and climb the waterfallTo the lake that rests and stirs not in its nook,As in the hollow of the collar-boneUnder the mountain's head of rush and stone.
OFTEN I had gone this way before:But now it seemed I never could beAnd never had been anywhere else;'Twas home; one nationalityWe had, I and the birds that sang,One memory.
They welcomed me. I had come backThat eve somehow from somewhere far:The April mist, the chill, the calm,Meant the same thing familiarAnd pleasant to us, and strange too,Yet with no bar.
The thrush on the oaktop in the laneSang his last song, or last but one;And as he ended, on the elmAnother had but just begunHis last; they knew no more than IThe day was done.
Then past his dark white cottage frontA labourer went along, his treadSlow, half with weariness, half with ease;And, through the silence, from his shedThe sound of sawing rounded allThat silence said.
OUT in the sun the goldfinch flitsAlong the thistle-tops, flits and twitsAbove the hollow woodWhere birds swim like fish—Fish that laugh and shriek—To and fro, far belowIn the pale hollow wood.
Lichen, ivy, and mossKeep evergreen the treesThat stand half-flayed and dying,And the dead trees on their kneesIn dog's-mercury and moss:And the bright twit of the goldfinch dropsDown there as he flits on thistle-tops.
THEY met inside the gateway that gives the view,A hollow land as vast as heaven. "It isA pleasant day, sir." "A very pleasant day.""And what a view here. If you like angled fieldsOf grass and grain bounded by oak and thorn,Here is a league. Had we with GermanyTo play upon this board it could not beMore dear than April has made it with a smile.The fields beyond that league close in togetherAnd merge, even as our days into the past,Into one wood that has a shining paneOf water. Then the hills of the horizon—That is how I should make hills had I to showOne who would never see them what hills werelike.""Yes. Sixty miles of South Downs at one glance.Sometimes a man feels proud at them, as ifHe had just created them with one mightythought.""That house, though modern, could not be betterplannedFor its position. I never liked a newHouse better. Could you tell me who lives init?""No one." "Ah—and I was peopling allThose windows on the south with happy eyes,The terrace under them with happy feet;Girls—" "Sir, I know. I know. I have seenthat houseThrough mist look lovely as a castle in Spain,And airier. I have thought: 'Twere happy thereTo live.' And I have laughed at thatBecause I lived there then." "Extraordinary.""Yes, with my furniture and familyStill in it, I, knowing every nook of itAnd loving none, and in fact hating it.""Dear me! How could that be? But pardonme.""No offence. Doubtless the house was not toblame,But the eye watching from those windows saw,Many a day, day after day, mist—mistLike chaos surging back—and felt itselfAlone in all the world, marooned alone.We lived in clouds, on a cliff's edge almost(You see), and if clouds went, the visible earthLay too far off beneath and like a cloud.I did not know it was the earth I lovedUntil I tried to live there in the cloudsAnd the earth turned to cloud." "You had agardenOf flint and clay, too." "True; that was realenough.The flint was the one crop that never failed.The clay first broke my heart, and then my back;And the back heals not. There were other thingsReal, too. In that room at the gable a childWas born while the wind chilled a summer dawn:Never looked grey mind on a greyer oneThan when the child's cry broke above the groans.""I hope they were both spared." "They were.Oh yes.But flint and clay and childbirth were too realFor this cloud-castle. I had forgot the wind.Pray do not let me get on to the wind.You would not understand about the wind.It is my subject, and compared with meThose who have always lived on the firm groundAre quite unreal in this matter of the wind.There were whole days and nights when the windand IBetween us shared the world, and the wind ruledAnd I obeyed it and forgot the mist.My past and the past of the world were in thewind.Now you may say that though you understandAnd feel for me, and so on, you yourselfWould find it different. You are all like thatIf once you stand here free from wind and mist:I might as well be talking to wind and mist.You would believe the house-agent's young manWho gives no heed to anything I say.Good morning. But one word. I want to admitThat I would try the house once more, if Icould;As I should like to try being young again."
THREE lovely notes he whistled, too soft to beheardIf others sang; but others never sangIn the great beech-wood all that May and June.No one saw him: I alone could hear himThough many listened. Was it but four yearsAgo? or five? He never came again.
Oftenest when I heard him I was alone,Nor could I ever make another hear.La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off—As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world,As if the bird or I were in a dream.Yet that he travelled through the trees and some-timesNeared me, was plain, though somehow distantstillHe sounded. All the proof is—I told menWhat I had heard.
I never knew a voice,Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I toldThe naturalists; but neither had they heardAnything like the notes that did so haunt me,I had them clear by heart and have them still.Four years, or five, have made no difference.ThenAs now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet:Sad more than joyful it was, if I must sayThat it was one or other, but if sad'Twas sad only with joy too, too far offFor me to taste it. But I cannot tellIf truly never anything but fairThe days were when he sang, as now they seem.This surely I know, that I who listened then,Happy sometimes, sometimes sufferingA heavy body and a heavy heart,Now straightway, if I think of it, becomeLight as that bird wandering beyond my shore.
TO-DAY I want the sky,The tops of the high hills,Above the last man's house,His hedges, and his cows,Where, if I will, I lookDown even on sheep and rook,And of all things that moveSee buzzards only above:—Past all trees, past furzeAnd thorn, where nought detersThe desire of the eyeFor sky, nothing but sky.I sicken of the woodsAnd all the multitudesOf hedge-trees. They are no moreThan weeds upon this floorOf the river of airLeagues deep, leagues wide, whereI am like a fish that livesIn weeds and mud and givesWhat's above him no thought.I might be a tench for aughtThat I can do to-dayDown on the wealden clay.Even the tench has daysWhen he floats up and playsAmong the lily leavesAnd sees the sky, or grievesNot if he nothing sees:While I, I know that treesUnder that lofty skyAre weeds, fields mud, and IWould arise and go farTo where the lilies are.
THE rain of a night and a day and a nightStops at the lightOf this pale choked day. The peering sunSees what has been done.The road under the trees has a border newOf purple hueInside the border of bright thin grass:For all that hasBeen left by November of leaves is tornFrom hazel and thornAnd the greater trees. Throughout the copseNo dead leaf dropsOn grey grass, green moss, burnt-orange fern,At the wind's return:The leaflets out of the ash-tree shedAre thinly spreadIn the road, like little black fish, inlaid,As if they played.What hangs from the myriad branches down thereSo hard and bareIs twelve yellow apples lovely to seeOn one crab-tree.And on each twig of every tree in the dellUncountableCrystals both dark and bright of the rainThat begins again.
TO-DAY I thinkOnly with scents,—scents dead leaves yield,And bracken, and wild carrot's seed,And the square mustard field;
Odours that riseWhen the spade wounds the root of tree,Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,Rhubarb or celery;
The smoke's smell, too,Flowing from where a bonfire burnsThe dead, the waste, the dangerous,And all to sweetness turns.
It is enoughTo smell, to crumble the dark earth.While the robin sings over againSad songs of Autumn mirth.
BUT these things also are Spring's—On banks by the roadside the grassLong-dead that is greyer nowThan all the Winter it was;
The shell of a little snail bleachedIn the grass; chip of flint, and miteOf chalk; and the small birds' dungIn splashes of purest white:
All the white things a man mistakesFor earliest violetsWho seeks through Winter's ruinsSomething to pay Winter's debts,
While the North blows, and starling flocksBy chattering on and onKeep their spirits up in the mist,And Spring's here, Winter's not gone.
THE sweetest thing, I thoughtAt one time, between earth and heavenWas the first smileWhen mist has been forgivenAnd the sun has stolen out,Peered, and resolved to shine at sevenOn dabbled lengthening grasses,Thick primroses and early leaves uneven,When earth's breath, warm and humid, far sur-passesThe richest oven's, and loudly rings "cuckoo"And sharply the nightingale's "tsoo, tsoo, tsoo,tsoo":To say "God bless it" was all that I could do.
But now I know one sweeterBy far since the day EmilyTurned weeping backTo me, still happy me,To ask forgiveness,—Yet smiled with half a certaintyTo be forgiven,—for whatShe had never done; I knew not what it might be,Nor could she tell me, having now forgot,By rapture carried with me past all careAs to an isle in April lovelierThan April's self. "God bless you" I said to her.
THEY should never have built a barn there, at all—Drip, drip, drip!—under that elm tree,Though then it was young. Now it is oldBut good, not like the barn and me.
To-morrow they cut it down. They will leaveThe barn, as I shall be left, maybe.What holds it up? 'Twould not pay to pull down.Well, this place has no other antiquity.
No abbey or castle looks so oldAs this that Job Knight built in '54,Built to keep corn for rats and men.Now there's fowls in the roof, pigs on the floor.
What thatch survives is dung for the grass,The best grass on the farm. A pity the roofWill not bear a mower to mow it. ButOnly fowls have foothold enough.
Starlings used to sit there with bubbling throatsMaking a spiky beard as they chatteredAnd whistled and kissed, with heads in air,Till they thought of something else that mattered.
But now they cannot find a place,Among all those holes, for a nest any more.It's the turn of lesser things, I suppose.Once I fancied 'twas starlings they built it for.
IT stood in the sunset skyLike the straight-backed down,Many a time—the barnAt the edge of the town,
So huge and dark that it seemedIt was the hillTill the gable's precipice provedIt impossible.
Then the great down in the westGrew into sight,A barn stored full to the ridgeWith black of night;
And the barn fell to a barnOr even lessBefore critical eyes and its ownLate mightiness.
But far down and near barn and ISince then have smiled,Having seen my new cautiousnessBy itself beguiled
To disdain what seemed the barnTill a few steps changedIt past all doubt to the down;So the barn was avenged.
MOTHER, the root of this little yellow flowerAmong the stones has the taste of quinine.Things are strange to-day on the cliff. The sunshines so bright,And the grasshopper works at his sewing-machineSo hard. Here's one on my hand, mother, look;I lie so still. There's one on your book.
But I have something to tell more strange. SoleaveYour book to the grasshopper, mother dear,—Like a green knight in a dazzling market-place,—And listen now. Can you hear what I hearFar out? Now and then the foam there curlsAnd stretches a white arm out like a girl's.
Fishes and gulls ring no bells. There cannot beA chapel or church between here and Devon,With fishes or gulls ringing its bell,—hark.—Somewhere under the sea or up in heaven."It's the bell, my son, out in the bayOn the buoy. It does sound sweet to-day."
Sweeter I never heard, mother, no, not in all Wales.I should like to be lying under that foam,Dead, but able to hear the sound of the bell,And certain that you would often comeAnd rest, listening happily.I should be happy if that could be.
THE skylarks are far behind that sang over thedown;I can hear no more those suburb nightingales;Thrushes and blackbirds sing in the gardens of thetownIn vain: the noise of man, beast, and machineprevails.
But the call of children in the unfamiliar streetsThat echo with a familiar twilight echoing,Sweet as the voice of nightingale or lark, completesA magic of strange welcome, so that I seem a king
Among man, beast, machine, bird, child, and theghostThat in the echo lives and with the echo dies.The friendless town is friendly; homeless, Inot lost;Though I know none of these doors, and meet butstrangers' eyes.
Never again, perhaps, after to-morrow, shallI see these homely streets, these church windowsalight,Not a man or woman or child among them all:But it is All Friends' Night, a traveller's goodnight.
THIS moonlight makesThe lovely lovelierThan ever before lakesAnd meadows were.
And yet they are not,Though this their hour is, moreLovely than things that were notLovely before.
Nothing on earth,And in the heavens no star,For pure brightness is worthMore than that jar,
For wasps meant, nowA star—long may it swingFrom the dead apple-bough,So glistening.
NAUGHT moves but clouds, and in the glassy lakeTheir doubles and the shadow of my boat.The boat itself stirs only when I breakThis drowse of heat and solitude afloatTo prove if what I see be bird or mote,Or learn if yet the shore woods be awake.
Long hours since dawn grew,—spread,—and passedon highAnd deep below,—I have watched the cool reedshungOver images more cool in imaged sky:Nothing there was worth thinking of so long;All that the ring-doves say, far leaves among,Brims my mind with content thus still to lie.
THERE once the wallsOf the ruined cottage stood.The periwinkle crawlsWith flowers in its hair into the wood.
In flowerless hoursNever will the bank fail,With everlasting flowersOn fragments of blue plates, to tell the tale.
THE Past is a strange land, most strange.Wind blows not there, nor does rain fall:If they do, they cannot hurt at all.Men of all kinds as equals range
The soundless fields and streets of it.Pleasure and pain there have no sting,The perished self not sufferingThat lacks all blood and nerve and wit,
And is in shadow-land a shade.Remembered joy and miseryBring joy to the joyous equally;Both sadden the sad. So memory made
Parting to-day a double pain:First because it was parting; nextBecause the ill it ended vexedAnd mocked me from the Past again,
Not as what had been remediedHad I gone on,—not that, oh no!But as itself no longer woe;Sighs, angry word and look and deed
Being faded: rather a kind of bliss,For there spiritualized it layIn the perpetual yesterdayThat naught can stir or stain like this.
THE two men in the road were taken aback.The lovers came out shading their eyes from thesun,And never was white so white, or black so black,As her cheeks and hair. "There are more thingsthan oneA man might turn into a wood for, Jack,"Said George; Jack whispered: "He has not gota gun.It's a bit too much of a good thing, I say.They are going the other road, look. And see herrun."—She ran.—"What a thing it is, this picking may."
THAT girl's clear eyes utterly concealed allExcept that there was something to reveal.And what did mine say in the interval?No more: no less. They are but as a sealNot to be broken till after I am dead;And then vainly. Every one of usThis morning at our tasks left nothing said,In spite of many words. We were sealed thus,Like tombs. Nor until now could I admitThat all I cared for was the pleasure and painI tasted in the stony square sunlit,Or the dark cloisters, or shade of airy plane,While music blazed and children, line after line,Marched past, hiding the "SEVENTEEN THIRTY-NINE."
"HE rolls in the orchard: he is stained with mossAnd with earth, the solitary old white horse.Where is his father and where is his motherAmong all the brown horses? Has he a brother?I know the swallow, the hawk, and the hern;But there are two million things for me to learn.
"Who was the lady that rode the white horseWith rings and bells to Banbury Cross?Was there no other lady in England besideThat a nursery rhyme could take for a ride?The swift, the swallow, the hawk, and the hern.There are two million things for me to learn.
"Was there a man once who straddled acrossThe back of the Westbury White HorseOver there on Salisbury Plain's green wall?Was he bound for Westbury, or had he a fall?The swift, the swallow, the hawk, and the hern.There are two million things for me to learn.
"Out of all the white horses I know three,At the age of six; and it seems to meThere is so much to learn, for men,That I dare not go to bed again.The swift, the swallow, the hawk, and the hern.There are millions of things for me to learn."
ALL day the air triumphs with its two voicesOf wind and rainAs loud as if in anger it rejoices,Drowning the sound of earthThat gulps and gulps in choked endeavour vainTo swallow the rain.
Half the night, too, only the wild air speaksWith wind and rain,Till forth the dumb source of the river breaksAnd drowns the rain and wind,Bellows like a giant bathing in mighty mirthThe triumph of earth.
CHAPEL and gravestones, old and few,Are shrouded by a mountain foldFrom sound and viewOf life. The loss of the brook's voiceFalls like a shadow. All they hear isThe eternal noiseOf wind whistling in grass more shrillThan aught as human as a sword,And saying still:"'Tis but a moment since man's birthAnd in another moment moreMan lies in earthFor ever; but I am the sameNow, and shall be, even as I wasBefore he came;Till there is nothing I shall be."Yet there the sun shines after noonSo cheerfullyThe place almost seems peopled, norLacks cottage chimney, cottage hearth:It is not moreIn size than is a cottage, lessThan any other empty homeIn homeliness.It has a garden of wild flowersAnd finest grass and gravestones warmIn sunshine hoursThe year through. Men behind the glassStand once a week, singing, and drownThe whistling grassTheir ponies munch. And yet somewhere,Near or far off, there's a man couldBe happy here,Or one of the gods perhaps, were theyNot of inhuman stature dire,As poets sayWho have not seen them clearly; ifAt sound of any wind of the worldIn grass-blades stiffThey would not startle and shudder coldUnder the sun. When gods were youngThis wind was old.
I NEVER had noticed it until'Twas gone,—the narrow copseWhere now the woodman lopsThe last of the willows with his bill.
It was not more than a hedge overgrown.One meadow's breadth awayI passed it day by day.Now the soil was bare as a bone,
And black betwixt two meadows green,Though fresh-cut faggot endsOf hazel made some amendsWith a gleam as if flowers they had been.
Strange it could have hidden so near!And now I see as I lookThat the small winding brook,A tributary's tributary, rises there.
THERE are so many things I have forgot,That once were much to me, or that were not,All lost, as is a childless woman's childAnd its child's children, in the undefiledAbyss of what can never be again.I have forgot, too, names of the mighty menThat fought and lost or won in the old wars,Of kings and fiends and gods, and most of the stars.Some things I have forgot that I forget.But lesser things there are, remembered yet,Than all the others. One name that I have not—Though 'tis an empty thingless name—forgotNever can die because Spring after SpringSome thrushes learn to say it as they sing.There is always one at midday saying it clearAnd tart—the name, only the name I hear.While perhaps I am thinking of the elder scentThat is like food, or while I am contentWith the wild rose scent that is like memory,This name suddenly is cried out to meFrom somewhere in the bushes by a birdOver and over again, a pure thrush word.
THESE things that poets saidOf love seemed true to meWhen I loved and I fedOn love and poetry equally.
But now I wish I knewIf theirs were love indeed,Or if mine were the trueAnd theirs some other lovely weed:
For certainly not thus,Then or thereafter, ILoved ever. Between usDecide, good Love, before I die.
Only, that once I lovedBy this one argumentIs very plainly proved:I, loving not, am different.
NOT the end: but there's nothing more.Sweet Summer and Winter rudeI have loved, and friendship and love,The crowd and solitude:
But I know them: I weary not;But all that they mean I know.I would go back again homeNow. Yet how should I go?
This is my grief. That land,My home, I have never seen;No traveller tells of it,However far he has been.
Afid could I discover it,I fear my happiness there,Or my pain, might be dreams of returnHere, to these things that were.
Remembering ills, though slightYet irremediable,Brings a worse, an impurer pangThan remembering what was well.
No: I cannot go back,And would not if I could.Until blindness come, I must waitAnd blink at what is not good.
ALL day and night, save winter, every weather,Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop,The aspens at the cross-roads talk togetherOf rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.
Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringingOf hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the innThe clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing—The sounds that for these fifty years have been.
The whisper of the aspens is not drowned,And over lightless pane and footless road,Empty as sky, with every other soundNot ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode,
A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor failsIn the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom,In tempest or the night of nightingales,To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.
And it would be the same were no house near.Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hearBut need not listen, more than to my rhymes.
Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leavesWe cannot other than an aspen beThat ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,Or so men think who like a different tree.
I WAS not apprenticed nor ever dwelt in famousLincolnshire;I've served one master ill and well much more thanseven year;And never took up to poaching as you shall quicklyfind;But 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the seasonof the year.
I roamed where nobody had a right but keepers andsquires, and thereI sought for nests, wild flowers, oak sticks, andmoles, both far and near.And had to run from farmers, and learnt theLincolnshire song:"Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in theseason of the year."
I took those walks years after, talking with friendor dear,Or solitary musing; but when the moon shone clearI had no joy or sorrow that could not be expressedBy "'Tis my delight of a shiny night in theseason of the year."
Since then I've thrown away a chance to fight agamekeeper;And I less often trespass, and what I see or hearIs mostly from the road or path by day: yet stillI sing:"Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in theseason of the year."
For if I am contented, at home or anywhere,Or if I sigh for I know not what, or my heartbeats with some fear,It is a strange kind of delight to sing or whistle just:"Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in theseason of the year."
And with this melody on my lips and no one by tocare,Indoors, or out on shiny nights or dark in open air,I am for a moment made a man that sings out ofhis heart:"Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in theseason of the year."
THERE was a time when this poor frame was wholeAnd I had youth and never another care,Or none that should have troubled a strong soul.Yet, except sometimes in a frosty airWhen my heels hammered out a melodyFrom pavements of a city left behind,I never would acknowledge my own gleeBecause it was less mighty than my mindHad dreamed of. Since I could not boast of strengthGreat as I wished, weakness was all my boast.I sought yet hated pity till at lengthI earned it. Oh, too heavy was the cost.But now that there is something I could useMy youth and strength for, I deny the age,The care and weakness that I know—refuseTo admit I am unworthy of the wagePaid to a man who gives up eyes and breathFor what can neither ask nor heed his death.
UNLESS it was that day I never knewAmbition. After a night of frost, beforeThe March sun brightened and the South-west blew,Jackdaws began to shout and float and soarAlready, and one was racing straight and highAlone, shouting like a black warriorChallenges and menaces to the wide sky.With loud long laughter then a woodpeckerRidiculed the sadness of the owl's last cry.And through the valley where all the folk astirMade only plumes of pearly smoke to towerOver dark trees and white meadows happierThan was Elysium in that happy hour,A train that roared along raised after itAnd carried with it a motionless white bowerOf purest cloud, from end to end close-knit,So fair it touched the roar with silence. TimeWas powerless while that lasted. I could sitAnd think I had made the loveliness of prime,Breathed its life into it and were its lord,And no mind lived save this 'twixt clouds and rime.Omnipotent I was, nor even deploredThat I did nothing. But the end fell like a bell:The bower was scattered; far off the train roared.But if this was ambition I cannot tell.What 'twas ambition for I know not well.
"No one cares less than I,Nobody knows but God,Whether I am destined to lieUnder a foreign clod,"Were the words I made to the bugle call in themorning.
But laughing, storming, scorning,Only the bugles knowWhat the bugles say in the morning,And they do not care, when they blowThe call that I heard and made words to early thismorning.
I LOVE roads:The goddesses that dwellFar along invisibleAre my favourite gods.
Roads go onWhile we forget, and areForgotten like a starThat shoots and is gone.
On this earth 'tis sureWe men have not madeAnything that doth fadeSo soon, so long endure:
The hill road wet with rainIn the sun would not gleamLike a winding streamIf we trod it not again.
They are lonelyWhile we sleep, lonelierFor lack of the travellerWho is now a dream only.
From dawn's twilightAnd all the clouds like sheepOn the mountains of sleepThey wind into the night.
The next turn may revealHeaven: upon the crestThe close pine clump, at restAnd black, may Hell conceal.
Often footsore, neverYet of the road I weary,Though long and steep and drearyAs it winds on for ever.
Helen of the roads,The mountain ways of WalesAnd the Mabinogion tales,Is one of the true gods,
Abiding in the trees,The threes and fours so wise,The larger companies,That by the roadside be,
And beneath the rafterElse uninhabitedExcepting by the dead;And it is her laughter
At morn and night I hearWhen the thrush cock singsBright irrelevant things,And when the chanticleer
Calls back to their own nightTroops that make lonelinessWith their light footsteps' press,As Helen's own are light.
Now all roads lead to FranceAnd heavy is the treadOf the living; but the deadReturning lightly dance:
Whatever the road bringTo me or take from me,They keep me companyWith their pattering,
Crowding the solitudeOf the loops over the downs,Hushing the roar of townsAnd their brief multitude.
THIS is no case of petty right or wrongThat politicians or philosophersCan judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hotWith love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.Beside my hate for one fat patriotMy hatred of the Kaiser is love true:—A kind of god he is, banging a gong.But I have not to choose between the two,Or between justice and injustice. DinnedWith war and argument I read no moreThan in the storm smoking along the windAthwart the wood. Two witches' cauldrons roar.From one the weather shall rise clear and gay;Out of the other an England beautifulAnd like her mother that died yesterday.Little I know or care if, being dull,I shall miss something that historiansCan rake out of the ashes when perchanceThe phoenix broods serene above their ken.But with the best and meanest EnglishmenI am one in crying, God save England, lestWe lose what never slaves and cattle blessed.The ages made her that made us from the dust:She is all we know and live by, and we trustShe is good and must endure, loving her so:And as we love ourselves we hate her foe.
"Is this the road that climbs above and bendsRound what was once a chalk-pit: now it isBy accident an amphitheatre.Some ash-trees standing ankle-deep in brierAnd bramble act the parts, and neither speakNor stir." "But see: they have fallen, every one,And brier and bramble have grown over them.""That is the place. As usual no one is here.Hardly can I imagine the drop of the axe,And the smack that is like an echo, sounding here.""I do not understand." "Why, what I mean isThat I have seen the place two or three timesAt most, and that its emptiness and silenceAnd stillness haunt me, as if just beforeIt was not empty, silent, still, but fullOf life of some kind, perhaps tragical.Has anything unusual happened here?""Not that I know of. It is called the Dell.They have not dug chalk here for a century.That was the ash-trees' age. But I will ask.""No. Do not. I prefer to make a tale,Or better leave it like the end of a play,Actors and audience and lights all gone;For so it looks now. In my memoryAgain and again I see it, strangely dark,And vacant of a life but just withdrawn.We have not seen the woodman with the axe.Some ghost has left it now as we two came.""And yet you doubted if this were the road?""Well, sometimes I have thought of it and failedTo place it. No. And I am not quite sure,Even now, this is it. For another place,Real or painted, may have combined with it.Or I myself a long way back in time . . .""Why, as to that, I used to meet a man—I had forgotten,—searching for birds' nestsAlong the road and in the chalk-pit too.The wren's hole was an eye that looked at himFor recognition. Every nest he knew.He got a stiff neck, by looking this side or that,Spring after spring, he told me, with his laugh,—A sort of laugh. He was a visitor,A man of forty,—smoked and strolled about.At orts and crosses Pleasure and Pain had playedOn his brown features;—I think both had lost;—Mild and yet wild too. You may know the kind.And once or twice a woman shared his walks,A girl of twenty with a brown boy's face,And hair brown as a thrush or as a nut,Thick eyebrows, glinting eyes—" "You havesaid enough.A pair,—free thought, free love,—I know thebreed:I shall not mix my fancies up with them.""You please yourself. I should prefer the truthOr nothing. Here, in fact, is nothing at allExcept a silent place that once rang loud,And trees and us—imperfect friends, we menAnd trees since time began; and neverthelessBetween us still we breed a mystery."
FOUR miles at a leap, over the dark hollow land,To the frosted steep of the down and its junipersblack,Travels my eye with equal ease and delight:And scarce could my body leap four yards.
This is the best and the worst of it—Never to know,Yet to imagine gloriously, pure health.
To-day, had I suddenly health,I could not satisfy the desire of my heartUnless health abated it,So beautiful is the air in its softness and clearness,while SpringPromises all and fails in nothing as yet;And what blue and what white is I never knewBefore I saw this sky blessing the land.
For had I health I could not ride or run or flySo far or so rapidly over the landAs I desire: I should reach Wiltshire tired;I should have changed my mind before I could bein Wales.I could not love; I could not command love.Beauty would still be far offHowever many hills I climbed over;Peace would still be farther.
Maybe I should not count it anythingTo leap these four miles with the eye;And either I should not be filled almost to burstingwith desire,Or with my power desire would still keep pace.