III
So, there, when sunset made the downs look new
And earth gave up her colours to the sky,
And far away the little city grew
Half into sight, new-visioned was my eye.
I, who have lived, and trod her lovely earth,
Raced with her winds and listened to her birds,
Have cared but little for their worldly worth
Nor sought to put my passion into words.
But now it’s different; and I have no rest
Because my hand must search, dissect and spell
The beauty that is better not expressed,
The thing that all can feel, but none can tell.
1 March 1914
II
BARBURY CAMP
WE burrowed night and day with tools of lead,
Heaped the bank up and cast it in a ring
And hurled the earth above. And Caesar said,
“Why, it is excellent. I like the thing.”
We, who are dead,
Made it, and wrought, and Caesar liked the thing.
And here we strove, and here we felt each vein
Ice-bound, each limb fast-frozen, all night long.
And here we held communion with the rain
That lashed us into manhood with its thong,
Cleansing through pain.
And the wind visited us and made us strong.
Up from around us, numbers without name,
Strong men and naked, vast, on either hand
Pressing us in, they came. And the wind came
And bitter rain, turning grey all the land.
That was our game,
To fight with men and storms, and it was grand.
For many days we fought them, and our sweat
Watered the grass, making it spring up green,
Blooming for us. And, if the wind was wet,
Our blood wetted the wind, making it keen
With the hatred
And wrath and courage that our blood had been.
So, fighting men and winds and tempests, hot
With joy and hate and battle-lust, we fell
Where we fought. And God said, “Killed at last then? What?
Ye that are too strong for heaven, too clean for hell,
(God said) stir not.
This be your heaven, or, if ye will, your hell.”
So again we fight and wrestle, and again
Hurl the earth up and cast it in a ring.
But when the wind comes up, driving the rain
(Each rain-drop a fiery steed), and the mists rolling
Up from the plain,
This wild procession, this impetuous thing,
Hold us amazed. We mount the wind-cars, then
Whip up the steeds and drive through all the world.
Searching to find somewhere some brethren.
Sons of the winds and waters of the world.
We, who were men.
Have sought, and found no men in all this world.
Wind, that has blown here always ceaselessly.
Bringing, if any man can understand,
Might to the mighty, freedom to the free;
Wind, that has caught us, cleansed us, made us grand
Wind that is we
(We that were men)—make men in all this land,
That so may live and wrestle and hate that when
They fall at last exultant, as we fell,
And come to God, God may say, “Do you come then
Mildly enquiring, is it heaven or hell?
Why! Ye were men!
Back to your winds and rains. Be these your heaven and hell!”
24 March 1913
III
WHAT YOU WILL
O COME and see, it’s such a sight,
So many boys all doing right:
To see them underneath the yoke,
Blindfolded by the elder folk,
Move at a most impressive rate
Along the way that is called straight.
O, it is comforting to know
They’re in the way they ought to go.
But don’t you think it’s far more gay
To see them slowly leave the way
And limp and loose themselves and fall?
O, that’s the nicest thing of all.
I love to see this sight, for then
I know they are becoming men,
And they are tiring of the shrine
Where things are really not divine.
I do not know if it seems brave
The youthful spirit to enslave,
And hedge about, lest it should grow.
I don’t know if it’s better so
In the long end. I only know
That when I have a son of mine,
He shan’t be made to droop and pine.
Bound down and forced by rule and rod
To serve a God who is no God.
But I’ll put custom on the shelf
And make him find his God himself.
Perhaps he’ll find him in a tree,
Some hollow trunk, where you can see.
Perhaps the daisies in the sod
Will open out and show him God.
Or will he meet him in the roar
Of breakers as they beat the shore?
Or in the spiky stars that shine?
Or in the rain (where I found mine)?
Or in the city’s giant moan?
—A God who will be all his own,
To whom he can address a prayer
And love him, for he is so fair,
And see with eyes that are not dim
And build a temple meet for him.
June 1913
IV
ROOKS
THERE, where the rusty iron lies,
The rooks are cawing all the day.
Perhaps no man, until he dies,
Will understand them, what they say.
The evening makes the sky like clay.
The slow wind waits for night to rise.
The world is half-content. But they
Still trouble all the trees with cries,
That know, and cannot put away,
The yearning to the soul that flies
From day to night, from night to day.
21 June 1913
V
ROOKS (II)
THERE is such cry in all these birds,
More than can ever be express’d;
If I should put it into words,
You would agree it were not best
To wake such wonder from its rest.
But since to-night the world is still
And only they and I astir,
We are united, will to will,
By bondage tighter, tenderer
Than any lovers ever were.
And if, of too much labouring.
All that I see around should die
(There is such sleep in each green thing,
Such weariness in all the sky),
We would live on, these birds and I.
Yet how? since everything must pass
At evening with the sinking sun,
And Christ is gone, and Barabbas,
Judas and Jesus, gone, clean gone,
Then how shall I live on?
Yet surely, Judas must have heard
Amidst his torments the long cry
Of some lone Israelitish bird,
And on it, ere he went to die,
Thrown all his spirit’s agony.
And that immortal cry which welled
For Judas, ever afterwards
Passion on passion still has swelled
And sweetened, till to-night these birds
Will take my words, will take my words,
And wrapping them in music meet
Will sing their spirit through the sky,
Strange and unsatisfied and sweet—
That, when stock-dead am I, am I,
O, these will never die!
July 1913
VI
STONES
THIS field is almost white with stone
That cumber all its thirsty crust.
And underneath, I know, are bones.
And all around is death and dust.
And if you love a livelier hue—
O, if you love the youth of year,
When all is clean and green and new,
Depart. There is no summer here.
Albeit, to me there lingers yet
In this forbidding stony dress
The impotent and dim regret
For some forgotten restlessness.
Dumb, imperceptibly astir,
These relics of an ancient race,
These men, in whom the dead bones were,
Still fortifying their resting-place.
Their field of life was white with stones;
Good fruit to earth they never brought.
O, in these bleached and buried bones
Was neither love nor faith nor thought.
But like the wind in this bleak place,
Bitter and bleak and sharp they grew.
And bitterly they ran their race,
A brutal, bad, unkindly crew:
Souls like the dry earth, hearts like stone.
Brains like that barren bramble-tree:
Stern, sterile, senseless, mute, unknown—
But bold, O, bolder far than we!
14 July 1913
VII
EAST KENNET CHURCH AT EVENING
I STOOD amongst the corn, and watched
The evening coming down.
The rising vale was like a queen,
And the dim church her crown.
Crown-like it stood against the hills.
Its form was passing fair.
I almost saw the tribes go up
To offer incense there.
And far below the long vale stretched.
As a sleeper she did seem
That after some brief restlessness
Has now begun to dream.
(All day the wakefulness of men,
Their lives and labours brief,
Have broken her long troubled sleep.
Now, evening brings relief.)
There was no motion there, nor sound.
She did not seem to rise.
Yet was she wrapping herself in
Her grey of night-disguise.
For now no church nor tree nor fold
Was visible to me:
Only that fading into one
Which God must sometimes see.
No coloured glory streaked the sky
To mark the sinking sun.
There was no redness in the west
To tell that day was done.
Only, the greyness of the eve
Grew fuller than before.
And, in its fulness, it made one
Of what had once been more.
There was much beauty in that sight
That man must not long see.
God dropped the kindly veil of night
Between its end and me.
24 July 1913
VIII
AUTUMN DAWN
AND this is morning. Would you think
That this was the morning, when the land
Is full of heavy eyes that blink
Half-opened, and the tall trees stand
Too tired to shake away the drops
Of passing night that cling around
Their branches and weigh down their tops:
And the grey sky leans on the ground?
The thrush sings once or twice, but stops
Affrighted by the silent sound.
The sheep, scarce moving, munches, moans.
The slow herd mumbles, thick with phlegm.
The grey road-mender, hacking stones,
Is now become as one of them.
Old mother Earth has rubbed her eyes
And stayed, so senseless, lying down.
Old mother is too tired to rise
And lay aside her grey nightgown,
And come with singing and with strength
In loud exuberance of day,
Swift-darting. She is tired at length,
Done up, past bearing, you would say.
She’ll come no more in lust of strife,
In hedges’ leap, and wild birds’ cries,
In winds that cut you like a knife,
In days of laughter and swift skies,
That palpably pulsate with life,
With life that kills, with life that dies.
But in a morning such as this
Is neither life nor death to see,
Only that state which some call bliss,
Grey hopeless immortality.
Earth is at length bedrid. She is
Supinest of the things that be:
And stilly, heavy with long years,
Brings forth such days in dumb regret,
Immortal days, that rise in tears,
And cannot, though they strive to, set.
* * * * * * *
The mists do move. The wind takes breath.
The sun appeareth over there,
And with red fingers hasteneth
From Earth’s grey bed the clothes to tear,
And strike the heavy mist’s dank tent.
And Earth uprises with a sigh.
She is astir. She is not spent.
And yet she lives and yet can die.
The grey road-mender from the ditch
Looks up. He has not looked before.
The stunted tree sways like the witch
It was: ’tis living witch once more.
The winds are washen. In the deep
Dew of the morn they’ve washed. The skies
Are changing dress. The clumsy sheep
Bound, and earth’s many bosoms rise,
And earth’s green tresses spring and leap
About her brow. The earth has eyes,
The earth has voice, the earth has breath,
As o’er the land and through the air,
With wingéd sandals, Life and Death
Speed hand in hand—that winsome pair!
16 September 1913
IX
RETURN
STILL stand the downs so wise and wide?
Still shake the trees their tresses grey?
I thought their beauty might have died
Since I had been away.
I might have known the things I love,
The winds, the flocking birds’ full cry,
The trees that toss, the downs that move,
Were longer things than I.
Lo, earth that bows before the wind,
With wild green children overgrown,
And all her bosoms, many-whinned,
Receive me as their own.
The birds are hushed and fled: the cows
Have ceased at last to make long moan.
They only think to browse and browse
Until the night is grown.
The wind is stiller than it was,
And dumbness holds the closing day.
The earth says not a word, because
It has no word to say.
The dear soft grasses under foot
Are silent to the listening ear.
Yet beauty never can be mute,
And some will always hear.
18 September 1913
X
RICHARD JEFFERIES
(LIDDINGTON CASTLE)
I SEE the vision of the Vale
Rise teeming to the rampart Down,
The fields and, far below, the pale
Red-roofédness of Swindon town.
But though I see all things remote,
I cannot see them with the eyes
With which ere now the man from Coate
Looked down and wondered and was wise.
He knew the healing balm of night,
The strong and sweeping joy of day,
The sensible and dear delight
Of life, the pity of decay.
And many wondrous words he wrote,
And something good to man he showed,
About the entering in of Coate,
There, on the dusty Swindon road.
19 September 1913
XI
J. B.
THERE’S still a horse on Granham hill,
And still the Kennet moves, and still
Four Miler sways and is not still.
But where is her interpreter?
The downs are blown into dismay,
The stunted trees seem all astray,
Looking for someone clad in grey
And carrying a golf-club thing;
Who, them when he had lived among,
Gave them what they desired, a tongue.
Their words he gave them to be sung
Perhaps were few, but they were true.
The trees, the downs, on either hand,
Still stand, as he said they would stand.
But look, the rain in all the land
Makes all things dim with tears of him.
And recently the Kennet croons,
And winds are playing widowed tunes.
—He has not left our “toun o’ touns,”
But taken it away with him!
October 1913
XII
THE OTHER WISE MAN
(Scene: A valley with a wood on one side and a road running up to a distant hill: as it might be, the valley to the east of West Woods, that runs up to Oare Hill, only much larger. Time: Autumn. Four wise men are marching hillward along the road.)
One Wise Man
I wonder where the valley ends?
On, comrades, on.
Another Wise Man
The rain-red road,
Still shining sinuously, bends
Leagues upwards.
A Third Wise Man
To the hill, O friends,
To seek the star that once has glowed
Before us; turning not to right
Nor left, nor backward once looking.
Till we have clomb—and with the night
We see the King.
All the Wise Men
The King! The King!
The Third Wise Man
Long is the road but—
A Fourth Wise Man
Brother, see,
There, to the left, a very aisle
Composed of every sort of tree—
The First Wise Man
The Fourth Wise Man
Oak and beech and birch,
Like a church, but homelier than church,
The black trunks for its walls of tile;
Its roof, old leaves; its floor, beech nuts;
The squirrels its congregation—
The Second Wise Man
Tuts!
For still we journey—
The Fourth Wise Man
But the sun weaves
A water-web across the grass,
Binding their tops. You must not pass
The water cobweb.
The Third Wise Man
Hush! I say.
Onward and upward till the day—
The Fourth Wise Man
Brother, that tree has crimson leaves.
You’ll never see its like again.
Don’t miss it. Look, it’s bright with rain—
The First Wise Man
O prating tongue. On, on.
The Fourth Wise Man
And there
A toad-stool, nay, a goblin stool.
No toad sat on a thing so fair.
Wait, while I pluck—and there’s—and here’s
A whole ring ... what?... berries?
(The Fourth Wise Man drops behind, botanizing.)
The Wisest of the remaining Three Wise Men
O fool!
Fool, fallen in this vale of tears
His hand had touched the plough: his eyes
Looked back: no more with us, his peers,
He’ll climb the hill and front the skies
And see the Star, the King, the Prize.
But we, the seekers, we who see
Beyond the mists of transiency—
Our feet down in the valley still
Are set, our eyes are on the hill.
Last night the star of God has shone,
And so we journey, up and on,
With courage clad, with swiftness shod,
All thoughts of earth behind us cast,
Until we see the lights of God,
—And what will be the crown at last?
All Three Wise Men
On, on.
(They pass on: it is already evening when the Other Wise Man limps along the road, still botanizing.)
The Other Wise Man
A vale of tears, they said!
A valley made of woes and fears,
To be passed by with muffled head
Quickly. I have not seen the tears,
Unless they take the rain for tears,
And certainly the place is wet.
Rain laden leaves are ever licking
Your cheeks and hands ... I can’t get on.
There’s a toad-stool that wants picking.
There, just there, a little up,
What strange things to look upon
With pink hood and orange cup!
And there are acorns, yellow—green ...
They said the King was at the end.
They must have been
Wrong. For here, here, I intend
To search for him, for surely here
Are all the wares of the old year,
And all the beauty and bright prize,
And all God’s colours meetly showed,
Green for the grass, blue for the skies,
Red for the rain upon the road;
And anything you like for trees,
But chiefly yellow brown and gold,
Because the year is growing old
And loves to paint her children these.
I tried to follow ... but, what do you think?
The mushrooms here are pink!
And there’s old clover with black polls
Black-headed clover, black as coals,
And toad-stools, sleek as ink!
And there are such heaps of little turns
Off the road, wet with old rain:
Each little vegetable lane
Of moss and old decaying ferns,
Beautiful in decay,
Snatching a beauty from whatever may
Be their lot, dark-red and luscious: till there pass’d
Over the many-coloured earth a grey
Film. It was evening coming down at last.
And all things hid their faces, covering up
Their peak or hood or bonnet or bright cup
In greyness, and the beauty faded fast,
With all the many-coloured coat of day.
Then I looked up, and lo! the sunset sky
Had taken the beauty from the autumn earth.
Such colour, O such colour, could not die.
The trees stood black against such revelry
Of lemon-gold and purple and crimson dye.
And even as the trees, so I
Stood still and worshipped, though by evening’s birth
I should have capped the hills and seen the King.
The King? The King?
I must be miles away from my journey’s end;
The others must be now nearing
The summit, glad. By now they wend
Their way far, far, ahead, no doubt.
I wonder if they’ve reached the end.
If they have, I have not heard them shout.
1 December 1913
XIII
THE SONG OF THE UNGIRT RUNNERS
WE swing ungirded hips,
And lightened are our eyes,
The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
We know not whom we trust
Nor whitherward we fare,
But we run because we must
Through the great wide air.
The waters of the seas
Are troubled as by storm.
The tempest strips the trees
And does not leave them warm.
Does the tearing tempest pause?
Do the tree-tops ask it why?
So we run without a cause
’Neath the big bare sky.
The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
But the storm the water whips
And the wave howls to the skies.
The winds arise and strike it
And scatter it like sand,
And we run because we like it
Through the broad bright land.
XIV
GERMAN RAIN
THE heat came down and sapped away my powers.
The laden heat came down and drowned my brain,
Till through the weight of overcoming hours
I felt the rain.
Then suddenly I saw what more to see
I never thought: old things renewed, retrieved.
The rain that fell in England fell on me,
And I believed.
XV
WHOM THEREFORE WE IGNORANTLY WORSHIP
THESE things are silent. Though it may be told
Of luminous deeds that lighten land and sea,
Strong sounding actions with broad minstrelsy
Of praise, strange hazards and adventures bold,
We hold to the old things that grow not old:
Blind, patient, hungry, hopeless (without fee
Of all our hunger and unhope are we),
To the first ultimate instinct, to God we hold.
They flicker, glitter, flicker. But we bide,
We, the blind weavers of an intense fate,
Asking but this—that we may be denied:
Desiring only desire insatiate,
Unheard, unnamed, unnoticed, crucified
To our unutterable faith, we wait.
XVI
TO POETS
WE are the homeless, even as you,
Who hope and never can begin.
Our hearts are wounded through and through
Like yours, but our hearts bleed within.
We too make music, but our tones
’Scape not the barrier of our bones.
We have no comeliness like you.
We toil, unlovely, and we spin.
We start, return: we wind, undo:
We hope, we err, we strive, we sin,
We love: your love’s not greater, but
The lips of our love’s might stay shut.
We have the evil spirits too
That shake our soul with battle-din.
But we have an eviller spirit than you
We have a dumb spirit within:
The exceeding bitter agony
But not the exceeding bitter cry.
XVII
A HUNDRED thousand million mites we go
Wheeling and tacking o’er the eternal plain,
Some black with death—and some are white with woe.
Who sent us forth? Who takes us home again?
And there is sound of hymns of praise—to whom?
And curses—on whom curses?—snap the air.
And there is hope goes hand in hand with gloom.
And blood and indignation and despair.
And there is murmuring of the multitude
And blindness and great blindness, until some
Step forth and challenge blind Vicissitude
Who tramples on them: so that fewer come.
And nations, ankle-deep in love or hate,
Throw darts or kisses all the unwitting hour
Beside the ominous unseen tide of fate;
And there is emptiness and drink and power.
And some are mounted on swift steeds of thought
And some drag sluggish feet of stable toil.
Yet all, as though they furiously sought,
Twist turn and tussle, close and cling and coil.
A hundred thousand million mites we sway
Writhing and tossing on the eternal plain,
Some black with death—but most are bright with Day!
Who sent us forth? Who brings us home again?
XVIII
DEUS LOQUITUR
THAT’s what I am: a thing of no desire,
With no path to discover and no plea
To offer up, so be my altar fire
May burn before the hearth continuously,
To be
For wayward men a steadfast light to see.
They know me in the morning of their days,
But ere noontide forsake me, to discern
New lore and hear new riddles. But moonrays
Bring them back footsore, humble, bent, a-burn
To turn
And warm them by my fire which they did spurn.
They flock together like tired birds. “We sought
Full many stars in many skies to see.
But ever knowledge disappointment brought.
Thy light alone, Lord, burneth steadfastly.”
Ah me!
Then it is I who fain would wayward be.