HONEY MEADOW

Here, Betsey, where the sainfoin blows, Pink and the grass more thickly grows, Where small brown bees are winging To clamber up the stooping flowers, We’ll share the sweet and sunny hours Made murmurous with their singing.

Dear, it requires no small address In such a billowy floweriness For you, so young, to sally: Yet would you still out-stay the sun And linger when his light was done Along the haunted valley.

O small brown fingers, clutched to seize The biggest blooms, don’t spill the bees; Imagine what contempt he Would meet who ventured to arrive Home, of an evening, at the hive, With both his pockets empty!

Moreover, if you steal their share, The bees become too poor to spare Their sweets nor part with any Honey at tea-time; so for you What were for them a cell too few Would be a sell too many!

Or, what were worse for you and me, They might admire the industry So thoughtlessly paraded, And, tired of their brown queen, maintain That no one needed Betsey-Jane As urgently as they did.

So should you taste in some far clime The plunder of eternal thyme And you would quite forget us, Our cottage and these English trees, When you were Queen of Honey Bees At Hybla or Hymettus.

AN ELEGY, FOR FATHER ANSELM, OF THE
ORDER OF REFORMED CISTERCIANS,
GUEST-MASTER AND PARISH PRIEST

“Et pastores erant in regione eadem vigilantes”

You to whose soul a death propitious brings Its Heaven, who attain a windless bourne Of sanctity beyond all sufferings, It is not ours to mourn;

For you, to whom the earth could nothing give, Who knew no hint of our inspirèd pride, You could not very well be said to live Until the day you died.

’Tis upon us—father and kindly friend, Holy and cheerful host—the unbidden guests You welcomed and the souls you would amend, The weight of sorrow rests.

From Sarum in the mesh of her five streams, Her idle belfries and her glittering vanes, We are clomb to where the cloud-race dusks and gleams On turf of upland plains.

Southward the road through juniper and briar Clambers the down, untrodden and unworn Save where some flock pitted the chalky mire With little feet at dawn.

Twice in a week the hooded carrier’s lamp, Flashing on wayside flints and grasses, spills Its misty radiance where the dews lie damp Among the untended hills;

Here lies the hamlet ringed with grassy mound And brambled barrow where, superbly dead, The dust of pagans turned to holy ground Beneath your humble tread.

Here we descend at drooping dusk the side Of the stony down beneath the planted ring Of beeches where you showed with pastoral pride The folded lambs in spring;

Here pull at eve the self-same bell that hastened Your rough-shod feet behind the hollow door— Yet never see you stand, the chain unfastened, Your lantern on the floor.

Others will spread the board now you are gone Here where you smiled and gave your guests to eat, Learning your menial kingliness from One Who washed His servants’ feet;

Along the slumbering corridor betimes Others will knock and other footsteps pass Down the wet lane e’er the thin shivering chimes Toll for the early mass.

Yet in the chapel’s self no sorrows sing In the strange priest’s voice, nor any dolour grips The heart because it is not you who bring Your Master to its lips.

Here let us leave the things you would not have— Vain grief and sorrow useless to be shown— “God’s gift and the Community’s I gave And nothing of my own,”

You would have said, self-deemed of no more worth Than the green hands that guard a poppy’s grace,— Blows the eternal flower and back to earth Tumbles the withered case.

Nay, but Our Lord hath made renouncement vain, Himself into those humble hands let fall, Guerdon of willing poverty and pain, The greatest gift of all;

To you and all who in that life austere Mid fields remote your harsher labours ply Singing His praise, girt round from year to year With sheep-bells and the sky—

This, that to you is larger audience given Where prayer and praise with sighing pinions shod Piercing the starry ante-rooms of Heaven Sway the designs of God:

And now yourself, standing where late hath stood The echo of your voice, are prayer and praise— O sweet reward and unsurpassing good For that small gift of days.

Yourself, who now have heard such summoning And seen such burning clarities alight As broke the vigilant shepherds’ drowsy ring On the predestined night,

Who made such haste as theirs who rose and trod To Bethlehem the dew-encumbered grass, Trustful to see the showing forth of God And the Word come to pass;

With how much more than home-spun Israelites’ Poor hungry glimpse of Godhead are you blest Whom Mary shows for more than mortal nights The Jewel on her breast.

Yet, as one kneeling churl might chance to think Of the wan herd behind their wattled bars, Moving unshepherded with bells that clink And stir beneath the stars,

And, for the thought’s space wishing he were back, Pray to that Sum of Sweetness for his sheep— “Take them, O Thou that dost supply our lack, Into Thy hands to keep,”

So you who in His presence move and live Recall amid your glad celestial cares Your chosen office, to your children give The charity of prayers.