A Song of the Walking Road
The World is all orange-round:
The sea smells salt between:
The strong hills climb on their own backs,
Coloured and damascene,
Cloud-flecked and sunny-green;
Knotted and straining up,
Up, with still hands and cold:
Grip at the slipping sky,
Yet cannot hold:
Round twists old Earth, and round ...
Stillness not yet found.
Plains like a flat dish, too,
Shudder and spin:
Roads in a pattern crawl
Scratched with a pin
Across the fields’ dim shagreen:
—Dusty their load:
But over the craggy hills
Wanders the Walking Road!
Broad as the hill’s broad,
Rough as the world’s rough, too:
Long as the Age is long,
Ancient and true,
Swinging, and broad, and long:
—Craggy, strong.
Gods sit like milestones
On the edge of the Road, by the Moon’s sill;
Man has feet, feet that swing, pound the high hill
Above and above, until
He stumble and widely spill
His dusty bones.
Round twists old Earth, and round ...
Stillness not yet found.
The Sermon
(Wales, 1920)
Like gript stick
Still I sit:
Eyes fixed on far small eyes,
Full of it:
On the old, broad face,
The hung chin;
Heavy arms, surplice
Worn through and worn thin.
Probe I the hid mind
Under the gross flesh:
Clutch at poetic words,
Follow their mesh
Scarce heaving breath.
Clutch, marvel, wonder,
Till the words end.
Stilled is the muttered thunder:
The hard, few people wake,
Gather their books and go ...
—Whether their hearts could break
How can I know?