15
The north wind came up yesternight
With the new year’s full moon,
And rising as she gained her height,
Grew to a tempest soon.
Yet found he not on heaven’s face
A task of cloud to clear;
There was no speck that he might chase
Off the blue hemisphere,
Nor vapour from the land to drive:
The frost-bound country held
Nought motionable or alive,
That ’gainst his wrath rebelled.
There scarce was hanging in the wood
A shrivelled leaf to reave;
No bud had burst its swathing hood
That he could rend or grieve:
Only the tall tree-skeletons,
Where they were shadowed all,
Wavered a little on the stones,
And on the white church-wall.
—Like as an artist in his mood,
Who reckons all as nought,
So he may quickly paint his nude,
Unutterable thought:
So Nature in a frenzied hour
By day or night will show
Dim indications of the power,
That doometh man to woe.
Ah, many have my visions been,
And some I know full well:
I would that all that I have seen
Were fit for speech to tell.—
And by the churchyard as I came,
It seemed my spirit passed
Into a land that hath no name,
Grey, melancholy and vast;
Where nothing comes: but Memory,
The widowed queen of Death,
Reigns, and with fixed, sepulchral eye
All slumber banisheth.
Each grain of writhen dust, that drapes
That sickly, staring shore,
Its old chaotic change of shapes
Remembers evermore.
And ghosts of cities long decayed,
And ruined shrines of Fate
Gather the paths, that Time hath made
Foolish and desolate.
Nor winter there hath hope of spring,
Nor the pale night of day,
Since the old king with scorpion sting
Hath done himself away.
The morn was calm; the wind’s last breath
Had fal’n: in solemn hush
The golden moon went down beneath
The dawning’s crimson flush.
16
NORTH WIND IN OCTOBER
In the golden glade the chestnuts are fallen all;
From the sered boughs of the oak the acorns fall:
The beech scatters her ruddy fire;
The lime hath stripped to the cold,
And standeth naked above her yellow attire:
The larch thinneth her spire
To lay the ways of the wood with cloth of gold.
Out of the golden-green and white
Of the brake the fir-trees stand upright
In the forest of flame, and wave aloft
To the blue of heaven their blue-green tuftings soft.
But swiftly in shuddering gloom the splendours fail,
As the harrying North-wind beareth
A cloud of skirmishing hail
The grievèd woodland to smite:
In a hurricane through the trees he teareth,
Raking the boughs and the leaves rending,
And whistleth to the descending
Blows of his icy flail.
Gold and snow he mixeth in spite,
And whirleth afar; as away on his winnowing flight
He passeth, and all again for awhile is bright.
17
FIRST SPRING MORNING
A CHILD’S POEM
Look! Look! the spring is come:
O feel the gentle air,
That wanders thro’ the boughs to burst
The thick buds everywhere!
The birds are glad to see
The high unclouded sun:
Winter is fled away, they sing,
The gay time is begun.
Adown the meadows green
Let us go dance and play,
And look for violets in the lane,
And ramble far away
To gather primroses,
That in the woodland grow,
And hunt for oxlips, or if yet
The blades of bluebells show:
There the old woodman gruff
Hath half the coppice cut,
And weaves the hurdles all day long
Beside his willow hut.
We’ll steal on him, and then
Startle him, all with glee
Singing our song of winter fled
And summer soon to be.
18
A VILLAGER
There was no lad handsomer than Willie was
The day that he came to father’s house:
There was none had an eye as soft an’ blue
As Willie’s was, when he came to woo.
To a labouring life though bound thee be,
An’ I on my father’s ground live free,
I’ll take thee, I said, for thy manly grace,
Thy gentle voice an’ thy loving face.
’Tis forty years now since we were wed:
We are ailing an’ grey needs not to be said:
But Willie’s eye is as blue an’ soft
As the day when he wooed me in father’s croft.
Yet changed am I in body an’ mind,
For Willie to me has ne’er been kind:
Merrily drinking an’ singing with the men
He ’ud come home late six nights o’ the se’n.
An’ since the children be grown an’ gone
He ’as shunned the house an’ left me lone:
An’ less an’ less he brings me in
Of the little he now has strength to win.
The roof lets through the wind an’ the wet,
An’ master won’t mend it with us in’s debt:
An’ all looks every day more worn,
An’ the best of my gowns be shabby an’ torn.
No wonder if words hav’ a-grown to blows;
That matters not while nobody knows:
For love him I shall to the end of life,
An’ be, as I swore, his own true wife.
An’ when I am gone, he’ll turn, an’ see
His folly an’ wrong, an’ be sorry for me:
An’ come to me there in the land o’ bliss
To give me the love I looked for in this.