FOG
STAGNANT this wintry gloom. Afar
The farm-cock bugles his 'Qui vive?'
The towering elms are lost in mist;
Birds in the thorn-trees huddle a-whist;
The mill-race waters grieve.
Our shrouded day
Dwindles away
To final black of eve.
Beyond these shades in space of air
Ride exterrestrial beings by?
Their colours burning rich and fair,
Where noon's sunned valleys lie?
With inaudible music are they sweet—
Bell, hoof, soft lapsing cry?
Turn marvellous faces, each to each?—
Lips innocent of sigh,
Or groan or fear, sorrow and grief,
Clear brow and falcon eye;
Bare foot, bare shoulder in the heat,
And hair like flax? Do their horses beat
Their way through wildernesses infinite
Of starry-crested trees, blue sward,
And gold-chasm'd mountain, steeply shored
O'er lakes of sapphire dye?
Mingled with lisping speech, faint laughter,
Echoes the Phoenix' scream of joyance
Mounting on high?—
Light-bathed vistas and divine sweet mirth,
Beyond dream of spirits penned to earth,
Condemned to pine and die?...
Hath serving Nature, bidden of the gods,
Thick-screened Man's narrow sky,
And hung these Stygian veils of fog
To hide his dingied sty?—
The gods who yet, at mortal birth,
Bequeathed him Fantasy?
SOTTO VOCE
(To Edward Thomas)
THE haze of noon wanned silver-grey
The soundless mansion of the sun;
The air made visible in his ray,
Like molten glass from furnace run,
Quivered o'er heat-baked turf and stone
And the flower of the gorse burned on—
Burned softly as gold of a child's fair hair
Along each spiky spray, and shed
Almond-like incense in the air
Whereon our senses fed.
At foot—a few sparse harebells: blue
And still as were the friend's dark eyes
That dwelt on mine, transfixèd through
With sudden ecstatic surmise.
'Hst!' he cried softly, smiling, and lo,
Stealing amidst that maze gold-green,
I heard a whispering music flow
From guileful throat of bird, unseen:—
So delicate the straining ear
Scarce carried its faint syllabling
Into a heart caught-up to hear
That inmost pondering
Of bird-like self with self. We stood,
In happy trance-like solitude,
Hearkening a lullay grieved and sweet—
As when on isle uncharted beat
'Gainst coral at the palm-tree's root,
With brine-clear, snow-white foam afloat,
The wailing, not of water or wind—
A husht, far, wild, divine lament,
When Prospero his wizardry bent
Winged Ariel to bind....
Then silence, and o'er-flooding noon.
I raised my head; smiled too. And he—
Moved his great hand, the magic gone—
Gently amused to see
My ignorant wonderment. He sighed.
'It was a nightingale,' he said,
'That sotto voce cons the song
He'll sing when dark is spread;
And Night's vague hours are sweet and long.
And we are laid abed.'