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.