What is the thing that on these commons gives
Me back to Me? What is this thing that heals
The cities’ wounds, that shows to me where lives
The Being of Me? What scorcery reveals
My hidden Native, blind, unnamed, unsung,
Wrapped in its passionate ardors like a shape
Of chambered chrysalid Soul—close woofed, high swung,
Waiting for sun and rain and winged escape?
34
There are wild days out on the winter heath,
Wild days asmoke in mystery and flame;
The black ducks break their columns into wreath,
The gaunt trees cringe away in windblown shame;
The moody skies press to the barren earth,
Sullen the sea hangs foam around the shore;
There is a look of starving and of dearth
Along the shivering roads across the moor.
35
Then, as if space awed of its yawning breach
Desired rhythms to sound some message home,
Crash in great clouds, dark waves of earthy speech,
The farmlands’ seaweed pile and stubbled loam.
There is cloud-writing on the scrolled West,
The church’s dome swells symboled on the sky;
Austere the landscape, yet so clear expressed,
It looms to awe and brooding majesty!
36
And then on Headland or on barren dune,
The wild light leaps, born of the naked sea;
The North cliffs are cathedral; there is rune
And choral in the surf’s antiphony.
The laborer, who slowly takes his way
Back to the hamlet in the early night,
Sees the old village set in convent grey,
And candled shrines of votive window light.
37
There are great days in Autumn, when the world
Turns to blue fire and all the hills are red;
One hears the fishing gulls’ wild screaming skirled
Up to the wingéd comrades overhead.
The Sound is flecked with scudding green and white,
And beaches stretch away to golden glow,
Till stars hang garlanded along the night,
And constellations swing liquid and low.
38