Where are you going, you pretty riders?—
To the moon’s rising, the rising of death’s moon,
Where the waters move not, and birds are still and songless,
Soon, very soon.
Where are you faring to, you proud Hectors?
Through battle, out of battle, under the grass,
Dust behind your hoof-beats rises, and into dust,
Clouded, you pass.
I’m a pretty rider, I’m a proud Hector,
I as you a little am pretty and proud;
I with you am riding, riding to the moonrise,
So sing we loud—
“Out beyond the dust lies mystery of moonrise,
We go to chiller learning than is bred in the sun,
Hectors, and riders, and a simple singer,
Riding as one.”
DEER
Shy in their herding dwell the fallow deer.
They are spirits of wild sense. Nobody near
Comes upon their pastures. There a life they live,
Of sufficient beauty, phantom, fugitive,
Treading as in jungles free leopards do,
Printless as evelight, instant as dew.
The great kine are patient, and home-coming sheep
Know our bidding. The fallow deer keep
Delicate and far their counsels wild,
Never to be folded reconciled
To the spoiling hand as the poor flocks are:
Lightfoot, and swift, and unfamiliar,
These you may not hinder, unconfined
Beautiful flocks of the mind.
TO ONE I LOVE
As I walked along the passage, in the night, beyond the stairs,
In the dark,
I was afraid,
Suddenly,
As will happen you know, my dear, it will often happen.
I knew the walls at my side,
Knew the drawings hanging there, the order of their placing,
And the door where my bed lay beyond,
And the window on the landing—
There was even a little ray of moonlight through it—
All was known, familiar, my comfortable home;
And yet I was afraid,
Suddenly,
In the dark, like a child, of nothing,
Of vastness, of eternity, of the queer pains of thought,
Such as used to trouble me when I heard,
When I was little, the people talk
On Sundays of “As it was in the Beginning,
Is Now, and Ever Shall Be....”
I am thirty-six years old,
And folk are friendly to me,
And there are no ghosts that should have reason to haunt me,
And I have tempted no magical happenings
By forsaking the clear noons of thought
For the wizardries that the credulous take
To be golden roads to revelation.
I knew all was simplicity there,
Without conspiracy, without antagonism,
And yet I was afraid,
Suddenly,
A child, in the dark, forlorn....
And then, as suddenly,
I was aware of a profound, a miraculous understanding,
Knowledge that comes to a man
But once or twice, as a bird’s note
In the still depth of the night
Striking upon the silence ...
I stood at the door, and there
Was mellow candle-light,
And companionship, and comfort,
And I knew
That it was even so,
That it must be even so
With death.
I knew
That no harm could have touched me out of my fear,
Because I had no grudge against anything,
Because I had desired
In the darkness, when fear came,
Love only, and pity, and fellowship,
And it would have been a thing monstrous,
Something defying nature
And all the simple universal fitness
For any force there to have come evilly
Upon me, who had no evil in my heart,
But only trust, and tenderness
For every presence about me in the air,
For the very shadow about me,
Being a little child for no one’s envy.
And I knew that God
Must understand that we go
To death as little children,
Desiring love so simply, and love’s defence,
And that he would be a barren God, without humour,
To cheat so little, so wistful, a desire,
That he created
In us, in our childishness ...
And I may never again be sure of this,
But there, for a moment,
In the candle-light,
Standing at the door,
I knew.