BOOK III
PROMENADES
NOCTURNE
The valleys that were known in sunlit hours
Are vast and vague as seas;
Wan as the blackthorn flowers
That quiver in the first spring-scented breeze:
Far as the frosted hollows of the moon.
The sighing woods are still—
Wrapp'd in their age-long boon
Of mystery and sleep. A naked hill,
Loud and discordant, looms against the sky,
And little lights like stars
Break the monotony
Of blue and silver, black and grey. Strange bars
Of light resemble silver masks, and leer
Across the forest lane.
Tall nettles, rank from rain,
Scent all the woods with some ancestral fear.
Trees rustle by the water. A voice sings
Faintly, to ward off fright.
The water breathes pale rings
Of sad, wan light;
Faintly they grow,
Then merge into the night:
The last poor twisted echo takes to flight.
To W. H. DAVIES.
THE LAMENT OF THE MOLE-CATCHER
An old, sad man who catches moles
Went lonely down the lane—
All lily-green were the lanes and knolls,
But sorrow numbed his brain.
He paid no heed to flower or weed
As he went his lonely way.
No note he heard from any bird
That sang, that sad spring day.
"I trap'd the moles for forty years
Who could not see the sky,
I reckoned not blind blood or tears,
And the Lord has seen them die.
For forty years I've sought to slay
The small, the dumb, the blind,
But now the Lord has made me pay,
And I am like their kind.
I cannot see or lane or hill,
Or flower or bird or moon;
Lest life shall lay me lower still,
O Lord—come take it soon."