The stones quiver. Twenty pounds of lead
Fold upon fold, the air laps my head.
Both eyes scorch: tongue stiff and bitter.
Flies buzz, but no birds twitter:
Slow bullocks stand with stinging feet,
And naked fishes scarcely stir, for heat.
White as smoke,
As jetted steam, dead clouds awoke
And quivered on the Western rim.
And then the singing started, dim
And sibilant as rime-stiff reeds
That whistle as the wind leads.
The North answered, low and clear;
The South whispered hard and sere,
And thunder muffled up like drums
Beat, whence the East-wind comes.
The heavy sky that could not weep
Is loosened: rain falls steep,
And thirty singing furies ride
To split the sky from side to side.
They sing, and lash the wet-flanked wind:
Sing, from Col to Hafod Mynd
And fling their voices half a score
Of miles along the mounded shore:
Whip loud music from a tree,
And roll their paean out to sea
Where crowded breakers fling and leap,
And strange things throb five fathoms deep.
The sudden tempest roared and died:
The singing furies muted ride
Down wet and slippery roads to hell;
And, silent in their captors’ train
Two fishers, storm-caught on the main;
A shepherd, battered with his flocks;
A pit-boy tumbled from the rocks,
A dozen back-broke gulls, and hosts
Of shadowy, small, pathetic ghosts,
Of mice and leverets caught by flood,
Their beauty shrouded in cold mud.
THE SERMON
(Wales 1920).
Like grippt stick
Still I sit:
Eyes fixed on far small eyes,
Full of it:
On the old, broad face,
The hung chin;
Heavy arms, surplice
Worn through and worn thin.
Probe I the hid mind
Under the gross flesh:
Clutch at poetic words,
Follow their mesh
Scarce heaving breath.
Clutch, marvel, wonder,
Till the words end.
Stilled is the muttered thunder:
The hard, few people wake,
Gather their books and go—
Whether their hearts could break
How can I know?