Poems, 1908-1919

Though summer long delayeth
Her blue and golden boon,
Yet now at length she stayeth
Her wings above the noon;
She sets the waters dreaming
To murmurous leafy tones,
The weeded waters gleaming
Above the stepping-stones.

Where fern and ivied willow
Lean o’er the seaward brook,
I read a volume mellow—
A poet’s fairy-book;
The seaward brook is narrow,
The hazel spans its pride,
And like a painted arrow
The king-bird keeps the tide.

JANUARY DUSK

Austere and clad in sombre robes of grey,
With hands upfolded and with silent wings,
In unimpassioned mystery the day
Passes; a lonely thrush its requiem sings.

The dust of night is tangled in the boughs
Of leafless lime and lilac, and the pine
Grows blacker, and the star upon the brows
Of sleep is set in heaven for a sign.

Earth’s little weary peoples fall on peace
And dream of breaking buds and blossoming,
Of primrose airs, of days of large increase,
And all the coloured retinue of spring.

AT GRAFTON

God laughed when he made Grafton
That’s under Bredon Hill,
A jewel in a jewelled plain.
The seasons work their will
On golden thatch and crumbling stone,
And every soft-lipped breeze
Makes music for the Grafton men
In comfortable trees.

God’s beauty over Grafton
Stole into roof and wall,
And hallowed every pavèd path
And every lowly stall,
And to a woven wonder
Conspired with one accord
The labour of the servant,
The labour of the Lord.

And momently to Grafton
Comes in from vale and wold
The sound of sheep unshepherded,
The sound of sheep in fold,
And, blown along the bases
Of lands that set their wide
Frank brows to God, comes chanting
The breath of Bristol tide.

DOMINION

I went beneath the sunny sky
When all things bowed to June’s desire,—
The pansy with its steadfast eye,
The blue shells on the lupin spire,

The swelling fruit along the boughs,
The grass grown heady in the rain,
Dark roses fitted for the brows
Of queens great kings have sung in vain;

My little cat with tiger bars,
Bright claws all hidden in content;
Swift birds that flashed like darkling stars
Across the cloudy continent;

The wiry-coated fellow curled
Stump-tailed upon the sunny flags;
The bees that sacked a coloured world
Of treasure for their honey-bags.

And all these things seemed very glad,
The sun, the flowers, the birds on wing,
The jolly beasts, the furry-clad
Fat bees, the fruit, and everything.

But gladder than them all was I,
Who, being man, might gather up
The joy of all beneath the sky,
And add their treasure to my cup,

And travel every shining way,
And laugh with God in God’s delight,
Create a world for every day,
And store a dream for every night.

THE MIRACLE

Come, sweetheart, listen, for I have a thing
Most wonderful to tell you—news of spring.

Albeit winter still is in the air,
And the earth troubled, and the branches bare,

Yet down the fields to-day I saw her pass—
The spring—her feet went shining through the grass.

She touched the ragged hedgerows—I have seen
Her finger-prints, most delicately green;

And she has whispered to the crocus leaves,
And to the garrulous sparrows in the eaves.

Swiftly she passed and shyly, and her fair
Young face was hidden in her cloudy hair.

She would not stay, her season is not yet,
But she has reawakened, and has set

The sap of all the world astir, and rent
Once more the shadows of our discontent.

Triumphant news—a miracle I sing—
The everlasting miracle of spring.

MILLERS DALE

Barefoot we went by Millers Dale
When meadowsweet was golden gloom
And happy love was in the vale
Singing upon the summer bloom
Of gipsy crop and branches laid
Of willows over chanting pools,
Barefoot by Millers Dale we made
Our summer festival of fools.

Folly bright-eyed, and quick, and young
Was there with all his silly plots,
And trotty wagtail stepped among
The delicate forget-me-nots,
And laughter played with us above
The rocky shelves and weeded holes
And we had fellowship to love
The pigeons and the water-voles.

Time soon shall be when we are all
Stiller than ever runs the Wye,
And every bitterness shall fall
To-morrow in obscurity,
And wars be done, and treasons fail,
Yet shall new friends go down to greet
The singing rocks of Millers Dale,
And willow pools and meadowsweet.

WRITTEN AT LUDLOW CASTLE

(IN THE HALL WHERE COMUS WAS
FIRST PERFORMED)

Where wall and sill and broken window-frame
Are bright with flowers unroofed against the skies,
And nothing but the nesting jackdaws’ cries
Breaks the hushed even, once imperial came
The muse that moved transfiguring the name
Of Puritan, and beautiful and wise
The verses fell, forespeaking Paradise,
And poetry set all this hall aflame.

Now silence has come down upon the place
Where life and song so wonderfully went,
And the mole’s afoot now where that passion rang,
Yet Comus now first moves his laurelled pace,
For song and life for ever are unspent,
And they are more than ghosts who lived and sang.

WORDSWORTH AT GRASMERE

These hills and waters fostered you
Abiding in your argument
Until all comely wisdom drew
About you, and the years were spent.

Now over hill and water stays
A world more intimately wise,
Built of your dedicated days,
And seen in your beholding eyes.

So, marvellous and far, the mind,
That slept among them when began
Waters and hills, leaps up to find
Its kingdom in the thought of man.

SUNRISE ON RYDAL WATER

(TO E. DE S.)

Come down at dawn from windless hills
Into the valley of the lake,
Where yet a larger quiet fills
The hour, and mist and water make
With rocks and reeds and island boughs
One silence and one element,
Where wonder goes surely as once
It went
By Galilean prows.

Moveless the water and the mist,
Moveless the secret air above,
Hushed, as upon some happy tryst
The poised expectancy of love;
What spirit is it that adores
What mighty presence yet unseen?
What consummation works apace
Between
These rapt enchanted shores?

Never did virgin beauty wake
Devouter to the bridal feast
Than moves this hour upon the lake
In adoration to the east;
Here is the bride a god may know,
The primal will, the young consent,
Till surely upon the appointed mood
Intent
The god shall leap—and, lo,

Over the lake’s end strikes the sun,
White, flameless fire; some purity
Thrilling the mist, a splendour won
Out of the world’s heart. Let there be
Thoughts, and atonements, and desires,
Proud limbs, and undeliberate tongue,
Where now we move with mortal oars
Among
Immortal dews and fires.

So the old mating goes apace,
Wind with the sea, and blood with thought,
Lover with lover; and the grace
Of understanding comes unsought
When stars into the twilight steer,
Or thrushes build among the may,
Or wonder moves between the hills,
And day
Comes up on Rydal mere.

SEPTEMBER

Wind and the robin’s note to-day
Have heard of autumn and betray
The green long reign of summer.
The rust is falling in the leaves,
September stands beside the sheaves,
The new, the happy comer.

Not sad my season of the red
And russet orchards gaily spread
From Cholesbury to Cooming,
Nor sad when twilit valley trees
Are ships becalmed on misty seas,
And beetles go abooming.

Now soon shall come the morning crowds
Of starlings, soon the coloured clouds
From oak and ash and willow,
And soon the thorn and briar shall be
Rich in their crimson livery,
In scarlet and in yellow.

Spring laughed and thrilled a million veins,
And summer shone above her rains
To fill September’s faring;
September talks as kings who know
The world’s way and superbly go
In robes of wisdom’s wearing.

OLTON POOLS

(TO G. C. G.)

Now June walks on the waters,
And the cuckoo’s last enchantment
Passes from Olton pools.

Now dawn comes to my window
Breathing midsummer roses,
And scythes are wet with dew.

Is it not strange for ever
That, bowered in this wonder,
Man keeps a jealous heart?...

That June and the June waters,
And birds and dawn-lit roses,
Are gospels in the wind,

Fading upon the deserts,
Poor pilgrim revelations?...
Hist ... over Olton pools!

OF GREATHAM

(TO THOSE WHO LIVE THERE)

For peace, than knowledge more desirable
Into your Sussex quietness I came,
When summer’s green and gold and azure fell
Over the world in flame.

And peace upon your pasture-lands I found,
Where grazing flocks drift on continually,
As little clouds that travel with no sound
Across a windless sky.

Out of your oaks the birds call to their mates
That brood among the pines, where hidden deep
From curious eyes a world’s adventure waits
In columned choirs of sleep.

Under the calm ascension of the night
We heard the mellow lapsing and return
Of night-owls purring in their groundling flight
Through lanes of darkling fern.

Unbroken peace when all the stars were drawn
Back to their lairs of light, and ranked along
From shire to shire the downs out of the dawn
Were risen in golden song.
. . . . . . . . . .
I sing of peace who have known the large unrest
Of men bewildered in their travelling,
And I have known the bridal earth unblest
By the brigades of spring.

I have known that loss. And now the broken thought
Of nations marketing in death I know,
The very winds to threnodies are wrought
That on your downlands blow.

I sing of peace. Was it but yesterday
I came among your roses and your corn?
Then momently amid this wrath I pray
For yesterday reborn.

MAMBLE

I never went to Mamble
That lies above the Teme,
So I wonder who’s in Mamble,
And whether people seem
Who breed and brew along there
As lazy as the name,
And whether any song there
Sets alehouse wits aflame.

The finger-post says Mamble,
And that is all I know
Of the narrow road to Mamble,
And should I turn and go
To that place of lazy token
That lies above the Teme,
There might be a Mamble broken
That was lissom in a dream.

So leave the road to Mamble
And take another road
To as good a place as Mamble
Be it lazy as a toad;
Who travels Worcester county
Takes any place that comes
When April tosses bounty
To the cherries and the plums.

OUT OF THE MOON

Merely the moonlight
Piercing the boughs of my may-tree,
Falling upon my ferns;
Only the night
Touching my ferns with silver bloom
Of sea-flowers here in the sleeping city—
And suddenly the imagination burns
With knowledge of many a dark significant doom
Out of antiquity,
Sung to hushed halls by troubadours
Who knew the ways of the heart because they had seen
The moonlight washing the garden’s deeper green
To silver flowers,
Falling with tidings out of the moon, as now
It falls on the ferns under my may-tree bough.

MOONLIT APPLES

At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,
And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those
Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes
A cloud on the moon in the autumn night.

A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then
There is no sound at the top of the house of men
Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again
Dapples the apples with deep-sea light.

They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams;
On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams
Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams,
And quiet is the steep stair under.

In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep.
And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep
Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep
On moon-washed apples of wonder.

COTTAGE SONG

Morning and night I bring
Clear water from the spring,
And through the lyric noon
I hear the larks in tune,
And when the shadows fall
There’s providence for all.

My garden is alight
With currants red and white;
And my blue curtains peep
On starry courses deep,
When down her silver tides
The moon on Cotswold rides.

My path of paven grey
Is thoroughfare all day
For fellowship, till time
Bids us with candles climb
The little whitewashed stair
Above my lavender.

THE MIDLANDS

Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill
Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky
Deep as the bedded violets that fill
March woods with dusky passion. As I lie
Abed between cool walls I watch the host
Of the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain,
And drowsily the habit of these most
Beloved of English lands moves in my brain,
While silence holds dominion of the dark,
Save when the foxes from the spinneys bark.

I see the valleys in their morning mist
Wreathed under limpid hills in moving light,
Happy with many a yeoman melodist:
I see the little roads of twinkling white
Busy with fieldward teams and market gear
Of rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tell
The many-minded changes of the year,
Who know why crops and kine fare ill or well;
I see the sun persuade the mist away,
Till town and stead are shining to the day.

I see the wagons move along the rows
Of ripe and summer-breathing clover-flower,
I see the lissom husbandman who knows
Deep in his heart the beauty of his power,
As, lithely pitched, the full-heaped fork bids on
The harvest home. I hear the rickyard fill
With gossip as in generations gone,
While wagon follows wagon from the hill.
I think how, when our seasons all are sealed,
Shall come the unchanging harvest from the field.

I see the barns and comely manors planned
By men who somehow moved in comely thought,
Who, with a simple shippon to their hand,
As men upon some godlike business wrought;
I see the little cottages that keep
Their beauty still where since Plantagenet
Have come the shepherds happily to sleep,
Finding the loaves and cups of cider set;
I see the twisted shepherds, brown and old,
Driving at dusk their glimmering sheep to fold.

And now the valleys that upon the sun
Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again,
And the last light upon the wolds is done,
And silence falls on flocks and fields and men;
And black upon the night I watch my hill,
And the stars shine, and there an owly wing
Brushes the night, and all again is still,
And, from this land of worship that I sing,
I turn to sleep, content that from my sires
I draw the blood of England’s midmost shires.

OLD CROW

The bird in the corn
Is a marvellous crow.
He was laid and was born
In the season of snow;
And he chants his old catches
Like a ghost under hatches.

He comes from the shades
Of his wood very early,
And works in the blades
Of the wheat and the barley,
And he’s happy, although
He’s a grumbleton crow.

The larks have devices
For sunny delight,
And the sheep in their fleeces
Are woolly and white;
But these things are the scorn
Of the bird in the corn.

And morning goes by,
And still he is there,
Till a rose in the sky
Calls him back to his lair
In the boughs where the gloom
Is a part of his plume.

But the boy in the lane
With his gun, by and by,
To the heart of the grain
Will narrowly spy,
And the twilight will come,
And no crow will fly home.

VENUS IN ARDEN

Now Love, her mantle thrown,
Goes naked by,
Threading the woods alone,
Her royal eye
Happy because the primroses again
Break on the winter continence of men.

I saw her pass to-day
In Warwickshire,
With the old imperial way,
The old desire,
Fresh as among those other flowers they went
More beautiful for Adon’s discontent.

Those other years she made
Her festival
When the blue eggs were laid
And lambs were tall,
By the Athenian rivers while the reeds
Made love melodious for the Ganymedes.

And now through Cantlow brakes,
By Wilmcote hill,
To Avon-side, she makes
Her garlands still,
And I who watch her flashing limbs am one
With youth whose days three thousand years are done.

ON A LAKE

Sweet in the rushes
The reed-singers make
A music that hushes
The life of the lake;
The leaves are dumb,
And the tides are still,
And no calls come
From the flocks on the hill.

Forgotten now
Are nightingales,
And on his bough
The linnet fails,—
Midway the mere
My mirrored boat
Shall rest and hear
A slenderer note.

Though, heart, you measure
But one proud rhyme,
You build a treasure
Confounding time—
Sweet in the rushes
The reed-singers make
A music that hushes
The life of the lake.

HARVEST MOON

“Hush!” was my whisper
At the stair-top
When the waggoners were down below
Home from the barley-crop.
Through the high window
Looked the harvest moon,
While the waggoners sang
A harvest tune,—
“Hush!” was my whisper when
Marjory stept
Down from her attic-room,
A true-love-adept.

“Fill a can, fill a can,”
Waggoners of heart were they,
“Harvest-home, harvest-home,
Barleycorn is home to-day.” ...
“Marjory, hush now—
Harvest—you hear?”—
Red was the moon’s rose
On the full year,
The cobwebs shook, so well
Did the waggoners sing—
“Hush!”—there was beauty at
That harvesting.

AT AN EARTHWORKS

Ringed high with turf the arena lies,
The neighbouring world unseen, unheard,
Here are but unhorizoned skies,
And on the skies a passing bird,

The conies and a wandering sheep,
The castings of the chambered mole,—
These, and the haunted years that keep
Lost agonies of blood and soul.

They say that in the midnight moon
The ghostly legions gather yet,
And hear a ghostly timbrel-tune,
And see a ghostly combat met.

These are but yeoman’s tales. And here
No marvel on the midnight falls,
But starlight marvellously clear,
Being girdled in these shadowy walls.

Yet now strange glooms of ancestry
Creep on me through this morning light,
Some spectral self is seeking me ...
I will not parley with the night.

INSTRUCTION

I have a place in a little garden,
That laurel-leaf and fern
Keep a cool place though fires of summer
All the green grasses burn.
Little cool winds creep there about
When winds all else are dead,
And tired limbs there find gentle keeping,
And humours of sloth are shed.

So do your songs come always to me,
Poets of age and age,
Clear and cool as rivers of wind
Threading my hermitage,
Stilling my mind from tribulation
Of life half-seen, half-heard,
With images made in the brain’s quietness,
And the leaping of a word.

HABITATION

High up in the sky there, now, you know,
In this May twilight, our cottage is asleep,
Tenantless, and no creature there to go
Near it but Mrs. Fry’s fat cows, and sheep
Dove-coloured, as is Cotswold. No one hears
Under that cherry-tree the night-jars yet,
The windows are uncurtained; on the stairs
Silence is but by tip-toe silence met.
All doors are fast there. It is a dwelling put by
From use for a little, or long, up there in the sky.

Empty; a walled-in silence, in this twilight of May—
A home for lovers, and friendly withdrawing, and sleep,
With none to love there, nor laugh, nor climb from the day
To the candles and linen.... Yet in the silence creep,
This minute, I know, little ghosts, little virtuous lives,
Breathing upon that still, insensible place,
Touching the latches, sorting the napkins and knives,
And such for the comfort of being, and bowls for the grace,
That roses will brim; they are creeping from that room to this,
One room, and two, till the four are visited ... they,
Little ghosts, little lives, are our thoughts in this twilight of May,
Signs that even the curious man would miss,
Of travelling lovers to Cotswold, signs of an hour,
Very soon, when up from the valley in June will ride
Lovers by Lynch to Oakridge up in the wide
Bow of the hill, to a garden of lavender flower....

The doors are locked; no foot falls; the hearths are dumb—
But we are there—we are waiting ourselves who come.

WRITTEN IN WINTERBORNE CAME
CHURCH
(William Barnes, 1801-1886)

To Mrs. Thomas Hardy

I do not use to listen well
At sermon time,
I ’ld rather hear the plainest rhyme
Than tales the parsons tell;

The homespun of experience
They will not wear,
But walk a transcendental air
In dusty rags of sense.

But humbly in your little church
Alone I watch;
Old rector, lift again the latch,
Here is a heart to search.

Come, with a simple word and wise
Quicken my brain,
And while upon the painted pane
The painted butterflies

Beat in the early April beams,
You shall instruct
My spirit in the knowledge plucked
From your still Dorset dreams.

Your word shall strive with no obscure
Debated text,
Your vision being unperplexed,
Your loving purpose pure.

I know you’ll speak of April flowers,
Or lambs in pen,
Or happy-hearted maids and men
Weaving their April hours.

Or rising to your thought will come,
For lessoning,
Those lovers of an older spring,
That now in tombs are dumb.

And brooding in your theme shall be,
Half said, half heard,
The presage of a poet’s word
To mock mortality.
. . . . . . . . . .
The years are on your grave the while,
And yet, almost,
I think to see your surpliced ghost
Stand hesitant in the aisle,