List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
LIKE THE TOUCH OF RAIN
Like the touch of rain she was
On a man’s flesh and hair and eyes
When the joy of walking thus
Has taken him by surprise:
With the love of the storm he burns, 5
He sings, he laughs, well I know how,
But forgets when he returns
As I shall not forget her ‘Go now’.
Those two words shut a door
Between me and the blessed rain 10
That was never shut before
And will not open again.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
WHEN WE TWO WALKED
When we two walked in Lent
We imagined that happiness
Was something different
And this was something less.
But happy were we to hide 5
Our happiness, not as they were
Who acted in their pride
Juno and Jupiter:
For the Gods in their jealousy
Murdered that wife and man, 10
And we that were wise live free
To recall our happiness then.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
TALL NETTLES
Tall nettles cover up, as they have done
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.
This corner of the farmyard I like most: 5
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
I NEVER SAW THAT LAND BEFORE
I never saw that land before,
And now can never see it again;
Yet, as if by acquaintance hoar
Endeared, by gladness and by pain,
Great was the affection that I bore 5
To the valley and the river small,
The cattle, the grass, the bare ash trees,
The chickens from the farmsteads, all
Elm-hidden, and the tributaries
Descending at equal interval; 10
The blackthorns down along the brook
With wounds yellow as crocuses
Where yesterday the labourer’s hook
Had sliced them cleanly; and the breeze
That hinted all and nothing spoke. 15
I neither expected anything
Nor yet remembered: but some goal
I touched then; and if I could sing
What would not even whisper my soul
As I went on my journeying, 20
I should use, as the trees and birds did,
A language not to be betrayed;
And what was hid should still be hid
Excepting from those like me made
Who answer when such whispers bid. 25
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
THE CHERRY TREES
The cherry trees bend over and are shedding
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
THE WATCHERS
By the ford at the town’s edge
Horse and carter rest:
The carter smokes on the bridge
Watching the water press in swathes about his horse’s chest.
From the inn one watches, too, 5
In the room for visitors
That has no fire, but a view
And many cases of stuffed fish, vermin, and kingfishers.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
IT RAINS
Anywhere through the orchard’s untrodden, dense
Forest of parsley. The great diamonds
Of rain on the grassblades there is none to break,
Or the fallen petals further down to shake. 5
And I am nearly as happy as possible
To search the wilderness in vain though well,
To think of two walking, kissing there,
Drenched, yet forgetting the kisses of the rain:
Sad, too, to think that never, never again, 10
Unless alone, so happy shall I walk
In the rain. When I turn away, on its fine stalk
Twilight has fined to naught, the parsley flower
Figures, suspended still and ghostly white,
The past hovering as it revisits the light. 15
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
THE SUN USED TO SHINE
The sun used to shine while we two walked
Slowly together, paused and started
Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked
As either pleased, and cheerfully parted
Each night. We never disagreed 5
Which gate to rest on. The to be
And the late past we gave small heed.
We turned from men or poetry
To rumours of the war remote
Only till both stood disinclined 10
For aught but the yellow flavorous coat
Of an apple wasps had undermined;
Or a sentry of dark betonies,
The stateliest of small flowers on earth,
At the forest verge; or crocuses 15
Pale purple as if they had their birth
In sunless Hades fields. The war
Came back to mind with the moonrise
Which soldiers in the east afar
Beheld then. Nevertheless, our eyes 20
Could as well imagine the Crusades
Or Caesar’s battles. Everything
To faintness like those rumours fades –
Like the brook’s water glittering
Under the moonlight – like those walks 25
Now – like us two that took them, and
The fallen apples, all the talks
And silences – like memory’s sand
When the tide covers it late or soon,
And other men through other flowers 30
In those fields under the same moon
Go talking and have easy hours.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
NO ONE CARES LESS THAN I
‘No one cares less than I,
Nobody knows but God,
Whether I am destined to lie
Under a foreign clod,’
Were the words I made to the bugle call in the morning. 5
But laughing, storming, scorning,
Only the bugles know
What the bugles say in the morning,
And they do not care, when they blow
The call that I heard and made words to early this morning. 10
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List of poems in alphabetical order
SOME EYES CONDEMN
Some eyes condemn the earth they gaze upon:
Some wait patiently till they know far more
Than earth can tell them: some laugh at the whole
As folly of another’s making: one
I knew that laughed because he saw, from core 5
To rind, not one thing worth the laugh his soul
Had ready at waking: some eyes have begun
With laughing; some stand startled
at the door.
Others, too, I have seen rest, question, roll,
Dance, shoot. And many I have loved watching. Some 10
I could not take my eyes from till they turned
And loving died. I had not found my goal.
But thinking of your eyes, dear, I become
Dumb: for they flamed, and it was me they burned.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
AS THE TEAM’S HEAD-BRASS
As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn
The lovers disappeared into the wood.
I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm
That strewed an angle of the fallow, and
Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square 5
Of charlock. Every time the horses turned
Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned
Upon the handles to say or ask a word,
About the weather, next about the war.
Scraping the share he faced towards the wood, 10
And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed
Once more.
The blizzard felled the elm whose crest
I sat in, by a woodpecker’s round hole,
The ploughman said. ‘When will they take it away?’
‘When the war’s over.’ So the talk began – 15
One minute and an interval of ten,
A minute more and the same interval.
‘Have you been out?’ ‘No.’ ‘And don’t want to, perhaps?’
‘If I could only come back again, I should.
I could spare an arm. I shouldn’t want to lose 20
A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so,
I should want nothing more…. Have many gone
From here?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Many lost?’ ‘Yes: a good few.
Only two teams work on the farm this year.
One of my mates is dead. The second day 25
In France they killed him. It was back in March,
The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if
He had stayed here we should have moved the tree.’
‘And I should not have sat here. Everything
Would have been different. For it would have been 30
Another world.’ ‘Ay, and a better, though
If we could see all all might seem good.’ Then
The lovers came out of the wood again:
The horses started and for the last time
I watched the clods crumble and topple over 35
After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.
List of poems in chronological order
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AFTER YOU SPEAK
After you speak
And what you meant
Is plain,
My eyes
Meet yours that mean – 5
With your cheeks and hair –
Something more wise,
More dark,
And far different.
Even so the lark 10
Loves dust
And nestles in it
The minute
Before he must
Soar in lone flight 15
So far,
Like a black star
He seems –
A mote
Of singing dust 20
Afloat
Above,
That dreams
And sheds no light.
I know your lust 25
Is love.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
BRIGHT CLOUDS
Bright clouds of may
Shade half the pond.
Beyond,
All but one bay
Of emerald 5
Tall reeds
Like criss-cross bayonets
Where a bird once called,
Lies bright as the sun.
No one heeds. 10
The light wind frets
And drifts the scum
Of may-blossom.
Till the moorhen calls
Again 15
Naught’s to be done
By birds or men.
Still the may falls.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
EARLY ONE MORNING
Early one morning in May I set out,
And nobody I knew was about.
I’m bound away for ever,
Away somewhere, away for ever.
There was no wind to trouble the weathercocks. 5
I had burnt my letters and darned my socks.
No one knew I was going away,
I thought myself I should come back some day.
I heard the brook through the town gardens run.
O sweet was the mud turned to dust by the sun. 10
A gate banged in a fence and banged in my head.
‘A fine morning, sir,’ a shepherd said.
I could not return from my liberty,
To my youth and my love and my misery.
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet, 15
The only sweet thing that is not also fleet.
I’m bound away for ever,
Away somewhere, away for ever.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
IT WAS UPON
It was upon a July evening.
At a stile I stood, looking along a path
Over the country by a second Spring
Drenched perfect green again. ‘The lattermath
Will be a fine one.’ So the stranger said, 5
A wandering man. Albeit I stood at rest,
Flushed with desire I was. The earth outspread,
Like meadows of the future, I possessed.
And as an unaccomplished prophecy
The stranger’s words, after the interval 10
Of a score years, when those fields are by me
Never to be recrossed, now I recall,
This July eve, and question, wondering,
What of the lattermath to this hoar Spring?
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
WOMEN HE LIKED
Women he liked, did shovel-bearded Bob,
Old Farmer Hayward of the Heath, but he
Loved horses. He himself was like a cob,
And leather-coloured. Also he loved a tree.
For the life in them he loved most living things, 5
But a tree chiefly. All along the lane
He planted elms where now the stormcock sings
That travellers hear from the slow-climbing train.
Till then the track had never had a name
For all its thicket and the nightingales 10
That should have earned it. No one was to blame.
To name a thing beloved man sometimes fails.
Many years since, Bob Hayward died, and now
None passes there because the mist and the rain
Out of the elms have turned the lane to slough 15
And gloom, the name alone survives, Bob’s Lane.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
THERE WAS A TIME
There was a time when this poor frame was whole
And I had youth and never another care,
Or none that should have troubled a strong soul.
Yet, except sometimes in a frosty air
When my heels hammered out a melody 5
From pavements of a city left behind,
I never would acknowledge my own glee
Because it was less mighty than my mind
Had dreamed of. Since I could not boast of strength
Great as I wished, weakness was all my boast. 10
I sought yet hated pity till at length
I earned it. Oh, too heavy was the cost.
But now that there is something I could use
My youth and strength for, I deny the age,
The care and weakness that I know – refuse 15
To admit I am unworthy of the wage
Paid to a man who gives up eyes and breath
For what would neither ask nor heed his death.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
THE GREEN ROADS
The green roads that end in the forest
Are strewn with white goose feathers this June,
Like marks left behind by someone gone to the forest
To show his track. But he has never come back.
Down each green road a cottage looks at the forest. 5
Round one the nettle towers; two are bathed in flowers.
An old man along the green road to the forest
Strays from one, from another a child alone.
In the thicket bordering the forest,
All day long a thrush twiddles his song. 10
It is old, but the trees are young in the forest,
All but one like a castle keep, in the middle deep.
That oak saw the ages pass in the forest:
They were a host, but their memories are lost,
For the tree is dead: all things forget the forest 15
Excepting perhaps me, when now I see
The old man, the child, the goose feathers at the edge of the forest,