In ‘seventy-four a year of soldiering
With the Berkshires, – hoeing and harvesting
In half the shires where corn and couch will grow.
His sons, three sons, were fighting, but the hoe 20
And reap-hook he liked, or anything to do with trees.
He fell once from a poplar tall as these:
The Flying Man they called him in hospital.
‘If I flew now, to another world I’d fall.’
He laughed and whistled to the small brown bitch 25
With spots of blue that hunted in the ditch.
Her foxy Welsh grandfather must have paired
Beneath him. He kept sheep in Wales and scared
Strangers, I will warrant, with his pearl eye
And trick of shrinking off as he were shy, 30
Then following close in silence for – for what?
‘No rabbit, never fear, she ever got,
Yet always hunts. Today she nearly had one:
She would and she wouldn’t. ‘Twas like that. The bad one!
She’s not much use, but still she’s company, 35
Though I’m not. She goes everywhere with me.
So Alton I must reach tonight somehow:
I’ll get no shakedown with that bedfellow
From farmers. Many a man sleeps worse tonight
Than I shall.’ ‘In the trenches.’ ‘Yes, that’s right. 40
But they’ll be out of that – I hope they be –
This weather, marching after the enemy.’
‘And so I hope. Good luck.’ And there I nodded
‘Good-night. You keep straight on.’ Stiffly he plodded;
And at his heels the crisp leaves scurried fast, 45
And the leaf-coloured robin watched. They passed,
The robin till next day, the man for good,
Together in the twilight of the wood.
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THE GYPSY
A fortnight before Christmas Gypsies were everywhere:
Vans were drawn up on wastes, women trailed to the fair.
‘My gentleman,’ said one, ‘You’ve got a lucky face.’
‘And you’ve a luckier,’ I thought, ‘if such a grace
And impudence in rags are lucky.’ ‘Give a penny 5
For the poor baby’s sake.’ ‘Indeed I have not any
Unless you can give change for a sovereign, my dear.’
‘Then just half a pipeful of tobacco can you spare?’
I gave it. With that much victory she laughed content.
I should have given more, but off and away she went 10
With her baby and her pink sham flowers to rejoin
The rest before I could translate to its proper coin
Gratitude for her grace. And I paid nothing then,
As I pay nothing now with the dipping of my pen
For her brother’s music when he drummed the tambourine 15
And stamped his feet, which made the workmen passing grin,
While his mouth-organ changed to a rascally Bacchanal dance
‘Over the hills and far away’. This and his glance
Outlasted all the fair, farmer and auctioneer,
Cheap-jack, balloon-man, drover with crooked stick, and steer, 20
Pig, turkey, goose, and duck, Christmas corpses to be.
Not even the kneeling ox had eyes like the Romany.
That night he peopled for me the hollow wooded land,
More dark and wild than stormiest heavens, that I searched and scanned
Like a ghost new-arrived. The gradations of the dark 20
Were like an underworld of death, but for the spark
In the Gypsy boy’s black eyes as he played and stamped his tune,
‘Over the hills and far away’, and a crescent moon.
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AMBITION
Unless it was that day I never knew
Ambition. After a night of frost, before
The March sun brightened and the South-west blew,
Jackdaws began to shout and float and soar
Already, and one was racing straight and high 5
Alone, shouting like a black warrior
Challenges and menaces to the wide sky.
With loud long laughter then a woodpecker
Ridiculed the sadness of the owl’s last cry.
And through the valley where all the folk astir 10
Made only plumes of pearly smoke to tower
Over dark trees and white meadows happier
Than was Elysium in that happy hour,
A train that roared along raised after it
And carried with it a motionless white bower 15
Of purest cloud, from end to end close-knit,
So fair it touched the roar with silence. Time
Was powerless while that lasted. I could sit
And think I had made the loveliness of prime,
And no mind lived save this ‘twixt clouds and rime.
Omnipotent I was, nor even deplored
That I did nothing. But the end fell like a bell:
The bower was scattered; far off the train roared.
But if this was ambition I cannot tell. 25
What ‘twas ambition for I know not well.
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PARTING
The Past is a strange land, most strange.
Wind blows not there, nor does rain fall:
If they do, they cannot hurt at all.
Men of all kinds as equals range
The soundless fields and streets of it. 5
Pleasure and pain there have no sting,
The perished self not suffering
That lacks all blood and nerve and wit,
And is in shadow-land a shade.
Remembered joy and misery 10
Bring joy to the joyous equally;
Both sadden the sad. So memory made
Parting today a double pain:
First because it was parting; next
Because the ill it ended vexed 15
And mocked me from the Past again,
Not as what had been remedied
Had I gone on, – not that, oh no!
But as itself no longer woe;
Sighs, angry word and look and deed 20
Being faded: rather a kind of bliss,
For there spiritualised it lay
In the perpetual yesterday
That naught can stir or stain like this.
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HOUSE AND MAN
One hour: as dim he and his house now look
As a reflection in a rippling brook,
While I remember him; but first, his house.
Empty it sounded. It was dark with forest boughs
That brushed the walls and made the mossy tiles 5
Part of the squirrels’ track. In all those miles
Of forest silence and forest murmur, only
One house – ‘Lonely!’ he said, ‘I wish it were lonely’ –
Which the trees looked upon from every side,
And that was his.
He waved good-bye to hide 10
A sigh that he converted to a laugh.
He seemed to hang rather than stand there, half
Ghost-like, half like a beggar’s rag, clean wrung
And useless on the briar where it has hung
Long years a-washing by sun and wind and rain. 15
But why I call back man and house again
Is that now on a beech-tree’s tip I see
As then I saw – I at the gate, and he
In the house darkness, – a magpie veering about,
A magpie like a weathercock in doubt. 20
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FIRST KNOWN WHEN LOST
I never had noticed it until
‘Twas gone, – the narrow copse
Where now the woodman lops
The last of the willows with his bill.
It was not more than a hedge overgrown. 5
One meadow’s breadth away
I passed it day by day.
Now the soil is bare as a bone,
And black betwixt two meadows green,
Though fresh-cut faggot ends 10
Of hazel make some amends
With a gleam as if flowers they had been.
Strange it could have hidden so near!
And now I see as I look
That the small winding brook, 15
A tributary’s tributary, rises there.
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MAY 23
There never was a finer day,
And never will be while May is May, –
The third, and not the last of its kind;
But though fair and clear the two behind
And the morrow with fear that it could not last
Was spoiled. Today ere the stones were warm
Five minutes of thunderstorm
Dashed it with rain, as if to secure,
By one tear, its beauty the luck to endure. 10
At midday then along the lane
Old Jack Noman appeared again,
Jaunty and old, crooked and tall,
And stopped and grinned at me over the wall,
With a cowslip bunch in his button-hole 15
And one in his cap. Who could say if his roll
Came from flints in the road, the weather, or ale?
He was welcome as the nightingale.
Not an hour of the sun had been wasted on Jack.
‘I’ve got my Indian complexion back’ 20
Said he. He was tanned like a harvester,
Like his short clay pipe, like the leaf and bur
That clung to his coat from last night’s bed,
Like the ploughland crumbling red.
Fairer flowers were none on the earth 25
Than his cowslips wet with the dew of their birth,
Or fresher leaves than the cress in his basket.
‘Where did they come from, Jack?’ ‘Don’t ask it,
And you’ll be told no lies.’ ‘Very well:
Then I can’t buy.’ ‘I don’t want to sell. 30
Take them and these flowers, too, free.
Perhaps you have something to give me?
Wait till next time. The better the day…
The Lord couldn’t make a better, I say;
If he could, he never has done.’ 35
So off went Jack with his roll-walk-run,
Leaving his cresses from Oakshott rill
And his cowslips from Wheatham hill.
‘Twas the first day that the midges bit;
But though they bit me, I was glad of it: 40
Of the dust in my face, too, I was glad.
Spring could do nothing to make me sad.
Bluebells hid all the ruts in the copse,
The elm seeds lay in the road like hops,
That fine day, May the twenty-third, 45
The day Jack Noman disappeared.
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THE BARN
They should never have built a barn there, at all –
Drip, drip, drip! – under that elm tree,
Though then it was young. Now it is old
But good, not like the barn and me.
Tomorrow they cut it down. They will leave 5
The barn, as I shall be left, maybe.
What holds it up? ‘Twould not pay to pull down.
Well, this place has no other antiquity.
No abbey or castle looks so old
As this that Job Knight built in ‘54, 10
Built to keep corn for rats and men.
Now there’s fowls in the roof, pigs on the floor.
What thatch survives is dung for the grass,
The best grass on the farm. A pity the roof
Will not bear a mower to mow it. But 15
Only fowls have foothold enough.
Starlings used to sit there with bubbling throats
Making a spiky beard as they chattered
And whistled and kissed, with heads in air,
Till they thought of something else that mattered. 20
But now they cannot find a place,
Among all those holes, for a nest any more.
It’s the turn of lesser things, I suppose.
Once I fancied ‘twas starlings they built it for.
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HOME
Not the end: but there’s nothing more.
Sweet Summer and Winter rude
I have loved, and friendship and love,
The crowd and solitude:
But I know them: I weary not; 5
But all that they mean I know.
I would go back again home
Now. Yet how should I go?
This is my grief. That land,
My home, I have never seen; 10
No traveller tells of it,
However far he has been.
And could I discover it,
I fear my happiness there,
Or my pain, might be dreams of return 15
Here, to these things that were.
Remembering ills, though slight
Yet irremediable,
Brings a worse, an impurer pang
Than remembering what was well. 20
No: I cannot go back,
And would not if I could.
Until blindness come, I must wait
And blink at what is not good.
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THE OWL
Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.
Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest, 5
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry
Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment, 10
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.
And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars, 15
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.
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THE CHILD ON THE CLIFFS
Mother, the root of this little yellow flower
Among the stones has the taste of quinine.
Things are strange today on the cliff. The sun shines so bright,
And the grasshopper works at his sewing-machine
So hard. Here’s one on my hand, mother, look; 5
I lie so still. There’s one on your book.
But I have something to tell more strange. So leave
Your book to the grasshopper, mother dear, –
Like a green knight in a dazzling market-place, –
And listen now. Can you hear what I hear 10
Far out? Now and then the foam there curls
And stretches a white arm out like a girl
’s.
Fishes and gulls ring no bells. There cannot be
A chapel or church between here and Devon,
With fishes or gulls ringing its bell, – hark! – 15
Somewhere under the sea or up in heaven.
‘It’s the bell, my son, out in the bay
On the buoy. It does sound sweet today.’
Sweeter I never heard, mother, no, not in all Wales.
I should like to be lying under that foam, 20
Dead, but able to hear the sound of the bell,
And certain that you would often come
And rest, listening happily.
I should be happy if that could be.
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THE BRIDGE
I have come a long way today:
On a strange bridge alone,
Remembering friends, old friends,
I rest, without smile or moan,
As they remember me without smile or moan. 5
All are behind, the kind
And the unkind too, no more
Tonight than a dream. The stream
Runs softly yet drowns the Past,
The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and the Past. 10
No traveller has rest more blest
Than this moment brief between
Two lives, when the Night’s first lights
And shades hide what has never been,
Things goodlier, lovelier, dearer, than will be or have been. 15
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GOOD-NIGHT
The skylarks are far behind that sang over the down;
I can hear no more those suburb nightingales;
Thrushes and blackbirds sing in the gardens of the town