And all the clouds like sheep
On the mountains of sleep
They wind into the night.
The next turn may reveal 25
Heaven: upon the crest
The close pine clump, at rest
And black, may Hell conceal.
Often footsore, never
Yet of the road I weary, 30
Though long and steep and dreary
As it winds on for ever.
Helen of the roads,
The mountain ways of Wales
And the Mabinogion tales, 35
Is one of the true gods,
Abiding in the trees,
The threes and fours so wise,
The larger companies,
That by the roadside be, 40
And beneath the rafter
Else uninhabited
Excepting by the dead;
And it is her laughter
At morn and night I hear 45
When the thrush cock sings
Bright irrelevant things,
And when the chanticleer
Calls back to their own night
Troops that make loneliness 50
With their light footsteps’ press,
As Helen’s own are light.
Now all roads lead to France
And heavy is the tread
Of the living; but the dead 55
Returning lightly dance:
Whatever the road bring
To me or take from me,
They keep me company
With their pattering, 60
Crowding the solitude
Of the loops over the downs,
Hushing the roar of towns
And their brief multitude.
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THE ASH GROVE
Half of the grove stood dead, and those that yet lived made
Little more than the dead ones made of shade.
If they led to a house, long before they had seen its fall:
But they welcomed me; I was glad without cause and delayed.
Scarce a hundred paces under the trees was the interval – 5
Paces each sweeter than sweetest miles – but nothing at all,
Not even the spirits of memory and fear with restless wing,
Could climb down in to molest me over the wall
That I passed through at either end without noticing.
And now an ash grove far from those hills can bring 10
The same tranquillity in which I wander a ghost
With a ghostly gladness, as if I heard a girl sing
The song of the Ash Grove soft as love uncrossed,
And then in a crowd or in distance it were lost,
But the moment unveiled something unwilling to die 15
And I had what most I desired, without search or desert or cost.
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FEBRUARY AFTERNOON
Men heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw,
A thousand years ago even as now,
Black rooks with white gulls following the plough
So that the first are last until a caw
Commands that last are first again, – a law 5
Which was of old when one, like me, dreamed how
A thousand years might dust lie on his brow
Yet thus would birds do between hedge and shaw.
Time swims before me, making as a day
A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak 10
Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke
Of war as ever, audacious or resigned,
And God still sits aloft in the array
That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.
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I MAY COME NEAR LOVING YOU
I may come near loving you
When you are dead
And there is nothing to do
And much to be said.
To repent that day will be 5
Impossible
For you and vain for me
The truth to tell.
I shall be sorry for
Your impotence: 10
You can do and undo no more
When you go hence,
Cannot even forgive
The funeral.
But not so long as you live 15
Can I love you at all.
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THOSE THINGS THAT POETS SAID
Those things that poets said
Of love seemed true to me
When I loved and I fed
On love and poetry equally.
But now I wish I knew 5
If theirs were love indeed,
Or if mine were the true
And theirs some other lovely weed:
For certainly not thus,
Then or thereafter, I 10
Loved ever. Between us
Decide, good Love, before I die.
Only, that once I loved
By this one argument
Is very plainly proved: 15
I, loving not, am different.
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NO ONE SO MUCH AS YOU
No one so much as you
Loves this my clay,
Or would lament as you
Its dying day.
You know me through and through 5
Though I have not told,
And though with what you know
You are not bold.
None ever was so fair
As I thought you: 10
Not a word can I bear
Spoken against you.
All that I ever did
For you seemed coarse
Compared with what I hid 15
Nor put in force.
My eyes scarce dare meet you
Lest they should prove
I but respond to you
And do not love. 20
We look and understand,
We cannot speak
Except in trifles and
Words the most weak.
For I at most accept 25
Your love, regretting
That is all: I have kept
Only a fretting
That I could not return
All that you gave 30
And could not ever burn
With the love you have,
Till sometimes it did seem
Better it were
Never to see you more 35
Than linger here
With only gratitude
Instead of love –
A pine in solitude
Cradling a dove. 40
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THE UNKNOWN
She is most fair,
And when they see her pass
The poets’ ladies
Look no more in the glass
But after her. 5
On a bleak moor
Running under the moon
She lures a poet,
Once proud or happy, soon
Far from his door. 10
Beside a train,
Because they saw her go,
Or failed to see her,
Travellers and watchers know
Another pain. 15
The simple lack
Of her is more to me
Than others’ presence,
Whether life splendid be
Or utter black. 20
I have not seen,
I have no news of her;
I can tell only
She is not here, but there
She might have been. 25
She is to be kisse
d
Only perhaps by me;
She may be seeking
Me and no other: she
May not exist. 30
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CELANDINE
Thinking of her had saddened me at first,
Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie
Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame,
A living thing, not what before I nursed,
The shadow I was growing to love almost, 5
The phantom, not the creature with bright eye
That I had thought never to see, once lost.
She found the celandines of February
Always before us all. Her nature and name
Were like those flowers, and now immediately 10
For a short swift eternity back she came,
Beautiful, happy, simply as when she wore
Her brightest bloom among the winter hues
Of all the world; and I was happy too,
Seeing the blossoms and the maiden who 15
Had seen them with me Februarys before,
Bending to them as in and out she trod
And laughed, with locks sweeping the mossy sod.
But this was a dream: the flowers were not true,
Until I stooped to pluck from the grass there 20
One of five petals and I smelt its juice
Which made me sigh, remembering she was no more,
Gone like a never perfectly recalled air.
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HOME
Fair was the morning, fair our tempers, and
We had seen nothing fairer than that land,
Though strange, and the untrodden snow that made
Wild of the tame, casting out all that was
Not wild and rustic and old; and we were glad. 5
Fair, too, was afternoon, and first to pass
Were we that league of snow, next the north wind.
There was nothing to return for, except need,
And yet we sang nor ever stopped for speed,
As we did often with the start behind. 10
Faster still strode we when we came in sight
Of the cold roofs where we must spend the night.
Happy we had not been there, nor could be,
Though we had tasted sleep and food and fellowship
Together long.
‘How quick’ to someone’s lip 15
The words came, ‘will the beaten horse run home.’
The word ‘home’ raised a smile in us all three,
And one repeated it, smiling just so
That all knew what he meant and none would say.
Between three counties far apart that lay 20
We were divided and looked strangely each
At the other, and we knew we were not friends
But fellows in a union that ends
With the necessity for it, as it ought.
Never a word was spoken, not a thought 25
Was thought, of what the look meant with the word
‘Home’ as we walked and watched the sunset blurred.
And then to me the word, only the word,
‘Homesick’, as it were playfully occurred:
No more.
If I should ever more admit 30
Than the mere word I could not endure it
For a day longer: this captivity
Must somehow come to an end, else I should be
Another man, as often now I seem,
Or this life be only an evil dream. 35
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THAW
Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.
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IF I SHOULD EVER BY CHANCE
If I should ever by chance grow rich
I’ll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch,
Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater,
And let them all to my elder daughter.
The rent I shall ask of her will be only 5
Each year’s first violets, white and lonely,
The first primroses and orchises –
She must find them before I do, that is.
But if she finds a blossom on furze
Without rent they shall all for ever be hers, 10
Whenever I am sufficiently rich:
Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch,
Roses, Pyrgo and Lapwater, –
I shall give them all to my elder daughter.
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IF I WERE TO OWN
As far as a man in a day could ride,
And the Tyes were mine for giving or letting, –
Wingle Tye and Margaretting
Tye, – and Skreens, Gooshays, and Cockerells, 5
Shellow, Rochetts, Bandish, and Pickerells,
Martins, Lambkins, and Lillyputs,
Their copses, ponds, roads, and ruts,
Fields where plough-horses steam and plovers
Fling and whimper, hedges that lovers 10
Love, and orchards, shrubberies, walls
Where the sun untroubled by north wind falls,
And single trees where the thrush sings well
His proverbs untranslatable,
I would give them all to my son 15
If he would let me any one
For a song, a blackbird’s song, at dawn.
He should have no more, till on my lawn
Never a one was left, because I
Had shot them to put them into a pie, – 20
His Essex blackbirds, every one,
And I was left old and alone.
Then unless I could pay, for rent, a song
As sweet as a blackbird’s, and as long –
No more – he should have the house, not I: 25
Margaretting or Wingle Tye,
Or it might be Skreens, Gooshays, or Cockerells,
Shellow, Rochetts, Bandish, or Pickerells,
Martins, Lambkins, or Lillyputs,
Should be his till the cart tracks had no ruts. 30
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WHAT SHALL I GIVE?
What shall I give my daughter the younger
More than will keep her from cold and hunger?
I shall not give her anything.
If she shared South Weald and Havering,
Their acres, the two brooks running between, 5
Paine’s Brook and Weald Brook,
With pewit, woodpecker, swan, and rook,
She would be no richer than the queen
Who once on a time sat in Havering Bower
Alone, with the shadows, pleasure and power. 10
She could do no more with Samarcand,
Or the mountains of a mountain land
And its far white house above cottages
Like Venus above the Pleiades.
With so many acres and their lumber, 15
But leave her Steep and her own world
And her spectacled self with hair uncurled,
Wanting a thousand little things
That time without contentment brings. 20
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AND YOU, HELEN
And you, Helen, what should I give you?
So many things I would give you
Had I an infinite great store
Offered me and I stood before
To choose. I would give you youth, 5
All kinds of loveliness and truth,
A clear eye as good as mine,
Lands, waters, flowers, wine,
As many children as your heart
Might wish for, a far better art 10
Than mine can be, all you have lost
Upon the travelling waters tossed,
Or given to me. If I could choose
Freely in that great treasure-house
Anything from any shelf, 15
I would give you back yourself,
And power to discriminate
What you want and want it not too late,
Many fair days free from care
And heart to enjoy both foul and fair, 20
And myself, too, if I could find
Where it lay hidden and it proved kind.
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THE WIND’S SONG
Dull-thoughted, walking among the nunneries
Of many a myriad anemones
In the close copses, I grew weary of Spring
Till I emerged and in my wandering
I climbed the down up to a lone pine clump 5
Of six, the tallest dead, one a mere stump.
On one long stem, branchless and flayed and prone,
I sat in the sun listening to the wind alone,
Thinking there could be no old song so sad
As the wind’s song; but later none so glad 10
Could I remember as that same wind’s song
All the time blowing the pine boughs among.
My heart that had been still as the dead tree
Awakened by the West wind was made free.