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Title: Last Poems

Author: Edward Thomas

Release date: September 23, 2007 [eBook #22732]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Lewis Jones

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST POEMS ***

Produced by Lewis Jones

Edward Thomas (1918) Last Poems

LAST POEMS

By

EDWARD THOMAS

LONDON: SELWYN & BLOUNT, 12, YORK BUILDINGS, ADELPHI, W.C. 2. 1918.

CONTENTS

I never saw that Land before

The Dark Forest

Celandine

The Ash Grove

Old Man

The Thrush

I built myself a House of Glass

February Afternoon

Digging

Two Houses

The Mill-water

A Dream

Sedge-Warblers

Under the Woods

What will they do?

To-night

A Cat

The Unknown

Song

She dotes

For These

March the Third

The New House

March

The Cuckoo

Over the Hills

Home

The Hollow Wood

Wind and Mist

The Unknown Bird

The Lofty Sky

After Rain

Digging

But these things also

April

The Barn

The Barn and the Down

The Child on the Cliffs

Good-night

The Wasp Trap

July

A Tale

Parting

Lovers

That Girl's Clear Eyes

The Child in the Orchard

The Source

The Mountain Chapel

First known when lost

The Word

These things that Poets said

Home

Aspens

An Old Song

There was a Time

Ambition

No one cares less than I

Roads

This is no case of petty Right or Wrong

The Chalk-Pit

Health

Beauty

Snow

The New Year

The Brook

The Other

House and Man

The Gypsy

Man and Dog

A Private

Out in the Dark

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

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;

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.

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,

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.

THE DARK FOREST

DARK is the forest and deep, and overhead

Hang stars like seeds of light

In vain, though not since they were sown was bred

Anything more bright.

And evermore mighty multitudes ride

About, nor enter in;

Of the other multitudes that dwell inside

Never yet was one seen.

The forest foxglove is purple, the marguerite

Outside is gold and white,

Nor can those that pluck either blossom greet

The others, day or night.

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,

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

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

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

One of five petals and I smelt the juice

Which made me sigh, remembering she was no more,

Gone like a never perfectly recalled air.

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— 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

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

And I had what most I desired, without search or

desert or cost.

OLD MAN

OLD Man, or Lad's-love,—in the name there's

nothing

To one that knows not Lad's-love, or Old Man,

The hoar-green feathery herb, almost a tree,

Growing with rosemary and lavender.

Even to one that knows it well, the names

Half decorate, half perplex, the thing it is:

At least, what that is clings not to the names

In spite of time. And yet I like the names.

The herb itself I like not, but for certain

I love it, as some day the child will love it

Who plucks a feather from the door-side bush

Whenever she goes in or out of the house.

Often she waits there, snipping the tips and

shrivelling

The shreds at last on to the path, perhaps

Thinking, perhaps of nothing, till she sniffs

Her fingers and runs off. The bush is still

But half as tall as she, though it is as old;

So well she clips it. Not a word she says;

And I can only wonder how much hereafter

She will remember, with that bitter scent,

Of garden rows, and ancient damson-trees

Topping a hedge, a bent path to a door,

A low thick bush beside the door, and me

Forbidding her to pick.

As for myself,

Where first I met the bitter scent is lost.

I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,

Sniff them and think and sniff again and try

Once more to think what it is I am remembering,

Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,

Yet I would rather give up others more sweet,

With no meaning, than this bitter one.

I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray

And think of nothing; I see and I hear nothing;

Yet seem, too, to be listening, lying in wait

For what I should, yet never can, remember:

No garden appears, no path, no hoar-green bush

Of Lad's-love, or Old Man, no child beside,

Neither father nor mother, nor any playmate;

Only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end.

THE THRUSH

WHEN Winter's ahead,

What can you read in November

That you read in April

When Winter's dead?

I hear the thrush, and I see

Him alone at the end of the lane

Near the bare poplar's tip,

Singing continuously.

Is it more that you know

Than that, even as in April,

So in November,

Winter is gone that must go?

Or is all your lore

Not to call November November,

And April April,

And Winter Winter—no more?

But I know the months all,

And their sweet names, April,

May and June and October,

As you call and call

I must remember

What died into April

And consider what will be born

Of a fair November;

And April I love for what

It was born of, and November

For what it will die in,

What they are and what they are not,

While you love what is kind,

What you can sing in

And love and forget in

All that's ahead and behind.

I BUILT MYSELF A HOUSE OF GLASS.

I BUILT myself a house of glass:

It took me years to make it:

And I was proud. But now, alas,

Would God someone would break it.

But it looks too magnificent.

No neighbour casts a stone

From where he dwells, in tenement

Or palace of glass, alone.

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

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

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.

DIGGING

WHAT matter makes my spade for tears or mirth,

Letting down two clay pipes into the earth?

The one I smoked, the other a soldier

Of Blenheim, Ramillies, and Malplaquet

Perhaps. The dead man's immortality

Lies represented lightly with my own,

A yard or two nearer the living air

Than bones of ancients who, amazed to see

Almighty God erect the mastodon,

Once laughed, or wept, in this same light of day.

TWO HOUSES

BETWEEN a sunny bank and the sun

The farmhouse smiles

On the riverside plat:

No other one

So pleasant to look at

And remember, for many miles,

So velvet-hushed and cool under the warm tiles.

Not far from the road it lies, yet caught

Far out of reach

Of the road's dust

And the dusty thought

Of passers-by, though each

Stops, and turns, and must

Look down at it like a wasp at the muslined peach.

But another house stood there long before:

And as if above graves

Still the turf heaves

Above its stones:

Dark hangs the sycamore,

Shadowing kennel and bones

And the black dog that shakes his chain and moans.

And when he barks, over the river

Flashing fast,

Dark echoes reply,

And the hollow past

Half yields the dead that never

More than half hidden lie:

And out they creep and back again for ever.

THE MILL-WATER

ONLY the sound remains

Of the old mill;

Gone is the wheel;

On the prone roof and walls the nettle reigns.

Water that toils no more

Dangles white locks

And, falling, mocks

The music of the mill-wheel's busy roar.

Pretty to see, by day

Its sound is naught

Compared with thought

And talk and noise of labour and of play.

Night makes the difference.

In calm moonlight,

Gloom infinite,

The sound comes surging in upon the sense:

Solitude, company,—

When it is night,—

Grief or delight

By it must haunted or concluded be.

Often the silentness

Has but this one

Companion;

Wherever one creeps in the other is:

Sometimes a thought is drowned

By it, sometimes

Out of it climbs;

All thoughts begin or end upon this sound,

Only the idle foam

Of water falling

Changelessly calling,

Where once men had a work-place and a home.

A DREAM

OVER known fields with an old friend in dream

I walked, but came sudden to a strange stream.

Its dark waters were bursting out most bright

From a great mountain's heart into the light.

They ran a short course under the sun, then back

Into a pit they plunged, once more as black

As at their birth; and I stood thinking there

How white, had the day shone on them, they were,

Heaving and coiling. So by the roar and hiss

And by the mighty motion of the abyss

I was bemused, that I forgot my friend

And neither saw nor sought him till the end,

When I awoke from waters unto men

Saying: "I shall be here some day again."

SEDGE-WARBLERS

THIS beauty made me dream there was a time

Long past and irrecoverable, a clime

Where any brook so radiant racing clear

Through buttercup and kingcup bright as brass

But gentle, nourishing the meadow grass

That leans and scurries in the wind, would bear

Another beauty, divine and feminine,

Child to the sun, a nymph whose soul unstained

Could love all day, and never hate or tire,

A lover of mortal or immortal kin.

And yet, rid of this dream, ere I had drained

Its poison, quieted was my desire

So that I only looked into the water,

Clearer than any goddess or man's daughter,

And hearkened while it combed the dark green hair

And shook the millions of the blossoms white

Of water-crowfoot, and curdled to one sheet

The flowers fallen from the chestnuts in the park

Far off. And sedge-warblers, clinging so light

To willow twigs, sang longer than the lark,

Quick, shrill, or grating, a song to match the heat

Of the strong sun, nor less the water's cool,

Gushing through narrows, swirling in the pool.

Their song that lacks all words, all melody,

All sweetness almost, was dearer then to me

Than sweetest voice that sings in tune sweet words.

This was the best of May—the small brown birds

Wisely reiterating endlessly

What no man learnt yet, in or out of school.

UNDER THE WOODS

WHEN these old woods were young

The thrushes' ancestors

As sweetly sung

In the old years.

There was no garden here,

Apples nor mistletoe;

No children dear

Ran to and fro.

New then was this thatched cot,

But the keeper was old,

And he had not

Much lead or gold.

Most silent beech and yew:

As he went round about

The woods to view

Seldom he shot.

But now that he is gone

Out of most memories,

Still lingers on,

A stoat of his,

But one, shrivelled and green,

And with no scent at all,

And barely seen

On this shed wall.

WHAT WILL THEY DO?

What will they do when I am gone? It is plain

That they will do without me as the rain

Can do without the flowers and the grass

That profit by it and must perish without.

I have but seen them in the loud street pass;

And I was naught to them. I turned about

To see them disappearing carelessly.

But what if I in them as they in me

Nourished what has great value and no price?

Almost I thought that rain thirsts for a draught

Which only in the blossom's chalice lies,

Until that one turned back and lightly laughed.

TO-NIGHT

HARRY, you know at night

The larks in Castle Alley

Sing from the attic's height

As if the electric light

Were the true sun above a summer valley:

Whistle, don't knock, to-night.

I shall come early, Kate:

And we in Castle Alley

Will sit close out of sight

Alone, and ask no light

Of lamp or sun above a summer valley:

To-night I can stay late.

A CAT

She had a name among the children;

But no one loved though someone owned

Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime

And had her kittens duly drowned.

In Spring, nevertheless, this cat

Ate blackbirds, thrushes, nightingales,

And birds of bright voice and plume and flight,

As well as scraps from neighbours' pails.

I loathed and hated her for this;

One speckle on a thrush's breast

Was worth a million such; and yet

She lived long, till God gave her rest.

THE UNKNOWN

SHE is most fair,

And when they see her pass

The poets' ladies

Look no more in the glass

But after her.

On a bleak moor

Running under the moon

She lures a poet,

Once proud or happy, soon

Far from his door.

Beside a train,

Because they saw her go,

Or failed to see her,

Travellers and watchers know

Another pain.

The simple lack

Of her is more to me

Than others' presence,

Whether life splendid be

Or utter black.

I have not seen,

I have no news of her;

I can tell only

She is not here, but there

She might have been.

She is to be kissed

Only perhaps by me;

She may be seeking

Me and no other; she

May not exist.

SONG

AT poet's tears,

Sweeter than any smiles but hers,

She laughs; I sigh;

And yet I could not live if she should die.

And when in June

Once more the cuckoo spoils his tune,

She laughs at sighs;

And yet she says she loves me till she dies.

SHE DOTES

SHE dotes on what the wild birds say

Or hint or mock at, night and day,—

Thrush, blackbird, all that sing in May,

And songless plover,

Hawk, heron, owl, and woodpecker.

They never say a word to her

About her lover.

She laughs at them for childishness,

She cries at them for carelessness

Who see her going loverless

Yet sing and chatter

Just as when he was not a ghost,

Nor ever ask her what she has lost

Or what is the matter.

Yet she has fancied blackbirds hide

A secret, and that thrushes chide

Because she thinks death can divide

Her from her lover;

And she has slept, trying to translate

The word the cuckoo cries to his mate

Over and over.

FOR THESE

AN acre of land between the shore and the hills,

Upon a ledge that shows my kingdoms three,

The lovely visible earth and sky and sea,

Where what the curlew needs not, the farmer tills:

A house that shall love me as I love it,

Well-hedged, and honoured by a few ash-trees

That linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinches

Shall often visit and make love in and flit:

A garden I need never go beyond,

Broken but neat, whose sunflowers every one

Are fit to be the sign of the Rising Sun:

A spring, a brook's bend, or at least a pond:

For these I ask not, but, neither too late

Nor yet too early, for what men call content,

And also that something may be sent

To be contented with, I ask of fate.

MARCH THE THIRD*

HERE again (she said) is March the third

And twelve hours singing for the bird

'Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past six

To half past six, never unheard.

'Tis Sunday, and the church-bells end

When the birds do. I think they blend

Now better than they will when passed

Is this unnamed, unmarked godsend.

Or do all mark, and none dares say,

How it may shift and long delay,

Somewhere before the first of Spring,

But never fails, this singing day?

And when it falls on Sunday, bells

Are a wild natural voice that dwells

On hillsides; but the birds' songs have

The holiness gone from the bells.

This day unpromised is more dear

Than all the named days of the year

When seasonable sweets come in,

Because we know how lucky we are.

* The author's birthday.

THE NEW HOUSE

Now first, as I shut the door,

I was alone

In the new house; and the wind

Began to moan.

Old at once was the house,

And I was old;

My ears were teased with the dread

Of what was foretold,

Nights of storm, days of mist, without end;

Sad days when the sun

Shone in vain: old griefs and griefs

Not yet begun.

All was foretold me; naught

Could I foresee;

But I learned how the wind would sound

After these things should be.

MARCH

Now I know that Spring will come again,

Perhaps to-morrow: however late I've patience

After this night following on such a day.

While still my temples ached from the cold burning

Of hail and wind, and still the primroses

Torn by the hail were covered up in it,

The sun filled earth and heaven with a great light

And a tenderness, almost warmth, where the hail

dripped,

As if the mighty sun wept tears of joy.

But 'twas too late for warmth. The sunset piled

Mountains on mountains of snow and ice in the

west:

Somewhere among their folds the wind was lost,

And yet 'twas cold, and though I knew that

Spring

Would come again, I knew it had not come,

That it was lost too in those mountains chill.

What did the thrushes know? Rain, snow, sleet,

hail,

Had kept them quiet as the primroses.

They had but an hour to sing. On boughs they

sang,

On gates, on ground; they sang while they

changed perches

And while they fought, if they remembered to

fight:

So earnest were they to pack into that hour

Their unwilling hoard of song before the moon

Grew brighter than the clouds. Then 'twas

no time

For singing merely. So they could keep off silence

And night, they cared not what they sang or

screamed;

Whether 'twas hoarse or sweet or fierce or soft;

And to me all was sweet: they could do no wrong.

Something they knew—I also, while they sang

And after. Not till night had half its stars

And never a cloud, was I aware of silence

Stained with all that hour's songs, a silence

Saying that Spring returns, perhaps to-morrow.

THE CUCKOO

THAT'S the cuckoo, you say. I cannot hear it.

When last I heard it I cannot recall; but I know

Too well the year when first I failed to hear it—

It was drowned by my man groaning out to his

sheep "Ho! Ho!"

Ten times with an angry voice he shouted

"Ho! Ho!" but not in anger, for that was his

way.

He died that Summer, and that is how I remember

The cuckoo calling, the children listening, and me

saying, "Nay."

And now, as you said, "There it is," I was hearing

Not the cuckoo at all, but my man's "Ho! Ho!"

instead.

And I think that even if I could lose my deafness

The cuckoo's note would be drowned by the voice

of my dead.

OVER THE HILLS

OFTEN and often it came back again

To mind, the day I passed the horizon ridge

To a new country, the path I had to find

By half-gaps that were stiles once in the hedge,

The pack of scarlet clouds running across

The harvest evening that seemed endless then

And after, and the inn where all were kind,

All were strangers. I did not know my loss

Till one day twelve months later suddenly

I leaned upon my spade and saw it all,

Though far beyond the sky-line. It became

Almost a habit through the year for me

To lean and see it and think to do the same

Again for two days and a night. Recall

Was vain: no more could the restless brook

Ever turn back and climb the waterfall

To the lake that rests and stirs not in its nook,

As in the hollow of the collar-bone

Under the mountain's head of rush and stone.

HOME

OFTEN I had gone this way before:

But now it seemed I never could be

And never had been anywhere else;

'Twas home; one nationality

We had, I and the birds that sang,

One memory.

They welcomed me. I had come back

That eve somehow from somewhere far:

The April mist, the chill, the calm,

Meant the same thing familiar

And pleasant to us, and strange too,

Yet with no bar.

The thrush on the oaktop in the lane

Sang his last song, or last but one;

And as he ended, on the elm

Another had but just begun

His last; they knew no more than I

The day was done.

Then past his dark white cottage front

A labourer went along, his tread

Slow, half with weariness, half with ease;

And, through the silence, from his shed

The sound of sawing rounded all

That silence said.

THE HOLLOW WOOD

OUT in the sun the goldfinch flits

Along the thistle-tops, flits and twits

Above the hollow wood

Where birds swim like fish—

Fish that laugh and shriek—

To and fro, far below

In the pale hollow wood.

Lichen, ivy, and moss

Keep evergreen the trees

That stand half-flayed and dying,

And the dead trees on their knees

In dog's-mercury and moss:

And the bright twit of the goldfinch drops

Down there as he flits on thistle-tops.

WIND AND MIST

THEY met inside the gateway that gives the view,

A hollow land as vast as heaven. "It is

A pleasant day, sir." "A very pleasant day."

"And what a view here. If you like angled fields

Of grass and grain bounded by oak and thorn,

Here is a league. Had we with Germany

To play upon this board it could not be

More dear than April has made it with a smile.

The fields beyond that league close in together

And merge, even as our days into the past,

Into one wood that has a shining pane

Of water. Then the hills of the horizon—

That is how I should make hills had I to show

One who would never see them what hills were

like."

"Yes. Sixty miles of South Downs at one glance.

Sometimes a man feels proud at them, as if

He had just created them with one mighty

thought."

"That house, though modern, could not be better

planned

For its position. I never liked a new

House better. Could you tell me who lives in

it?"

"No one." "Ah—and I was peopling all

Those windows on the south with happy eyes,

The terrace under them with happy feet;

Girls—" "Sir, I know. I know. I have seen

that house

Through mist look lovely as a castle in Spain,

And airier. I have thought: 'Twere happy there

To live.' And I have laughed at that

Because I lived there then." "Extraordinary."

"Yes, with my furniture and family

Still in it, I, knowing every nook of it

And loving none, and in fact hating it."

"Dear me! How could that be? But pardon

me."

"No offence. Doubtless the house was not to

blame,

But the eye watching from those windows saw,

Many a day, day after day, mist—mist

Like chaos surging back—and felt itself

Alone in all the world, marooned alone.

We lived in clouds, on a cliff's edge almost

(You see), and if clouds went, the visible earth

Lay too far off beneath and like a cloud.

I did not know it was the earth I loved

Until I tried to live there in the clouds

And the earth turned to cloud." "You had a

garden

Of flint and clay, too." "True; that was real

enough.

The flint was the one crop that never failed.

The clay first broke my heart, and then my back;

And the back heals not. There were other things

Real, too. In that room at the gable a child

Was born while the wind chilled a summer dawn:

Never looked grey mind on a greyer one

Than when the child's cry broke above the groans."

"I hope they were both spared." "They were.

Oh yes.

But flint and clay and childbirth were too real

For this cloud-castle. I had forgot the wind.

Pray do not let me get on to the wind.

You would not understand about the wind.

It is my subject, and compared with me

Those who have always lived on the firm ground

Are quite unreal in this matter of the wind.

There were whole days and nights when the wind

and I

Between us shared the world, and the wind ruled

And I obeyed it and forgot the mist.

My past and the past of the world were in the

wind.

Now you may say that though you understand

And feel for me, and so on, you yourself

Would find it different. You are all like that

If once you stand here free from wind and mist:

I might as well be talking to wind and mist.

You would believe the house-agent's young man

Who gives no heed to anything I say.

Good morning. But one word. I want to admit

That I would try the house once more, if I

could;

As I should like to try being young again."

THE UNKNOWN BIRD

THREE lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be

heard

If others sang; but others never sang

In the great beech-wood all that May and June.

No one saw him: I alone could hear him

Though many listened. Was it but four years

Ago? or five? He never came again.

Oftenest when I heard him I was alone,

Nor could I ever make another hear.

La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off—

As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world,

As if the bird or I were in a dream.

Yet that he travelled through the trees and some-

times

Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant

still

He sounded. All the proof is—I told men

What I had heard.

I never knew a voice,

Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I told

The naturalists; but neither had they heard

Anything like the notes that did so haunt me,

I had them clear by heart and have them still.

Four years, or five, have made no difference.

Then

As now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet:

Sad more than joyful it was, if I must say

That it was one or other, but if sad

'Twas sad only with joy too, too far off

For me to taste it. But I cannot tell

If truly never anything but fair

The days were when he sang, as now they seem.

This surely I know, that I who listened then,

Happy sometimes, sometimes suffering

A heavy body and a heavy heart,

Now straightway, if I think of it, become

Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.

THE LOFTY SKY

TO-DAY I want the sky,

The tops of the high hills,

Above the last man's house,

His hedges, and his cows,

Where, if I will, I look

Down even on sheep and rook,

And of all things that move

See buzzards only above:—

Past all trees, past furze

And thorn, where nought deters

The desire of the eye

For sky, nothing but sky.

I sicken of the woods

And all the multitudes

Of hedge-trees. They are no more

Than weeds upon this floor

Of the river of air

Leagues deep, leagues wide, where

I am like a fish that lives

In weeds and mud and gives

What's above him no thought.

I might be a tench for aught

That I can do to-day

Down on the wealden clay.

Even the tench has days

When he floats up and plays

Among the lily leaves

And sees the sky, or grieves

Not if he nothing sees:

While I, I know that trees

Under that lofty sky

Are weeds, fields mud, and I

Would arise and go far

To where the lilies are.

AFTER RAIN

THE rain of a night and a day and a night

Stops at the light

Of this pale choked day. The peering sun

Sees what has been done.

The road under the trees has a border new

Of purple hue

Inside the border of bright thin grass:

For all that has

Been left by November of leaves is torn

From hazel and thorn

And the greater trees. Throughout the copse

No dead leaf drops

On grey grass, green moss, burnt-orange fern,

At the wind's return:

The leaflets out of the ash-tree shed

Are thinly spread

In the road, like little black fish, inlaid,

As if they played.

What hangs from the myriad branches down there

So hard and bare

Is twelve yellow apples lovely to see

On one crab-tree.

And on each twig of every tree in the dell

Uncountable

Crystals both dark and bright of the rain

That begins again.

DIGGING

TO-DAY I think

Only with scents,—scents dead leaves yield,

And bracken, and wild carrot's seed,

And the square mustard field;

Odours that rise

When the spade wounds the root of tree,

Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,

Rhubarb or celery;

The smoke's smell, too,

Flowing from where a bonfire burns

The dead, the waste, the dangerous,

And all to sweetness turns.

It is enough

To smell, to crumble the dark earth.

While the robin sings over again

Sad songs of Autumn mirth.

BUT THESE THINGS ALSO

BUT these things also are Spring's—

On banks by the roadside the grass

Long-dead that is greyer now

Than all the Winter it was;

The shell of a little snail bleached

In the grass; chip of flint, and mite

Of chalk; and the small birds' dung

In splashes of purest white:

All the white things a man mistakes

For earliest violets

Who seeks through Winter's ruins

Something to pay Winter's debts,

While the North blows, and starling flocks

By chattering on and on

Keep their spirits up in the mist,

And Spring's here, Winter's not gone.

APRIL

THE sweetest thing, I thought

At one time, between earth and heaven

Was the first smile

When mist has been forgiven

And the sun has stolen out,

Peered, and resolved to shine at seven

On dabbled lengthening grasses,

Thick primroses and early leaves uneven,

When earth's breath, warm and humid, far sur-

passes

The richest oven's, and loudly rings "cuckoo"

And sharply the nightingale's "tsoo, tsoo, tsoo,

tsoo":

To say "God bless it" was all that I could do.

But now I know one sweeter

By far since the day Emily

Turned weeping back

To me, still happy me,

To ask forgiveness,—

Yet smiled with half a certainty

To be forgiven,—for what

She had never done; I knew not what it might be,

Nor could she tell me, having now forgot,

By rapture carried with me past all care

As to an isle in April lovelier

Than April's self. "God bless you" I said to her.

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.

To-morrow they cut it down. They will leave

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,

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

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.

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.

THE BARN AND THE DOWN

IT stood in the sunset sky

Like the straight-backed down,

Many a time—the barn

At the edge of the town,

So huge and dark that it seemed

It was the hill

Till the gable's precipice proved

It impossible.

Then the great down in the west

Grew into sight,

A barn stored full to the ridge

With black of night;

And the barn fell to a barn

Or even less

Before critical eyes and its own

Late mightiness.

But far down and near barn and I

Since then have smiled,

Having seen my new cautiousness

By itself beguiled

To disdain what seemed the barn

Till a few steps changed

It past all doubt to the down;

So the barn was avenged.

THE CHILD ON THE CLIFFS

MOTHER, the root of this little yellow flower

Among the stones has the taste of quinine.

Things are strange to-day 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;

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

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.—

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 to-day."

Sweeter I never heard, mother, no, not in all Wales.

I should like to be lying under that foam,

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.

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

In vain: the noise of man, beast, and machine

prevails.

But the call of children in the unfamiliar streets

That echo with a familiar twilight echoing,

Sweet as the voice of nightingale or lark, completes

A magic of strange welcome, so that I seem a king

Among man, beast, machine, bird, child, and the

ghost

That in the echo lives and with the echo dies.

The friendless town is friendly; homeless, I

not lost;

Though I know none of these doors, and meet but

strangers' eyes.

Never again, perhaps, after to-morrow, shall

I see these homely streets, these church windows

alight,

Not a man or woman or child among them all:

But it is All Friends' Night, a traveller's good

night.

THE WASP TRAP

THIS moonlight makes

The lovely lovelier

Than ever before lakes

And meadows were.

And yet they are not,

Though this their hour is, more

Lovely than things that were not

Lovely before.

Nothing on earth,

And in the heavens no star,

For pure brightness is worth

More than that jar,

For wasps meant, now

A star—long may it swing

From the dead apple-bough,

So glistening.

JULY

NAUGHT moves but clouds, and in the glassy lake

Their doubles and the shadow of my boat.

The boat itself stirs only when I break

This drowse of heat and solitude afloat

To prove if what I see be bird or mote,

Or learn if yet the shore woods be awake.

Long hours since dawn grew,—spread,—and passed

on high

And deep below,—I have watched the cool reeds

hung

Over images more cool in imaged sky:

Nothing there was worth thinking of so long;

All that the ring-doves say, far leaves among,

Brims my mind with content thus still to lie.

A TALE

THERE once the walls

Of the ruined cottage stood.

The periwinkle crawls

With flowers in its hair into the wood.

In flowerless hours

Never will the bank fail,

With everlasting flowers

On fragments of blue plates, to tell the tale.

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.

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

Bring joy to the joyous equally;

Both sadden the sad. So memory made

Parting to-day a double pain:

First because it was parting; next

Because the ill it ended vexed

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

Being faded: rather a kind of bliss,

For there spiritualized it lay

In the perpetual yesterday

That naught can stir or stain like this.

LOVERS

THE two men in the road were taken aback.

The lovers came out shading their eyes from the

sun,

And never was white so white, or black so black,

As her cheeks and hair. "There are more things

than one

A man might turn into a wood for, Jack,"

Said George; Jack whispered: "He has not got

a gun.

It's a bit too much of a good thing, I say.

They are going the other road, look. And see her

run."—

She ran.—"What a thing it is, this picking may."

THAT GIRL'S CLEAR EYES

THAT girl's clear eyes utterly concealed all

Except that there was something to reveal.

And what did mine say in the interval?

No more: no less. They are but as a seal

Not to be broken till after I am dead;

And then vainly. Every one of us

This morning at our tasks left nothing said,

In spite of many words. We were sealed thus,

Like tombs. Nor until now could I admit

That all I cared for was the pleasure and pain

I tasted in the stony square sunlit,

Or the dark cloisters, or shade of airy plane,

While music blazed and children, line after line,

Marched past, hiding the "SEVENTEEN THIRTY-

NINE."

THE CHILD IN THE ORCHARD

"HE rolls in the orchard: he is stained with moss

And with earth, the solitary old white horse.

Where is his father and where is his mother

Among all the brown horses? Has he a brother?

I know the swallow, the hawk, and the hern;

But there are two million things for me to learn.

"Who was the lady that rode the white horse

With rings and bells to Banbury Cross?

Was there no other lady in England beside

That a nursery rhyme could take for a ride?

The swift, the swallow, the hawk, and the hern.

There are two million things for me to learn.

"Was there a man once who straddled across

The back of the Westbury White Horse

Over there on Salisbury Plain's green wall?

Was he bound for Westbury, or had he a fall?

The swift, the swallow, the hawk, and the hern.

There are two million things for me to learn.

"Out of all the white horses I know three,

At the age of six; and it seems to me

There is so much to learn, for men,

That I dare not go to bed again.

The swift, the swallow, the hawk, and the hern.

There are millions of things for me to learn."

THE SOURCE

ALL day the air triumphs with its two voices

Of wind and rain

As loud as if in anger it rejoices,

Drowning the sound of earth

That gulps and gulps in choked endeavour vain

To swallow the rain.

Half the night, too, only the wild air speaks

With wind and rain,

Till forth the dumb source of the river breaks

And drowns the rain and wind,

Bellows like a giant bathing in mighty mirth

The triumph of earth.

THE MOUNTAIN CHAPEL

CHAPEL and gravestones, old and few,

Are shrouded by a mountain fold

From sound and view

Of life. The loss of the brook's voice

Falls like a shadow. All they hear is

The eternal noise

Of wind whistling in grass more shrill

Than aught as human as a sword,

And saying still:

"'Tis but a moment since man's birth

And in another moment more

Man lies in earth

For ever; but I am the same

Now, and shall be, even as I was

Before he came;

Till there is nothing I shall be."

Yet there the sun shines after noon

So cheerfully

The place almost seems peopled, nor

Lacks cottage chimney, cottage hearth:

It is not more

In size than is a cottage, less

Than any other empty home

In homeliness.

It has a garden of wild flowers

And finest grass and gravestones warm

In sunshine hours

The year through. Men behind the glass

Stand once a week, singing, and drown

The whistling grass

Their ponies munch. And yet somewhere,

Near or far off, there's a man could

Be happy here,

Or one of the gods perhaps, were they

Not of inhuman stature dire,

As poets say

Who have not seen them clearly; if

At sound of any wind of the world

In grass-blades stiff

They would not startle and shudder cold

Under the sun. When gods were young

This wind was old.

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.

One meadow's breadth away

I passed it day by day.

Now the soil was bare as a bone,

And black betwixt two meadows green,

Though fresh-cut faggot ends

Of hazel made 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,

A tributary's tributary, rises there.

THE WORD

THERE are so many things I have forgot,

That once were much to me, or that were not,

All lost, as is a childless woman's child

And its child's children, in the undefiled

Abyss of what can never be again.

I have forgot, too, names of the mighty men

That fought and lost or won in the old wars,

Of kings and fiends and gods, and most of the stars.

Some things I have forgot that I forget.

But lesser things there are, remembered yet,

Than all the others. One name that I have not—

Though 'tis an empty thingless name—forgot

Never can die because Spring after Spring

Some thrushes learn to say it as they sing.

There is always one at midday saying it clear

And tart—the name, only the name I hear.

While perhaps I am thinking of the elder scent

That is like food, or while I am content

With the wild rose scent that is like memory,

This name suddenly is cried out to me

From somewhere in the bushes by a bird

Over and over again, a pure thrush word.

THESE THINGS THAT POETS SAID

THESE 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

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

Loved ever. Between us

Decide, good Love, before I die.

Only, that once I loved

By this one argument

Is very plainly proved:

I, loving not, am different.

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;

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;

No traveller tells of it,

However far he has been.

Afid could I discover it,

I fear my happiness there,

Or my pain, might be dreams of return

Here, to these things that were.

Remembering ills, though slight

Yet irremediable,

Brings a worse, an impurer pang

Than remembering what was well.

No: I cannot go back,

And would not if I could.

Until blindness come, I must wait

And blink at what is not good.

ASPENS

ALL day and night, save winter, every weather,

Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop,

The aspens at the cross-roads talk together

Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.

Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing

Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn

The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing—

The sounds that for these fifty years have been.

The whisper of the aspens is not drowned,

And over lightless pane and footless road,

Empty as sky, with every other sound

Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode,

A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor fails

In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom,

In tempest or the night of nightingales,

To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.

And it would be the same were no house near.

Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,

Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear

But need not listen, more than to my rhymes.

Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves

We cannot other than an aspen be

That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,

Or so men think who like a different tree.

AN OLD SONG

I WAS not apprenticed nor ever dwelt in famous

Lincolnshire;

I've served one master ill and well much more than

seven year;

And never took up to poaching as you shall quickly

find;

But 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the season

of the year.

I roamed where nobody had a right but keepers and

squires, and there

I sought for nests, wild flowers, oak sticks, and

moles, both far and near.

And had to run from farmers, and learnt the

Lincolnshire song:

"Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the

season of the year."

I took those walks years after, talking with friend

or dear,

Or solitary musing; but when the moon shone clear

I had no joy or sorrow that could not be expressed

By "'Tis my delight of a shiny night in the

season of the year."

Since then I've thrown away a chance to fight a

gamekeeper;

And I less often trespass, and what I see or hear

Is mostly from the road or path by day: yet still

I sing:

"Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the

season of the year."

For if I am contented, at home or anywhere,

Or if I sigh for I know not what, or my heart

beats with some fear,

It is a strange kind of delight to sing or whistle just:

"Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the

season of the year."

And with this melody on my lips and no one by to

care,

Indoors, or out on shiny nights or dark in open air,

I am for a moment made a man that sings out of

his heart:

"Oh, 'tis my delight of a shiny night in the

season of the year."

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

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.

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

To admit I am unworthy of the wage

Paid to a man who gives up eyes and breath

For what can neither ask nor heed his death.

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

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

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

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,

Breathed its life into it and were its lord,

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.

What 'twas ambition for I know not well.

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.

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.

ROADS

I LOVE roads:

The goddesses that dwell

Far along invisible

Are my favourite gods.

Roads go on

While we forget, and are

Forgotten like a star

That shoots and is gone.

On this earth 'tis sure

We men have not made

Anything that doth fade

So soon, so long endure:

The hill road wet with rain

In the sun would not gleam

Like a winding stream

If we trod it not again.

They are lonely

While we sleep, lonelier

For lack of the traveller

Who is now a dream only.

From dawn's twilight

And all the clouds like sheep

On the mountains of sleep

They wind into the night.

The next turn may reveal

Heaven: upon the crest

The close pine clump, at rest

And black, may Hell conceal.

Often footsore, never

Yet of the road I weary,

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,

Is one of the true gods,

Abiding in the trees,

The threes and fours so wise,

The larger companies,

That by the roadside be,

And beneath the rafter

Else uninhabited

Excepting by the dead;

And it is her laughter

At morn and night I hear

When the thrush cock sings

Bright irrelevant things,

And when the chanticleer

Calls back to their own night

Troops that make loneliness

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

Returning lightly dance:

Whatever the road bring

To me or take from me,

They keep me company

With their pattering,

Crowding the solitude

Of the loops over the downs,

Hushing the roar of towns

And their brief multitude.

THIS IS NO CASE OF PETTY RIGHT OR WRONG

THIS is no case of petty right or wrong

That politicians or philosophers

Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot

With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.

Beside my hate for one fat patriot

My hatred of the Kaiser is love true:—

A kind of god he is, banging a gong.

But I have not to choose between the two,

Or between justice and injustice. Dinned

With war and argument I read no more

Than in the storm smoking along the wind

Athwart the wood. Two witches' cauldrons roar.

From one the weather shall rise clear and gay;

Out of the other an England beautiful

And like her mother that died yesterday.

Little I know or care if, being dull,

I shall miss something that historians

Can rake out of the ashes when perchance

The phoenix broods serene above their ken.

But with the best and meanest Englishmen

I am one in crying, God save England, lest

We lose what never slaves and cattle blessed.

The ages made her that made us from the dust:

She is all we know and live by, and we trust

She is good and must endure, loving her so:

And as we love ourselves we hate her foe.

THE CHALK-PIT

"Is this the road that climbs above and bends

Round what was once a chalk-pit: now it is

By accident an amphitheatre.

Some ash-trees standing ankle-deep in brier

And bramble act the parts, and neither speak

Nor stir." "But see: they have fallen, every one,

And brier and bramble have grown over them."

"That is the place. As usual no one is here.

Hardly can I imagine the drop of the axe,

And the smack that is like an echo, sounding here."

"I do not understand." "Why, what I mean is

That I have seen the place two or three times

At most, and that its emptiness and silence

And stillness haunt me, as if just before

It was not empty, silent, still, but full

Of life of some kind, perhaps tragical.

Has anything unusual happened here?"

"Not that I know of. It is called the Dell.

They have not dug chalk here for a century.

That was the ash-trees' age. But I will ask."

"No. Do not. I prefer to make a tale,

Or better leave it like the end of a play,

Actors and audience and lights all gone;

For so it looks now. In my memory

Again and again I see it, strangely dark,

And vacant of a life but just withdrawn.

We have not seen the woodman with the axe.

Some ghost has left it now as we two came."

"And yet you doubted if this were the road?"

"Well, sometimes I have thought of it and failed

To place it. No. And I am not quite sure,

Even now, this is it. For another place,

Real or painted, may have combined with it.

Or I myself a long way back in time . . ."

"Why, as to that, I used to meet a man—

I had forgotten,—searching for birds' nests

Along the road and in the chalk-pit too.

The wren's hole was an eye that looked at him

For recognition. Every nest he knew.

He got a stiff neck, by looking this side or that,

Spring after spring, he told me, with his laugh,—

A sort of laugh. He was a visitor,

A man of forty,—smoked and strolled about.

At orts and crosses Pleasure and Pain had played

On his brown features;—I think both had lost;—

Mild and yet wild too. You may know the kind.

And once or twice a woman shared his walks,

A girl of twenty with a brown boy's face,

And hair brown as a thrush or as a nut,

Thick eyebrows, glinting eyes—" "You have

said enough.

A pair,—free thought, free love,—I know the

breed:

I shall not mix my fancies up with them."

"You please yourself. I should prefer the truth

Or nothing. Here, in fact, is nothing at all

Except a silent place that once rang loud,

And trees and us—imperfect friends, we men

And trees since time began; and nevertheless

Between us still we breed a mystery."

HEALTH

FOUR miles at a leap, over the dark hollow land,

To the frosted steep of the down and its junipers

black,

Travels my eye with equal ease and delight:

And scarce could my body leap four yards.

This is the best and the worst of it—

Never to know,

Yet to imagine gloriously, pure health.

To-day, had I suddenly health,

I could not satisfy the desire of my heart

Unless health abated it,

So beautiful is the air in its softness and clearness,

while Spring

Promises all and fails in nothing as yet;

And what blue and what white is I never knew

Before I saw this sky blessing the land.

For had I health I could not ride or run or fly

So far or so rapidly over the land

As I desire: I should reach Wiltshire tired;

I should have changed my mind before I could be

in Wales.

I could not love; I could not command love.

Beauty would still be far off

However many hills I climbed over;

Peace would still be farther.

Maybe I should not count it anything

To leap these four miles with the eye;

And either I should not be filled almost to bursting

with desire,

Or with my power desire would still keep pace.

Yet I am not satisfied

Even with knowing I never could be satisfied.

With health and all the power that lies

In maiden beauty, poet and warrior,

In Caesar, Shakespeare, Alcibiades,

Mazeppa, Leonardo, Michelangelo,

In any maiden whose smile is lovelier

Than sunlight upon dew,

I could not be as the wagtail running up and down

The warm tiles of the roof slope, twittering

Happily and sweetly as if the sun itself

Extracted the song

As the hand makes sparks from the fur of a cat:

I could not be as the sun.

Nor should I be content to be

As little as the bird or as mighty as the sun.

For the bird knows not of the sun,

And the sun regards not the bird.

But I am almost proud to love both bird and sun,

Though scarce this Spring could my body leap

four yards.

BEAUTY

WHAT does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease,

No man, woman, or child alive could please

Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh

Because I sit and frame an epitaph—

"Here lies all that no one loved of him

And that loved no one." Then in a trice that

whim

Has wearied. But, though I am like a river

At fall of evening while it seems that never

Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while

Cross breezes cut the surface to a file,

This heart, some fraction of me, happily

Floats through the window even now to a tree

Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale,

Not like a pewit that returns to wail

For something it has lost, but like a dove

That slants unswerving to its home and love.

There I find my rest, and through the dusk air

Flies what yet lives in me. Beauty is there.

SNOW

IN the gloom of whiteness,

In the great silence of snow,

A child was sighing

And bitterly saying: "Oh,

They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,

The down is fluttering from her breast."

And still it fell through that dusky brightness

On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

THE NEW YEAR

HE was the one man I met up in the woods

That stormy New Year's morning; and at first

sight,

Fifty yards off, I could not tell how much

Of the strange tripod was a man. His body,

Bowed horizontal, was supported equally

By legs at one end, by a rake at the other:

Thus he rested, far less like a man than

His wheel-barrow in profile was like a pig.

But when I saw it was an old man bent,

At the same moment came into my mind

The games at which boys bend thus, High-

Cockalorum,

Or Fly-the-garter, and Leap-frog. At the sound

Of footsteps he began to straighten himself;

His head rolled under his cape like a tortoise's;

He took an unlit pipe out of his mouth

Politely ere I wished him "A Happy New Year,"

And with his head cast upward sideways

Muttered—

So far as I could hear through the trees' roar—

"Happy New Year, and may it come fastish, too,"

While I strode by and he turned to raking leaves.

THE BROOK

SEATED once by a brook, watching a child

Chiefly that paddled, I was thus beguiled.

Mellow the blackbird sang and sharp the thrush

Not far off in the oak and hazel brush,

Unseen. There was a scent like honeycomb

From mugwort dull. And down upon the dome

Of the stone the cart-horse kicks against so oft

A butterfly alighted. From aloft

He took the heat of the sun, and from below.

On the hot stone he perched contented so,

As if never a cart would pass again

That way; as if I were the last of men

And he the first of insects to have earth

And sun together and to know their worth.

I was divided between him and the gleam,

The motion, and the voices, of the stream,

The waters running frizzled over gravel,

That never vanish and for ever travel.

A grey flycatcher silent on a fence

And I sat as if we had been there since

The horseman and the horse lying beneath

The fir-tree-covered barrow on the heath,

The horseman and the horse with silver shoes,

Galloped the downs last. All that I could lose

I lost. And then the child's voice raised the dead.

"No one's been here before" was what she said

And what I felt, yet never should have found

A word for, while I gathered sight and sound.

THE OTHER

THE forest ended. Glad I was

To feel the light, and hear the hum

Of bees, and smell the drying grass

And the sweet mint, because I had come

To an end of forest, and because

Here was both road and inn, the sum

Of what's not forest. But 'twas here

They asked me if I did not pass

Yesterday this way? "Not you? Queer."

"Who then? and slept here?" I felt fear.

I learnt his road and, ere they were

Sure I was I, left the dark wood

Behind, kestrel and woodpecker,

The inn in the sun, the happy mood

When first I tasted sunlight there.

I travelled fast, in hopes I should

Outrun that other. What to do

When caught, I planned not. I pursued

To prove the likeness, and, if true,

To watch until myself I knew.

I tried the inns that evening

Of a long gabled high-street grey,

Of courts and outskirts, travelling

An eager but a weary way,

In vain. He was not there. Nothing

Told me that ever till that day

Had one like me entered those doors,

Save once. That time I dared: "You may

Recall"—but never-foamless shores

Make better friends than those dull boors.

Many and many a day like this

Aimed at the unseen moving goal

And nothing found but remedies

For all desire. These made not whole;

They sowed a new desire, to kiss

Desire's self beyond control,

Desire of desire. And yet

Life stayed on within my soul.

One night in sheltering from the wet

I quite forgot I could forget.

A customer, then the landlady

Stared at me. With a kind of smile

They hesitated awkwardly:

Their silence gave me time for guile.

Had anyone called there like me,

I asked. It was quite plain the wile

Succeeded. For they poured out all.

And that was naught. Less than a mile

Beyond the inn, I could recall

He was like me in general.

He had pleased them, but I less.

I was more eager than before

To find him out and to confess,

To bore him and to let him bore.

I could not wait: children might guess

I had a purpose, something more

That made an answer indiscreet.

One girl's caution made me sore,

Too indignant even to greet

That other had we chanced to meet.

I sought then in solitude.

The wind had fallen with the night; as still

The roads lay as the ploughland rude,

Dark and naked, on the hill.

Had there been ever any feud

'Twixt earth and sky, a mighty will

Closed it: the crocketed dark trees,

A dark house, dark impossible

Cloud-towers, one star, one lamp, one peace

Held on an everlasting lease:

And all was earth's, or all was sky's;

No difference endured between

The two. A dog barked on a hidden rise;

A marshbird whistled high unseen;

The latest waking blackbird's cries

Perished upon the silence keen.

The last light filled a narrow firth

Among the clouds. I stood serene,

And with a solemn quiet mirth,

An old inhabitant of earth.

Once the name I gave to hours

Like this was melancholy, when

It was not happiness and powers

Coming like exiles home again,

And weaknesses quitting their bowers,

Smiled and enjoyed, far off from men,

Moments of everlastingness.

And fortunate my search was then

While what I sought, nevertheless,

That I was seeking, I did not guess.

That time was brief: once more at inn

And upon road I sought my man

Till once amid a tap-room's din

Loudly he asked for me, began

To speak, as if it had been a sin,

Of how I thought and dreamed and ran

After him thus, day after day:

He lived as one under a ban

For this: what had I got to say?

I said nothing, I slipped away.

And now I dare not follow after

Too close. I try to keep in sight,

Dreading his frown and worse his laughter.

I steal out of the wood to light;

I see the swift shoot from the rafter

By the inn door: ere I alight

I wait and hear the starlings wheeze

And nibble like ducks: I wait his flight.

He goes: I follow: no release

Until he ceases. Then I also shall cease.

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

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

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 brier where it has hung

Long years a-washing by sun and wind and rain.

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.

THE GYPSY

A FORTNIGHT before Christmas Gypsies were every-

where:

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

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

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

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,

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

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.

MAN AND DOG

"'TWILL take some getting." "Sir, I think 'twill

so."

The old man stared up at the mistletoe

That hung too high in the poplar's crest for plunder

Of any climber, though not for kissing under:

Then he went on against the north-east wind—

Straight but lame, leaning on a staff new-skinned,

Carrying a brolly, flag-basket, and old coat,—

Towards Alton, ten miles off. And he had not

Done less from Chilgrove where he pulled up docks.

'Twere best, if he had had "a money-box,"

To have waited there till the sheep cleared a field

For what a half-week's flint-picking would yield.

His mind was running on the work he had done

Since he left Christchurch in the New Forest, one

Spring in the 'seventies,—navvying on dock and

line

From Southampton to Newcastle-on-Tyne,—

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

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

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,

Then following close in silence for—for what?

"No rabbit, never fear, she ever got,

Yet always hunts. To-day 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,

Though I'm not. She goes everywhere with me.

So Alton I must reach to-night somehow:

I'll get no shakedown with that bedfellow

From farmers. Many a man sleeps worse to-night

Than I shall." "In the trenches." "Yes, that's

right.

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,

And the leaf-coloured robin watched. They

passed,

The robin till next day, the man for good,

Together in the twilight of the wood.

A PRIVATE

THIS ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors

Many a frozen night, and merrily

Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all

bores:

"At Mrs. Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he,

"I slept." None knew which bush. Above the

town,

Beyond "The Drover," a hundred spot the down

In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps

More sound in France—that, too, he secret keeps.

OUT IN THE DARK

OUT in the dark over the snow

The fallow fawns invisible go

With the fallow doe;

And the winds blow

Fast as the stars are slow.

Stealthily the dark haunts round

And, when a lamp goes, without sound

At a swifter bound

Than the swiftest hound,

Arrives, and all else is drowned;

And I and star and wind and deer,

Are in the dark together,—near,

Yet far,—and fear

Drums on my ear

In that sage company drear.

How weak and little is the light,

All the universe of sight,

Love and delight,

Before the might,

If you love it not, of night.

Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey.

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Table of Contents

LAST POEMS

EDWARD THOMAS

CONTENTS

I NEVER SAW THAT LAND BEFORE

THE DARK FOREST

CELANDINE

THE ASH GROVE

OLD MAN

THE THRUSH

I BUILT MYSELF A HOUSE OF GLASS.

FEBRUARY AFTERNOON

DIGGING

TWO HOUSES

THE MILL-WATER

A DREAM

SEDGE-WARBLERS

UNDER THE WOODS

WHAT WILL THEY DO?

TO-NIGHT

A CAT

THE UNKNOWN

SONG

SHE DOTES

FOR THESE

MARCH THE THIRD*

THE NEW HOUSE

MARCH

THE CUCKOO

OVER THE HILLS

HOME

THE HOLLOW WOOD

WIND AND MIST

THE UNKNOWN BIRD

THE LOFTY SKY

AFTER RAIN

DIGGING

BUT THESE THINGS ALSO

APRIL

THE BARN

THE BARN AND THE DOWN

THE CHILD ON THE CLIFFS

GOOD-NIGHT.

THE WASP TRAP

JULY

A TALE

PARTING

LOVERS

THAT GIRL'S CLEAR EYES

THE CHILD IN THE ORCHARD

THE SOURCE

THE MOUNTAIN CHAPEL

FIRST KNOWN WHEN LOST

THE WORD

THESE THINGS THAT POETS SAID

HOME

ASPENS

AN OLD SONG

THERE WAS A TIME

AMBITION

NO ONE CARES LESS THAN I

ROADS

THIS IS NO CASE OF PETTY RIGHT OR WRONG

THE CHALK-PIT

HEALTH

BEAUTY

SNOW

THE NEW YEAR

THE BROOK

THE OTHER

HOUSE AND MAN

THE GYPSY

MAN AND DOG

A PRIVATE

OUT IN THE DARK

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