Chapter I: Front Matter

AS THE WIND BLOWS

AS THE WIND BLOWS

BY
EDEN PHILLPOTTS

AUTHOR OF “THE GIRL AND THE FAUN,” “DANCE OF THE MONTHS,”
“EVANDER,” ETC.

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
LONDON: ELKIN MATHEWS
MCMXX

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH

CONTENTS

PAGE

ON EYLESBARROW 7

NOCTURNE 8

THE HUNTING 9

THE STRIKING HOURS 10

NIGHT 11

SWINBURNE 12

JUNE 13

BELLS OF VARENNA 14

IN THE VALLEY 16

GAFFER’S SONG 18

SCANDAL 19

WELCOME 20

THE NEOLITH 21

IN A WOOD 24

GHOSTIES AT THE WEDDING 26

DAWN WIND 27

DART 28

BY RUNDLESTONE 30

A SONG TO SILVER EYES 31

ENOUGH 32

SONG OF THE LARCHES 32

A SONG 33

BUONARROTI’S “DAWN” 34

A DARTMOOR STREAM 35

THE FALL 37

LAPWINGS 38

TO AN OPAL 39

JACK O’ LANTERN 40

THE OLD ROAD 41

THE DOUBTFUL ONES 42

LITANY TO PAN 44

A SONG 45

CHERRYBROOK 46

THE HUNTER’S MOON 47

VOICES 48

WIND OF THE WEST 50

THE LOVER AND THE WIND 51

A SONG 52

THE GRAVE OF KEATS 53

TIGER 55

THE PUDDLE 61

VISION 62

IN GALLIPOLI 63

THEN AND NOW 65

VIGIL 66

DARTMOOR NIGHT 68

THE FRUIT OF THE TREE 70

WHERE MY TREASURE IS 80

ON EYLESBARROW

Hither, at set of autumn sun,
Each golden child of Hesper flies
From gardens of old deities,
Where Zeus the maiden Hera won.

Their footsteps kindled stone by stone
The time-worn barrow, where it stands,
Above wide, valley border-lands,
Austere and imminent and alone.

Their fingers smoothed each granite frown
And blossomed where no flow’r may live,
And gave, what never flow’r can give,
Of living flame-light for a crown.

And from their flickering kirtles fell
A gleam upon its stubborn ways,
To touch their nakedness with rays
Of amaranth and asphodel.

O Hesperids, remember him
Whose sun is westering to the change,
Along uneven paths and strange,
By shadowed aisles and frontiers dim.

Flash but one token, pure and rare,
From the abundance of your grace,
For many a storm hath stripped the face
Of this, his life, and left it bare.

Dance but one measure in a heart
Sad and unprofitably proud,
Ere to your chariots of cloud
Ye leap again and so depart.

NOCTURNE

Twilight and falling dew; a little bell
And answering bell, from campanile far,
Chime and are silent; one triumphant star
Conquers the after-glow, that like a shell,
Nacreous and rose, vibrating as it dies,
Faints on the lifted forehead of the snow,
Falls from the deepening purple of the skies
And falling fades upon the hill below.
Unnumbered olive-trees, like hooded wights,
Stand solemn in their companies and grey;
Mule-mounted men go clattering down the way
To yonder galaxy of earth-born lights.
The crepuscule from sea and radiant land
Hath drunk the colour; night lifts up her hand
For peace before the coming of the moon--
All darkling heaven will be silver soon.

THE HUNTING

When red sun fox steals down the sky,
And darkness dims the heavens high,
There leap again upon his tracks
The eager, starry, hunting packs.
They glitter, glitter, gold and green,
With sparks of frosty fire between,
And Dian bright as day;
While in the gloaming, far below,
Brown owl doth shout “Hi! Tally Ho
Sun fox hath gone away!”

To music of the spheres they sweep
Over the western world asleep;
Then in the east, with sudden rush,
Sun fox shall whisk his white-tipped brush.
The field is fading, gold and green,
With sparks of frosty fire between,
And Dian growing grey;
While morning leaps the hither hill
And herald lark shouts with a will,
“Sun fox hath gone away!”

Oh, Huntress fond and silly stars--
White Venus, fiery, futile Mars,
In vain your pack ye whirl and cast
Upon the marches of the vast;
In vain ye glitter, gold and green,
With sparks of frosty fire between,
And Dian’s arrows fly
In shattered shafts of ebbing light;
For ne’er shall day be caught by night,
And sun fox cannot die.

THE STRIKING HOURS

My brother, can the heart of ocean say
When winds may woo her bosom; when the ships,
Or sudden galleon of an azure day,
Shall fling her foam to rainbows? Can eclipse
Hide up their silver when the full moons will?
Are the cloud-cisterns of the latter rain
At beck of every, summer-starven rill?
Life cannot call the time; nor man may feign
That he shall haply choose when he would have:
To will the striking hours he is not free,
That chime between his cradle and his grave,
Or speed, or slow the hands of destiny.
A bunch of stars upon the vine of heaven
Grows ripe and falls and passes when complete;
The galaxy of grapes to your mouth given,
Bursting their bloomy chalices, are sweet
One little moment; for they will not stay
Your pleasure and their consummation hold
While you misdoubt and linger and delay
Before their cups of purple and of gold.
When to a feast the gods would make you free
At their own time, or never, shall it be.

NIGHT

Another day has ended and again
The fading emeralds of the quiet west
Grow dusky o’er the hill-top and the plain,
Dying along each drowsy vale and crest,
Where Earth lifts up her bosom to the breast
Of Night oncoming. Now once more she brings
To the least folded flow’r her primal rest,
Opens the mantle of her darkenings
And sprinkles the white dew from both her starry wings.

The moth and beetle, owl and flittermouse--
All creatures that do call the moon their sun--
Steal silent forth, each from his little house.
They mount and fly, and others creep and run,
Where fox and hare and brock have all begun
The task of living. Now alert, awake,
They seek their joy and substance; every one
Pads out into the dingle, heath and brake;
While hungry fishes stir the silver of the lake.

For servants of the day another boon
Brings Night, and as the working hours decrease,
Lifts up her evening star and sickle moon
To disenthral, unfetter and release;
Bidding the long-drawn tale of labour cease.
She comes with twilight healing for each smart
Of soul and body, lays her unguent peace
With fingers cool on every aching part;
Anoints the tired flesh, soothes the day-foundered heart.

She asks no worship from our drooping eyes;
She needs no prayer to minister our plight;
Hers not our little deeds and destinies,
But still to smooth the pillow, lower the light;
Play nurse for every world-aweary wight;
Comfort and succour; at a touch redeem;
And pour her ancient anodyne of might:
Omnipotent sleep, inviolate, supreme,
Insensible as death, without one sigh or dream.

SWINBURNE

Children and lovers and the cloud-robed sea
Shall mourn him first; and then the motherland,
Weeping in silence by his empty hand
And fallen sword, that flashed for Liberty.
Song-bringer of a glad new minstrelsy,
He came and found joy sleeping and swift fanned
Old pagan fires, then snatched an altar brand
And wrote, “The fearless only shall be free!”

Oh, by the flame that made thine heart a home,
By the wild surges of thy silver song,
Seer before the sunrise, may there come
Spirits of dawn to light this aching wrong
Called Earth! Thou saw’st them in the foregrow roam;
But we still wait and watch, still thirst and long.

JUNE

June, who goes garlanded, who, never sleeping,
Laughs from behind the eastern hills at night,
And flashes to the hidden skylark keeping
His morning watch and thrilling from the height
Ere yet the stars are dim.

June, who unseals all fountains at their sources,
And pours life like a river overflowing
In proud and passionate desire, who courses
To throne our feeling higher than our knowing
And heap it to the brim.

June, when the new-born find their feet and wings,
Scent the sweet grass and air and taste their being,
And in their wanderings and wonderings,
Their motion and their hearing and their seeing
Conquer the earth and sky.

June, with her feast of flow’rs and lyric rapture,
Whose fair days fly the fleetest of the year,
So pure and fresh that only youth may capture
Their rainbow shapes without a thought of fear,
Without a single sigh.

BELLS OF VARENNA

Drowsy and sweet along the Larian Lake
Your melody is stealing;
Your fitful pealing
Floats on the pinion of a summer night.
Aloft the murmuring upland echoes wake
And wing upon the mountains,
Whence flying fountains
Thin their wild whiteness out o’er many a height,
Bells of Varenna,
Bells of Varenna--
Ancient bells,
Solemn bells,
Bells,
Bells.

A tall grey campanile and a spire
Of russet red upspringing,
Meet for your ringing,
O most melodious, mediæval chime,
Arise and point with fane of moonlight fire
To forests and snow ridges
And far-flung bridges
And ruined castles of the olden time,
Bells of Varenna,
Bells of Varenna--
Dulcet bells,
Dreaming bells,
Bells,
Bells.

Along a floor of crystal, where the moon,
From her blue mansion bending,
Awaits the sending
Of your deep benison and soft “Good-night,”
Canorous cadence comes. Too soon, too soon,
Faint off the last far throbbing
And silver sobbing
By Como’s patined pathway, still and bright,
Bells of Varenna,
Bells of Varenna--
Sleeping bells,
Weary bells,
Bells,
Bells.

IN THE VALLEY

Heather and potentilla fold
The rocks with purple and with gold;
The burn beneath sings clear and cold.

Here man and woman kept a tryst;
Here often met; here first they kissed
Under the white and secret mist.

And here, within this holy place,
He came and thundered her disgrace,
And looked his last upon her face.

And while he cursed her ruined name,
Her young soul fainted, sick with shame,
Before the death knell of her fame.

Had heath and potentil but known
His wrath and her despairing moan,
Their twinkling flowers had surely flown.

And had the burn but felt that cry,
Or understood their agony,
She must have wept her silver dry.

The grey hills heard the lover take
An oath, that made their echoes ache,
To hate all women for her sake.

The sunshine saw the woman cast
Herself to earth when he had past,
Her little pitcher broke at last.

But heath and potentil are gay;
The waters sing upon their way,
Though all this happened yesterday.

For June must joy, though joy departs,
And life must laugh, though sorrow smarts,
And buds must break as well as hearts.

GAFFER’S SONG

The boys don’t hoe like they used to do,
And the maids don’t sew like they used to do;
The hen don’t lay
And the hound don’t bay,
And the wind don’t blow like it used to do.

The men don’t drink like they used to do,
And the girls don’t wink like they used to do;
The bud don’t swell
And the flow’rs don’t smell;
And the folk don’t think like they used to do.

The milk don’t cream like it used to do,
And the ewes don’t teem like they used to do;
The corn don’t kern
And the sun don’t burn;
And my head won’t scheme like it used to do.

Bad men ban’t hung like they used to be,
Good songs ban’t sung like they used to be;
The jolly and wise
Have all flown to the skies;
And I ban’t so young as I used to be.

SCANDAL

The owl alighted in a yew
Beside the portals of my house;
The hour was nearly half-past two
And, as he ate his juicy mouse,
A cuckoo clock made cheerful chime
Within and shouted out the time.

“O gracious God!” the owl began,
And rolled his round eyes at the moon,
“What a black piece of work is man--
Well might we miss cuckoo in June,
How mad, misguided, inhumane
To keep a cuckoo on a chain!

“But all the feathered folk must know;
This infamy I’ll bring to light
And tell the horror high and low
And scream the crime by day and night.
No bird shall sing to him again
Who keeps a cuckoo on a chain.”

Good neighbour, of your charity
Consider that mistaken fowl;
Beware you tell not truth awry
And, hooting with your brother owl,
Into the public ear complain
I keep a cuckoo on a chain.

WELCOME

The hard azure on high
That bends over the Spring
Falls a tinkling, a thrill--
Sudden, silvery, shrill;
For the lark’s in the sky
And his lyre-shapen wing
Lifts the song in a spiral at will.

In the East is the wind;
At the fringe of the wood
Shiver catkins of gold
Or the fleece and the fold.
Sure the eaning ewes find
That the sunlight is good,
Though chill Eurus, his scythe’s on the wold.

Dawns a sweet lemon light
Through the red-bosomed earth;
Leaps and sparkles a train
Along dingle and lane;
For the primrosen bright,
They are come to their birth
And the daffodil’s dancing again.

THE NEOLITH

Sole standing in utter loneliness--superbly alone--
A monolith ruggedly lifts, with the roseal ling at his feet.
Only the murmur of bees and the twinkle and throb of the heat
On the league-long height, and the shade from his granite thrown.

Roll upon roll of the Moor flung out on a sky-line free;
Clouds at the zenith blue; in the flower-clad earth beneath
The dust of a neolith: one who has swept this heath
As the chieftain of vanished hordes and their fate and their destiny.

When he died, that no mocking phantom, or jealous shade
Of him mighty, should darken their lodge in the distant glen,
They brought their lord hither, on shoulders of mourning men,
And tore at their hair and howled long and fierce music made.

Then they sought for a stone of girth that should evermore
mark his place
And be seen for remembrance, afar on the frowning hill,
Of that leader of men, whose right arm and resistless will
Had lifted his clan to power and to splendour and pride of face.

He was cooped with his knees to his chin in a granite kist,
And a granite flake over his head that should last till doom.
So near doth he seem that one feels him not dead in his tomb,
But crouching, alive and alert, with a warrior’s axe in his fist.

Does he hear the old gods of the thunder? Can summer sun
Reach down to his pit? May his dog’s ears discern the rain
Hissing over the heather, or tell if the purple stain
From a cloud-shadow dims his grey stone? When the ponies run,

Can he mark the dull drumming above of their unshod feet?
Does he chill when the snowdrift is clogged on the frozen ground?
Does he thrill to the shout of the stream, or the bay of the hound,
Or heed the sad curlew’s cry and the brown snipe bleating his bleat?

Nay, for nothing lies under the grass but the broken stones
Or mayhap a primeval crock, or a fleck of red rust,
For the hero is earth of the earth, and its dust is his dust,
And his flesh is the flesh of the peat, and its bones are his
very bones.

That master of men is ascended, for joy and for bane,
And life after life hath he lived and relinquished since then--
In the heather and herbage and birds, in the beetles and foxes and men,
Each in their turn sprung of earth; each in their turn earth again.

Yesterday clad with great thews, that builded a chieftain of might;
To-day where the milkwort and fern and the starry tormentil
Spread joy by the auburn beck and loveliness on the hill;
To-morrow a moorman’s fire at the fall of a winter’s night.

And the aura, so azure clear, that is running above the red,
Was the glow of a savage heart imprisoned within the brand;
And the warmth on your hand was the sun on a stone-man’s hand
In the far off urgent days that were lived by the ancient dead.

So mutable myriads wake to the ring of their morning chime;
So mutable myriads pass at the set of their final sun;
And only Matter remains--the august, the unchanging one--
But no shape and no shadow of aught that she moulds on
the wheel of Time.

And ye who would bring man his soul from a mystical matrix apart;
And ye who would lift up man’s life to a land beyond Matter’s ken,
Must proclaim how her rape overtook her, and wherefore, and when,
Ere we bend to your idols, or take these your fairyland
stories to heart.

IN A WOOD

There runs a pathway through the wood
Where lace the boughs and all is good.
The beech-boles don a robe of white
And gleam like ghosts at dayspring light,
When first the pure, canorous note
Throbs from a waking blackbird’s throat;
And down the long aisle dim
Another answers him.

Often they met, the girl and boy
At this still hour; it was her joy
To share a kiss at peep of day
Before he took his working way.
Then light of heart the youngster went,
Leaving the little maid content
To seek her home near by
The forest boundary.

But when at evening back he came
Where the beech-boles were all aflame
With ruddy fire along the glade,
She leapt from out some stealthy shade.
And dawdling once when sunset shone,
He cut their letters, one in one,
Upon an ancient stem,
And drew a heart around them.

Then rose the red, accursed star,
And honour swept her boy afar;
While she, sore hindered and forlorn,
Still heard the blackbird sing at morn,
Still felt her heart with each sun sink,
Knowing he stood upon the brink,
Prayed on in hope and trust--
Until the boy was dust.

Life brought its anodyne of years,
To dull young griefs and dry young tears,
And Time, who knows not to stand still,
Sent a new lover up the hill.
A wife and mother now she goes
And plays with her first baby’s toes--
The name in memory
Spoken without a sigh.

And grey upon the beech’s rind,
Foregone, forgotten, out of mind,
Two woven letters may be told
When dawns are white and eves are gold;
Where his aubade the blackbird makes,
Or sleepy, sweet good-even takes;
And down the long aisle dim
Another answers him.

GHOSTIES AT THE WEDDING

Turn down a glass afore his place;
Draw up the dog-eared chair;
For though we shall not see his face,
I think he will be there
Our wedding day to share.

Turn up the glass where she would be
And put a red rose there.
Her quick, grey eyes we cannot see,
But weren’t they everywhere,
And shall not they be here?

Though them old blids are in the grave
And their good light’s gone out,
We’d sooner their kind ghosties have
Than all the living rout
As will be there no doubt.

For some are dead as cannot die,
Some flown as cannot flee.
You still do fancy ’em near by.
’Tis so with him and she,
At any rate to we.

DAWN WIND

Wind of the Dawn am I, and only She
Who knows the music of my every song
Can hear the whisper lingering along
Melodiously.

Melodiously along the moonlit corn,
With silver fingering all my peaceful way,
I nightly wander towards another day
Soon to be born.

Lo! from the East he comes; and I rejoice
And throbbing on into the ruddy light
Leap like a giant from the dying night
With organ voice.

Along the rosy, misty, magic lands
That gleam above each dewy-scented lea
The children of the morning welcome me
And clap their hands.

DART

Elfin river, stealing from far-off granite cradle,
Musical the place names upon thy tidal water;
Tuckenhay and Greenway, Stoke Gabriel and Dittisham,
Sharpham and Duncannon, beside thy margin’s mirror--
Sweet bells all a-chiming for native ear that knows them.
Rainbows in November, above the hillside footed,
Burn along the brake fern to set the auburn flaming
In transparent wonders of emerald and purple;
Till descends the hailstorm, with lash and scourge ice-knotted,
Hurtling through the coppice; from larch and cherry robbing
Amber dust and crimson. Chattering then and hissing,
And fretting first thy bosom into a sudden torment,
He draws his tatters round him and huddles off to seaward.
So the sun returning, by hover and by ripple,
Charms thy fleeting turmoil and wins thee back to laughter.
At the river ferry a little bell is calling;
And where the red earth arches, low on the blue above it,
Man and horses ploughing, herald a cloud behind them
Of the great, white sea-fowl that feed along the furrow.
Cobweb grey thine orchards, still the last apples ling’ring,
Topaz and ruby tangled upon the frosted lichen;
While broad, oaken hangers, a rapture for the sunset,
Meet the steadfast beech scrub, like red-hot fire aglowing,
Till their conflagrations, that blaze along the tide way,
Melt in flame and mingle their wonder with thy crystal.
Massy, rounded elm-trees roll out along the river,
And above, in billows far mightier and vaster,
Sail the light-laden clouds, that lift another forest
Bossed and round as they are and carry up their image,
Crested, crowned and golden, into the hyaline azure.
Pale that lifted glory and faint those sun-touched summits
Seen against the ardour of thine own earth-born elm-trees.
Down beside the reed-rond, pulse of the sea, a-weary,
Doth bring a wreath of flow’rs to mark the place of parting.
High above them glitters the wide weir’s silver apron
And the bright salmon leap, springing from salt to sweetness.
Farewell, worthy worship in all thy times and seasons;
By thy magic subtle of many a deep and rapid;
By thy sunny reaches and mystery of shadow;
Thy gentle hillsides green and dear delight of forests;
By the surprise of coombs, the hanging woods and dingles;
The happy days and sad; the murmur of thy voices;
Thy changing, winsome moods and little lovelinesses,
Thou art all Devon, and so incomparably England.

BY RUNDLESTONE

Her cottage solitary stood
Beside the granite Rundlestone--
Lonely enough, but not so lone
That fortune missed it, ill and good.

And faring by that way once more
I sought to see the friend of old,
And found an orange-lily’s gold
Still burning by her cottage door.

There seemed no stir about the place;
No voice responded to my call;
I heard no tardy footsteps fall,
Nor welcomed her familiar face.

From open window overhead
There came a dull and fitful flap,
Where the blind bulged and filled the gap
And billowed as the breezes sped.

Empty the house, for she had gone
Full many a moon before that day,
Passing in steadfast faith away
To join her man beneath his stone.

And now, when currents of the mind
Drift to my thought her vanished name,
I see the orange-lily flame
And hear the flapping of a blind.

A SONG TO SILVER EYES

Now that the dayspring surely comes
To wake a dreaming world once more
And light a thousand, thousand homes
With message from the Eastern shore;
Though dawn doth shiver sad and grey
And sombre clouds hide earth and sea,
My love shall be the sun to me
And glad’ my going through the day.

When mournful darkness falls again
To sink old earth in slumber deep,
Save where the sisters, sorrow, pain,
Their sobbing, throbbing vigils keep;
Though faint my heart and dim my sight
Beneath the storm’s immensity,
My love shall be a star to me
And guide my going through the night.

ENOUGH

The larch, the birch and the eagle fern
And granite grey;
The cry of the kine and the song of the burn
Down Dartmoor way.

A league-long tramp to a lifted stone
Under the sky;
Long lustral hours superbly alone--
My soul and I.

For you be the kingdoms that you list,
The seas you will;
And mine a white rainbow in the mist
On a heather hill.

SONG OF THE LARCHES

Not foliage, but emerald fires
Run through our legions in the spring,
Until their myriad points and spires
Are hidden past remembering.
Through hanging wood, by dell and dene
Again we ray ourselves in green.

Not foliage, but aureate fires
Leap through our legions in the fall.
When autumn lights her saffron pyres
And the red sun sinks to a ball,
Like golden smoke across the grey
We fling our worn-out robes away.

A SONG

Shadows we are and shadows seek
And haunt the place where shadows move;
But I, who know thy blessed love,
Scorn shadowland and all things weak.

Thou art alone reality;
The rest is dream within a dream.
My life knows nothing but doth seem
Save only thee, save only thee.

Through noon of day and noon of night
There steals a golden thought and rare,
That still we breathe the self-same air,
Still glory in the same delight.

That soul to soul and sense to sense--
Our heavens woven into one--
We’re shining, each the other’s sun,
Before we vanish and go hence.

And if thy love should faint and die,
The deep, eternal after-glow
Shall burn for ever where I go--
A cloud of light in my grey sky.

BUONARROTI’S “DAWN”

Spirit of twilight chill and upper air
Stretched desolate upon the rack of morn;
Thou hooded grief from mountain marble torn,
Gazing sad-lidded on the sky’s despair,
While the grey stars, like tears, descend forlorn;
Earth’s broken heart and man’s unsleeping care
Wait on thy pillow, crying to be borne--
The only burden thou shalt ever bear.
No infant hope may dream on thy deep breast,
No little lip may soothe with infant might
Thy mouth’s immortal woe; for thee, oppressed,
Dawn dim epiphanies beyond all light,
Where man’s long agony and cry for rest
But torture dayspring into darker night.

A DARTMOOR STREAM

When Shakespeare wrote, you sang the song I hear,
And when Eliza reigned, your lint-white locks
Flashed where they flash to-day, among the rocks,
And showered their tresses twined into the brown pool clear.

You danced and flung your foam upon the fern,
And sang along your green and granite ways
Even as now, in far-off Golden days,
When toiled the tinner men beside your heathery urn.

Their ruins shrink beside you; foxglove springs
Above the roofless hut and smelting place;
No more their shadows fall upon your face,
Or mediæval chime of pick and hammer rings.

But they were children in your lap beside
The early men of stone, whose lodges stand,
Like mushroom circles grey upon the land
Above the cotton-grass that marks your cradle wide.

The bear has lapped your crystal on his rounds;
The stricken elk beside you dropped at last--
A flint home in his shoulder, deep and fast--
To smear your emerald moss from red of deathly wounds.

And now, where once the wolf pack hunting went,
With ululation through the snowy nights,
Leap motor cars upon the highway heights,
And by their hooting horns the silent air is rent.

All one to you: machine and beast and man,
And Time, that leads them off and brings them in;
You strive above all circumstance, to win
Your immemorial dream and predetermined plan.

Unchanging, ever-changing, you possess
Your spirit quickened with an ardour still
Of workmanship--a patient, steadfast will
To rarer beauty yet and purer loveliness.

THE FALL

I’ll sing a song of kings and queens
And falling leaves and flying rain,
With Time to mow, and Fate who gleans
Their good and evil, boon and bane.

I’ll sing a song of leaves and rains
And flying queens and falling kings,
Yet doubt not reason still remains
Snug hidden at the core of things.

For every year an autumn brings
To round the root and fat the sheaves
And haply garner queens and kings
With falling rain and flying leaves.

The rain is salt with tears of queens,
The leaves are red with blood of kings;
Unknowing what the mystery means,
We puzzle at these mighty things.

For why great kings and rains should fall,
And wherefore leaves and queens should fly,
Or such rare wonders be at all,
You cannot tell; no more can I.

Yet this we know: new leaves and rain
Anon shall crown the vernal scene,
But dust of dynasts not again
Blows up into a king or queen.

LAPWINGS

When white ice tinkles on the rutted roads
And icicles are bearding from the thatch;
When fens are froze, the lapwings make despatch
And all a-mewing come from their frost-bound abodes.

With rush of wings upon the northern wind
Across the wintry blue, like sparks of gold
They flash into the valleys, hunger-bold,
And seek their comforting with doubtful human-kind.

They love the lew, where yellow corn-stacks stand,
And puff their feathers in the pallid sun,
Go daintily about and peep and run,
Like pixy pilgrim folk of some far fairy-land.

And near to bud-break, when young grey-eyed Spring,
Clad in the silver of an April rain,
Calls from the hill-tops, home they go again
And lift their kitten cries to give her welcoming.

TO AN OPAL

Wrapt in the radiant air’s own milky tress,
That’s less than cloud and more than cloudlessness,
Dawn-light and moon-light art thou; dreaming fire,
That dies along the west: a pulse; a pyre
Burning beneath the brow of some red eave;
The very staple that the salt winds weave
Into the vaporous east, or sobbing south,
When some grey hurricane sucks at the mouth
Of the dear, wild-haired sea, and with huge mirth
Rains back his rape of kisses on the earth.
The blooms of old-world flow’rs in ancient garths;
The dancing aureole of winter hearths;
The argent flame that haunts eternal snows;
Spray of the burn and petal of the rose;
Gleam of the dragon-fly or halcyon’s wing;
The dew-bedappled kirtle of the Spring;
The amber ripple of the kerning corn;
Splendour of fruit; where ripeness, like a morn,
Breaks through the bloom; the rainbow’s liquid light;
The northern dancers of an arctic night;
Nacre of pearl and foam upon the sea--
All these, thou glimmering epitome
Of the world’s glory, throb and nestle here
Within the little compass of a tear.

JACK O’ LANTERN

Where the dim marrish oozes out and fills
The lap of the hills,
While drowsy gloom broods deep upon the wold,
They keep their place and take their trembling flight
And fringe the night
With pallid flowers of azure and faint gold.

Along the darkness elfin lanterns flicker,
Now slow, now quicker--
A pale corona set upon the mire.
They float and fly and leap and sink together
Upon one tether,
Where ancient fens excern their lambent fire.

Thin, shaking, blue--spectres of flame--they travel
And break and ravel,
Then fade and flash again and fade again.
They wave their lamps upon the quag; they quiver
And soar and shiver
And flit, like little ghosts, above the plain.

Born from the heavy breath of sleeping Earth,
In feeble mirth
They trail and slink and linger, rise and fall;
Then, shuddering before the chill of day,
Soon speed away,
Blow out their lights and vanish, one and all.

THE OLD ROAD

How short the road with you, my friend,
How short the road with you--
The hills and vales, the heights and dales
And each unfolding view;
For side by side and foot by foot,
Though long that summer noon,
The twilight fell too soon, my friend,
The twilight fell too soon.

How far the road alone, my friend,
How far the road alone;
The hills how steep, the dales how deep,
Their ancient magic flown;
For now the way, together trod,
You cannot tread again,
Is twenty miles of pain, my friend,
Is twenty miles of pain.

Still winds the patient road, my friend;
Still winds the patient road,
Whereon I go, now high, now low,
With my appointed load;
And glories shared I felt were gone
For ever when you past,
Have brought you back at last, my friend,
Have brought you back at last.

THE DOUBTFUL ONES

They lie about, the naughty folk, a-mingling with the rest,
And just so green the grave-grass on their mounds as on the best;
For Nature’s poor at morals, and to her they’re all the same,
With their virtues no great matter and their vices no great shame.
Tom White bides there: they say he slew his first to wed another,
And that’s the hill that hides Jack Ford, as robbed his own
grandmother.
This lump of earth, where dandelions be keeping such a state,
Is Katherine Jay’s, the baby’s friend, once known as “cruel Kate.”
They dug up thirteen childer in her garden, so ’tis said;
And when they ran the creature down, she’d cut her evil thread.
Near by we teeled Bart. Coombstock--one as took his own life too:
He hanged hisself at seventy-three, though why for no man knew.
And Martin Cobley, in a pit beside they godly Foxes,
Did six months of his middle time for breaking the alms boxes.
Where yonder row of Caunters lie--a famed and far-spread clan--
Have crept their black sheep, Rupert, him once called “the gentleman.”
A reckless love-hunter was he, and made an end of life
When Noah Bassett shot him dead for playing with his wife.
Poor Nelly Dingle, buried by the lich-gate on the left,
Burned six good stacks of wheat the night they flung her out for theft;
And they small hillocks, down-along, of babies side by side,
Be “chrisomers,” as never got baptised afore they died,
There do they rest--the doubtful ones--and sleep so sweet and sound
As any proper saint of God that ever went to ground;
But when the graves be opened and they birds begin to sing--
Lord! Won’t it be a funny dish to set before the King!

LITANY TO PAN

By the abortions of the teeming Spring,
By Summer’s starved and withered offering,
By Autumn’s stricken hope and Winter’s sting,
Oh, hear!

By the ichneumon on the writhing worm,
By the swift, far-flung poison of the germ,
By soft and foul brought out of hard and firm,
Oh, hear!

By the fierce battle under every blade,
By the etiolation of the shade,
By drought and thirst and things undone half made,
Oh, hear!

By all the horrors of re-quickened dust,
By the eternal waste of baffled lust,
By mildews and by cankers and by rust,
Oh, hear!

By the fierce scythe of Spring upon the wold,
By the dead eaning mother in the fold,
By stillborn, stricken young and tortured old,
Oh, hear!

By fading eyes pecked from a dying head,
By the hot mouthful of a thing not dead,
By all thy bleeding, struggling, shrieking red,
Oh, hear!

By all the agonies of all the past,
By earth’s cold dust and ashes at the last,
By her return to the unconscious vast,
Oh, hear!

A SONG

How I have lived while others slept,
With the white moon and thee!
Heaven-high my adoration leapt
Sea-deep my ecstasy.

And now one memory I keep
Till life and I shall part:
She loved me well enough to sleep
In peace upon my heart.

CHERRYBROOK

Far more than others feel or see;
Far more than others hear or know,
Awakes and lives and throbs for me
When by the Cherrybrook I go.

For others, Bellevor’s green side
And yellow furzes burning bright;
Grouse heather, foaming like a tide,
And stones that dance, or drowse in light.

For others, just a singing stream
Of flashing stickles, cherry red,
That mirrors in her breast the beam,
Like golden beads upon a thread.

For me, a river of regret
In every reach so still and clear--
A streamlet, where I follow yet
The Shadow of a brother dear.

I see his trout-rod catch the sun;
I hear the music of his reel;
Knowing his kindly days are done,
His good life gone beyond appeal.

Now other rods are twinkling high;
But the grey shape I used to bless,
Lacking, the stream runs lonely by
And Cherrybrook’s an emptiness.

THE HUNTER’S MOON

October day drifts into night and now,
Globing red gold upon a naked bough,
The Hunter’s Moon climbs through a ragged larch,
Swings out on Heaven and sweeps her steadfast arch
Through cloudrack dim; while underneath there lie
The darkling forests and the floods, and fly
Leaves from the summer woods. They tinkle down
Russet and sere, etiolate and brown,
Blood-red and scarlet, auburn, silver, grey--
Good millions, bearing wherewithal to pay
Debt of the trees. The busy earthworms cold
Draw in the yearly dues to rich the mould,
Storing what tree-tops earned; and thus full round
The cycle spins; for sure the sodden ground
Is but a bank, that hoards to give again,
Wherein the beetle and the mole and rain
Balance their books beneath the Hunter’s Moon,
While Nature budgets for another June.

VOICES

I

Harken, harken, neighbour, harken!
There be little childer jangling,
There be childer up-long wrangling
By the thorn-tree in the wood.
Nay, them noises you are hearing,
Out of yonder blue-bell clearing,
Are the wild cat’s kitlings playing,
While their mother’s hunting food.

II

Harken, harken, neighbour, harken!
There’s the pixy bells a-ringing,
And the dinky pixies singing
Through the curtain of the rain.
Nay, ’tis but a flock of plover--
Golden plover now come over,
From the places of their summer,
To their winter home again.