Chapter IV: That I May Be Given Fellowship of Angels and a Happy Heart

God of fine fellowship in heaven and earth,
O let me share
A little of the gaiety of saints.
Sometimes let angels carelessly with robins
Sing in these Minsterworth trees.
Teach me that mirth,
Give me that happy heart, hating the thin
Blasphemous gravity of wicked men.

THE HOLLOW LAND

Elms on the marbled sky
Walling this hollow land,
Write something black that I
Find hard to understand.

Belshazzar in his hall,
Belshazzar and those lords
Saw suddenly on the wall
Great crooked words:

A doom, a doom of fear ...
Something our hearts forget
Is mighty still and near
To claim his debt.

Behold before it falls--
Behold the mighty hand
Of Nature on the walls
Of the hollow land!

ON BIRDLIP

I’ve tramped a score of miles to-day
And now on Cotswold stand,
Wondering if in any way
Their owners understand
How all those little gold fields I see
And the great green woods beyond
Have given themselves to me, to me
Who own not an inch of land.

Because I loved with deep desire,
Wooing all as I walked,
This noble country by tree and spire
Taught (as if music talked)
How Beauty is never bought or sold,
But freely given to them
Who worship more than crowns of gold
Her dew-bright diadem.

_Now_ all that under open heaven
I see of arable
Or pasture land to me is given,
As runs the parable--
“To him that hath not----” Even so,
For all we love is ours
While the little streams of Cotswold flow,
Swaying forget-me-not flowers.

OUT OF THE CITY

Here in the ring of the hills,
Under a cloudy sky,
Content at last I lie
Where Peace o’erspills
Like a cool rain which giveth
This brave daisy scent
And wine of sacrament
Whereby he liveth.

The big hooters may howl,
Men quarrel, whistles screech,
I will hear only the speech
Of my forgotten soul,
Which is the speech of trees,
Soft yet of clarity
And brimmed with verity
And all gay peace.

A SONG

O, Cranham ways are steep and green
And Cranham woods are high,
And if I was that black rook,
It’s there that I would fly.

But since I’m here in London town,
A silly walking man;
I’ll make this song and caw it
As loudly as I can.

MAY-FLOOD

Now the Spring’s cold
Foam-crested waves, the bright
Hedges, delay
To break and quench the light
Of golden fields with spray
Of hawthorn. As of old
Men saw the steep
Walls of the Red Sea round them,
Quiet sheep
Watch the wild hedge forbear to drown them.

BIG THINGS AND SMALL

This spinning spark in space--our Earth and all
Its vast envelopment of ancient night--
Is not a wonder greater or less than the white
Blossom now in the orchards, soon to fall.

And let men learn the secret of that bloom
And all its beauty’s wonder, they shall know
Life to the core; and they with God may go
To make a daisy or the day of doom.

AFTER LONG WANDERING

I will go back to Gloucestershire,
To the spot where I was born,
To the talk at eve with men and women
And song on the roads at morn.
And I’ll sing as I tramp by dusty hedges
Or drink my ale in the shade
How Gloucestershire is the finest home
That the Lord God ever made.

First I will go to the ancient house
Where Doomsday book was planned,
And cool my body and soul in shade
Of pillars huge which stand
Where the organ echoes thunder-like
Its paean of triumph and praise
In a temple lovely as ever the love
Of Beauty’s God did raise.

Gargoyles will thrust out heads to hearken,
A frozen forest of stone
Echo behind me as I pass
Out of the shadow alone
To buzz and bustle of Barton Fair
And its drifting droves of sheep,
To find three miles away the village
Where I will sleep.

Minsterworth, queen of riverside places
(Save Framilode, who can vie?),
To her I’ll go when day has dwindled
And the light low in the sky;
And my troubles shall fall from me, a bundle,
And youth come back again,
Seeing the smoke of her houses and hearing
The talk of Minsterworth men.

I’ll drink my perry and sing my song
Of home and home again,
Pierced with the old miraculous pleasure
Keen as sharpest pain;
And if I rise to sing on the morrow
Or if I die in my bed,
’Tis all the same: I’ll be home again,
And happy alive or dead.

THE MOON

What have you not seen,
Old White-face, looking down
Since the heavens were hollowed out
And winds were blown?

You saw white Helen
On the walls of Troy Town,
You silvered dew on the ruin
When Troy shook down.

Ulysses you saw
And the strange seas that bore him;
But all he wandered to see
You had seen before him.

Bodies black and yellow,
Gold tresses and brown,
The brown earth covers them ...
And you look down.

THE WIND’S GRIEF

The wind is grieving. Over what old woe
Howls it as though
Its very heart would break?--
The roving wind who merrily did make
A song all day in woods and meadows gay
Grieves in the night.

Is it for olden evil it hath done
’Neath moon and sun
Since first it roved the world?
Brave trees uprooted, ships and sailors hurled
To stormy death? or for the passing breath
Of flowers bright?

A WINDY NIGHT

The rain is done; and a great wind,
Filling the hollow night,
He shouts like a boy in an archway
And whistles with all his might.

He has blown the sky empty,
Except for the little stout
Stars, and they are flickering
As if they might go out.

All the black trees are crying;
The night is full of noise;
They are shouting under the arch of heaven
Like a school of rowdy boys.

RIDDLE CUM RUDDLE

The wains be unloaded, the ricks be in stack--
Riddle cum Ruddle, the harvest’s whoam;
An’ varmer be merry, an’ me an’ Jack
Sing Riddle cum Ruddle, the harvest’s whoam.

There’s wuts for the horses and hay for the cow--
Riddle cum Ruddle, the harvest’s whoam;
And wheat for bread, and barley for brew--
Sing Riddle cum Ruddle, the harvest’s whoam

Young randy lovers may praise the Spring--
Riddle cum Ruddle, the harvest’s whoam;
But this be the time ver to dance and sing
Riddle cum Ruddle!
Riddle cum Ruddle!
Riddle cum Ruddle!
The harvest’s whoam!

GLOUCESTERSHIRE FROM THE TRAIN

The golden fields wheel round--
Their spokes, green hedges;
And at the galloping sound
Of the train, from watery sedges
Arise familiar birds.

Pools brown, and blue, and green,
Criss-crossed with shadows,
Flash by, and in between
Gloucestershire meadows
Lie speckled red with herds.

A little flying farm,
With humped grey back
Against the rays that warm
To gold a last-year stack,
Like a friendly cat appears;

And so through gloom and gleam
Continues dwindling,
While in my heart a dream
Of home awakes to kindling
Fire, and falling tears.

LASSINGTON

To Lassington the priests went out
From Gloucester long ago
To worship oaks and fool about
With mistletoe.

Now after twenty centuries
Still men and girls do go
Lassington way. To worship trees?
You ask,--ah no!

They laugh the magic boughs beneath,
Catch hands, and kiss the while:
And the dead Druids grind their teeth
Below, or smile

To see (ah, fair beneath the bough
The fretted moonlight lies!)
How readily come the victims now
To sacrifice.

How, robed in moonlight’s ancient gold,
Another god doth reign,
Tormenting men as did their old
Grey gods of Pain.

JEALOUSY

On Zunday marn dro’ varmer’s wheat
I zeed the print and track o’ veet:
If I’d a had a rook-gun then
They vaur veet would’n a walked again.

Two on ’em--they o’ the larger zize--
I coulden praperly reckernize.
Two wer the purty-printed veet
O’ Molly--zo valse as she be sweet.

I hadn’t no bird-gun: zo it fell
As I maun laugh--ho, ho!--and tell
Here in a pub at the end o’ the street
O’ the winding--ha! ha!--o’ they vaur veet.

But may the zoul o’ him as wore
They hob-nails roast vor evermore;
And the veet wi’ the instep’s purty curve
May both on ’em get what um deserve!

ELVERS

Up the Severn River from Lent to Eastertide
Millions and millions of slithy elvers glide,
Millions, billions of glassy bright
Little wormy fish,
Chewed-string fish,
Slithery dithery fish,
In the dead of the night.

Up the gleaming river miles and miles along
Lanterns burn yellow: old joke and song
Echo as fishermen dip down a slight
Wide frail net,
Gauzy white net,
Strong long net
In the water bright.

From the Severn river at daybreak come
Hundreds of happy fishermen home
With bags full of elvers: perhaps that’s why
We all love Lent,
Lean mean Lent,
Fishy old Lent,
When the elvers fry.

When elvers fry for breakfast with egg chopped small
And bacon from the side that’s hung upon the wall.
When the dish is on the table how the children shout
“O, what funny fish,
Wormy squirmy fish,
Weeny white fish,
Our mother’s dishing out!”

Eels have a flavour (and a baddish one) of oil.
“When we have shuffled _down_ their mortal coil,
What dreams may come!” what horrid nightmares neigh,
Gallop or squat,
Trample or trot,
Vanishing not
Till break of day!

“Never start nothing,” says the motto in our pub:
“It might lead to summat”: that’s (as Shakespeare said) the rub!
So I’m not going to tell you, anyway not yet,
If the elvers are eels,
White baby eels,
Tiny shiny eels,
Caught with a net--

Or another quite separate wriggly kind of grub,
For I’ve seen more fights over that outside a pub
Than ever _you_ saw at Barton Fair when Joe
The brown gipsy man,
The tawny gipsy man,
The tipsy gipsy man,
Tried to smart up the show.

But anyway, good people, you may search the river over
Before a breakfast tastier or cheaper you discover
Than elvers, and if all the year the elver season lasted
I wouldn’t mind a bit,
I wouldn’t care a bit,
Not a little tiny bit,
_How_ long I fasted!

JOHN HELPS

John Helps a wer an honest mon;
The perry that a made
Wer crunched vrom purs as honest
As ever tree displayed.

John Helps a wer an honest mon;
The dumplings that a chewed
Wer made vrom honest apples
As Autumn ever growed.

John Helps a wer an honest mon,
And I be sorry a’s dead.
Perry and honest men be scarce
These days, ’tiz zed.

_LOVE POEMS_

THE GOLDEN SNAKE

Her body’s glory is a golden snake
Around Life’s tree
Coiled: the tree shall break
In the blast of Eternity
And the coil be crushed.

Too late! immortal poison has rushed
Through more-than-veins.
Beauty remains
Though bodies rot. The fang
(Though flesh the pang
To flesh deliver)
Strikes down more deep
Than flesh, to trouble
Even the ultimate sleep,
The eternal dream.

Though all she seem
To be, like a golden bubble
Shall break at the prick of Death,
This shall not break:
Her beauty’s sting: sharp as the sting of a snake:
The sting of Beauty failing not with breath.

IN A CATHEDRAL

From her sweet unrest and sting
Hither I come.
The cloisters like a frozen forest ring,
Echoing back more faint and faintlier
The tread of living. Home,
Home flies the spirit. Faint and faintlier
The surging waves of passion break to foam

Then like a clash of cymbals suddenly
She, slave of Time,
O’ercomes all tokens of Eternity,
Nay, rather with Eternity is made one,
One with recurrent rhyme
Of arch, with flash of window, with the sun
Yellow on lofty walls sweet echoes climb.

THE LANTHORN

“I never saw a soul save in the body.”

Haply within the woods of Paradise
We see unblinded of our earthly eyes,
Kiss with unthwarted lips, and taste our one
Desired and complete communion.

There scabbards that do sheath the gleaming blade,
There globes which muffle in the naked light
Aside being cast, naked and unafraid,
Lovers may stand in one another’s sight.

Now since through fleshly glass Thy flame, O Love,
Shines clear, and nowhere else doth visibly move;
That lanthorn bright I will bow down before,
Kneeling the crystal body to adore.

SONNET

My native land is only where you are,
You are my home, my roof-tree, hearth, and fire.
I have been home-sick for you, wandering far,
But now have reached the end of my desire.
You are my kingdom small and very fair,
Your breasts my snowy hills, my lakes your eyes,
Your face my garden, and my woods your hair,
Your breath the breeze of that sweet Paradise.

Lie fenced within the circle of these arms,
Dear country: you whose air to breathe is Peace,
Peace deeper than Death, more soft than Night--
Soother of griefs. Here, safe from wild alarms,
I’ll bide, plucking from off your sighing trees
The fruit of dreams, red apples of delight.

SINCE I HAVE LOVED

Since I have loved, I have put the world in my heart.
The great clouds scattering over Cotswold seem
But shadows of those others counterpart:
Those clouds standing over hills of dream--
Hills of dream in a country that is called
Peace--a country by my own heart walled.

Since I do love and bear you in my breast,
Who are both my beloved country and its queen,
I wonder not to see red dawn uprise.
I say no more how restful is the green
Of summer fields, for looking on your eyes
It is as though I had died and found my rest.

SAFETY

You are like a pool reflecting shadowy trees
Of green and glint of sunbeams mixed together
(And I had forgotten both) in water clear.

Full of the foulness of blood and lust and fear
Is the past now. I break its holding tether,
And stand once more with guiding Innocences.

You are like silence in which I can be myself.
You are the truth of music: something lost
Ages and ages ago, and forgotten, and found.

Ere death my feet are set upon holy ground,
I, wanderer amid a wandering host,
Come home, led by the magic of one sweet elf.

HAPPY SINGING

Men have made songs,
And I among them,
Because some hell
Of grief had wrung them.
The tolling bell
Will often bring
Torture to force
A man to sing.

But I this day
A song will make
Only for joy
And my sweet love’s sake:
And will employ
No sorrowful thing
For making of it,--
That song, I’ll sing.

But lovely laughter
Of singing thrushes
When dawn has broken
And heaven flushes,
Shall be the token
Of one whom days
Nor death can rob
Of joyous praise.

SONG

And in the evening when I walked apart
For joy of that I carry in my heart,
The song I made brave thrushes did complete,
Shouting, “O, pretty Joy!” and “Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!”

This is my glory, this the crown of me:
That I hold joy of my love, and she of me;
And though my song be but a breath of air,
Yet is it greater than death and all despair.

For howso poor and of what base estate
I be, this love shall make me proud and great.
And howso deep in care I lie, there are words
Shall build my heart a nest of singing birds.

IDENTITY

I am the blood that burns,
The flesh that dies,
The haunted heart that turns
To Paradise,
The soul that laugheth low
And whispereth
There are sweet things to know
After--Death.

Such powers am I, and more
Both good and bad;
Nor all the learnéd lore
Solomon had
Could ill and good dissever.
Yet this is true:
Naught’s me that doth not ever
Cleave to you.

JUNE

April was in your making--youth of the year,
Wild-blooded, beautiful! And May with flowers
And showers agleam went into you, my dear.

But you are June. Deep shadows, silver dew,
Red roses, and the nightingale’s delight:
White moonlight the essential soul of you.

And sometimes as I watch you walk arrayed
In beauty of that month, a foolish fear
Comes, dear, into my heart: I am afraid

That you being one with shadow-bars and roses,
Birds and wild scents of June, with these will fly
And I be left alone when Summer closes
Her pageantry!

SONNET

That Death shall take and slay me matters not
In truth: for better men are buried under,
And--tut, “what can’t be cured must be endured”!
But I am wild with hate, pray devil’s thunder
May fall on Death though heaven itself glow hot,
Hell-like, and stars be lighted stubble, and worlds
Like birds drop blinded by the bloody light!
O, such a bonfire do I wish for Death
Or ever his insolent envy of sweet breath
Should touch and soil the body of delight--
The singing flame of fragrant holy fire
Which showed to me the meaning of the spring
And every lovely tune musicians bring
Out of the womb of innermost desire!

SONNET

But now since Death hath certain date, I fling,
Strong in this manhood for a little space,
Gayest defiance in his wrinkled face,
And mock that envious shadowy old king:
Scyther of flowers, plucker of everything
In beauty fair upgrowing; so the place
Thereof knoweth no more the golden grace
That was the pride and savour of its spring.

Spring is not here. But spring is in this heart,
Quick with the blowing buds of lovely mirth
And over-brimmed with love taken and given
When that is withered, let us lie apart
And rock like sleeping babes in cradle of earth,
Dearest, till Doomsday: we have had our heaven.

“LOCAL FATALITIES ARE REPORTED”

Dangerously sheltered they,
The lovers lay
Upon the great dead hill,
Frail flesh and blood:
Beneath a twisted thorn,
Which to the heaven’s mood
Died and was born
Again, as lightning fell.

Two mites of trembling clay--
Ah, what cared they!
The lightning flashed:
They laughed.
The thunder crashed:
They kissed.
The grey rain lashed
The hill: and hid them in mist.

Did they return again
To the sunny plain,
To spite and scorn,
The plane of mortal care?
Nay, with passions of skies
They mingled were ...
They were made wise
Beneath the twisted thorn.

MY JOY

In your impassioned loveliness
I drink a wine no heel did press
In vats of place or time or space,
And gazing on your April face
And in your dim green-shadowed eyes
I glimpse green leaves of a great vine
Whose roots are firm in Paradise:
And you the cup and you the wine.

THE WATCHING MOON

Calm with the calm
Of all old Earth has taken
To her peaceful breast,
And will not awaken;

Pale with the passion
Of Life that never dies;
You sit there watching us
With clear bright eyes.

HARVEST HOME

My heart is filled with you
As a field tilled which grew
But couch and weed;
You are my cornfield spread,
Ripe to be harvested
For bitter need.

You have built barns in my heart,
You have become a part
Of all I knew:
Wherefore I dance and sing
And fear not anything
Sharp scythes may do.

_POEMS OF REFLECTION_

EXPERIMENTS IN VERS LIBRE

I

Not curled into rose leaves
Or twisted into fantastic patterns of beauty ...

Out of my joy in the Earth,
Out of my sorrow for men,
Out of the love which I bore to one and another
Come these rough nuggets.

Take them--they are all I can give you!
Take, and make of them whatsoever you will,
You who have skill,
And you also who have none.

Hold them in sunlight and moonlight
Till they shine back,
Ponder also the dark Earth wherefrom they came!

II

He who lies dead was my father.
Degradation has befallen his flesh.
Why? O, why?

The palace is fouled.
The king insulted, crucified, and abandoned.
The slaves have fled.

And so, after certain days, you
And I too shall lie.

The pride
Shall pass.
Our mouths shall never kiss
Nor our strong arms embrace ...
We too, we too shall die.