Chapter 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