Chapter VI

The day was a lifeless day.
Under a tree I lay
And round me its branches bent
Touching the earth like a tent.
There was no stir of breeze;
I was shut in with trees,
Locked from the world by these;
Dead leaves were piled on the ground,
And the forest lay in a swound,
Throbbed with nor pulse nor breath,
And I thought: "It is waiting Death."
So I lay there, still and oppressed,
While the silence grew in my breast.

Presently as I lay
I heard from far away
Little pattering feet
Over the dry leaves beat;
Tripping along pell-mell,
Thicker and faster they fell
Than tongue could count or tell.
And I fancied the birds and deer
And rabbits, too awed for fear,
Were creeping my aid to plead
Impelled by our common need—
Till into my sheltered place
One raindrop splashed on my face.

I lay there tented and dry
While the dews, dropped out of the sky,
Made music upon the sheaves
Of last year's stacked-up leaves—
No steps of wild things that trod,
But the whispering voice of God
In grave commune with the sod,
Messenger-angels rife
With words not of Death but Life,
Bidding the old brown Earth
Prepare for her great re-birth
And look to Heaven in pride
Renewed and revivified.

Then I heard far under the soil
The seedlings stir and toil,
And blade and bulb and root
Put forth each one new shoot,
And I felt deep down and deep
A million pulses leap
Out of their term of sleep,
And I thought the acorn spoke
With the voice of the full-grown oak,
And the cone wore the crown divine
Of the red-stemmed, crested pine,
And the haw held all the blush
And bloom of the wild-rose bush.

What helped these young things to grow?
Dead leaves of a year ago,
Leaves heaped up in their crowds
And spread like funeral-shrouds;
Yet life sprang out of their death
As the blade slips out of its sheath,
Life was fostered beneath
The leaves here rotting away
And emerged from their decay.
Are all things that seem to die
Renewed to infinity,
And the bodies and souls of men
Made and re-made again?

With the scent of the rain-wet loam
In my nostrils, I turned me home.