Is the land ship? we are rolled, we drive Tritonly, cleaving hiss and hum; Whirl with the dead, or mount or dive, Or down in dregs, or on in scum. And drums the distant, pipes the near, And vale and hill are grey in grey, As when the surge is crumbling sheer, And sea-mews wing the haze of spray. Clouds—are they bony witches?—swarms, Darting swift on the robber's flight, Hurry an infant sky in arms: It peeps, it becks; 'tis day, 'tis night. Black while over the loop of blue The swathe is closed, like shroud on corse. Lo, as if swift the Furies flew, The Fates at heel at a cry to horse!

Interpret me the savage whirr: And is it Nature scourged, or she, Her offspring's executioner, Reducing land to barren sea? But is there meaning in a day When this fierce angel of the air, Intent to throw, and haply slay, Can for what breath of life we bear, Exact the wrestle?—Call to mind The many meanings glistening up When Nature to her nurslings kind, Hands them the fruitage and the cup! And seek we rich significance Not otherwhere than with those tides Of pleasure on the sunned expanse, Whose flow deludes, whose ebb derides?

Look in the face of men who fare Lock-mouthed, a match in lungs and thews For this fierce angel of the air, To twist with him and take his bruise. That is the face beloved of old Of Earth, young mother of her brood: Nor broken for us shows the mould When muscle is in mind renewed: Though farther from her nature rude, Yet nearer to her spirit's hold: And though of gentler mood serene, Still forceful of her fountain-jet. So shall her blows be shrewdly met, Be luminously read the scene Where Life is at her grindstone set, That she may give us edgeing keen, String us for battle, till as play The common strokes of fortune shower. Such meaning in a dagger-day Our wits may clasp to wax in power. Yea, feel us warmer at her breast, By spin of blood in lusty drill, Than when her honeyed hands caressed, And Pleasure, sapping, seemed to fill.

Behold the life at ease; it drifts. The sharpened life commands its course. She winnows, winnows roughly; sifts, To dip her chosen in her source: Contention is the vital force, Whence pluck they brain, her prize of gifts, Sky of the senses! on which height, Not disconnected, yet released, They see how spirit comes to light, Through conquest of the inner beast, Which Measure tames to movement sane, In harmony with what is fair. Never is Earth misread by brain: That is the welling of her, there The mirror: with one step beyond, For likewise is it voice; and more, Benignest kinship bids respond, When wail the weak, and them restore Whom days as fell as this may rive, While Earth sits ebon in her gloom, Us atomies of life alive Unheeding, bent on life to come. Her children of the labouring brain, These are the champions of the race, True parents, and the sole humane, With understanding for their base. Earth yields the milk, but all her mind Is vowed to thresh for stouter stock. Her passion for old giantkind, That scaled the mount, uphurled the rock, Devolves on them who read aright Her meaning and devoutly serve; Nor in her starlessness of night Peruse her with the craven nerve: But even as she from grass to corn, To eagle high from grubbing mole, Prove in strong brain her noblest born, The station for the flight of soul.



THE SOUTH-WESTER



Day of the cloud in fleets! O day Of wedded white and blue, that sail Immingled, with a footing ray In shadow-sandals down our vale! - And swift to ravish golden meads, Swift up the run of turf it speeds, Thy bright of head and dark of heel, To where the hilltop flings on sky, As hawk from wrist or dust from wheel, The tiptoe sealers tossed to fly:- Thee the last thunder's caverned peal Delivered from a wailful night: All dusky round thy cradled light, Those brine-born issues, now in bloom Transfigured, wreathed as raven's plume And briony-leaf to watch thee lie: Dark eyebrows o'er a dreamful eye Nigh opening: till in the braid Of purpled vapours thou wert rosed: Till that new babe a Goddess maid Appeared and vividly disclosed Her beat of life: then crimson played On edges of the plume and leaf: Shape had they and fair feature brief, The wings, the smiles: they flew the breast, Earth's milk. But what imperial march Their standards led for earth, none guessed Ere upward of a coloured arch, An arrow straining eager head Lightened, and high for zenith sped. Fierier followed; followed Fire. Name the young lord of Earth's desire, Whose look her wine is, and whose mouth Her music! Beauteous was she seen Beneath her midway West of South; And sister was her quivered green To sapphire of the Nereid eyes On sea when sun is breeze; she winked As they, and waved, heaved waterwise Her flood of leaves and grasses linked: A myriad lustrous butterflies A moment in the fluttering sheen; Becapped with the slate air that throws The reindeer's antlers black between Low-frowning and wide-fallen snows, A minute after; hooded, stoled To suit a graveside Season's dirge. Lo, but the breaking of a surge, And she is in her lover's fold, Illumined o'er a boundless range Anew: and through quick morning hours The Tropic-Arctic countercharge Did seem to pant in beams and showers.

But noon beheld a larger heaven; Beheld on our reflecting field The Sower to the Bearer given, And both their inner sweetest yield, Fresh as when dews were grey or first Received the flush of hues athirst. Heard we the woodland, eyeing sun, As harp and harper were they one. A murky cloud a fair pursued, Assailed, and felt the limbs elude: He sat him down to pipe his woe, And some strange beast of sky became: A giant's club withheld the blow; A milky cloud went all to flame. And there were groups where silvery springs The ethereal forest showed begirt By companies in choric rings, Whom but to see made ear alert. For music did each movement rouse, And motion was a minstrel's rage To have our spirits out of house, And bathe them on the open page. This was a day that knew not age. Since flew the vapoury twos and threes From western pile to eastern rack; As on from peaks of Pyrenees To Graians; youngness ruled the track. When songful beams were shut in caves, And rainy drapery swept across; When the ranked clouds were downy waves, Breast of swan, eagle, albatross, In ordered lines to screen the blue, Youngest of light was nigh, we knew. The silver finger of it laughed Along the narrow rift: it shot, Slew the huge gloom with golden shaft, Then haled on high the volumed blot, To build the hurling palace, cleave The dazzling chasm; the flying nests, The many glory-garlands weave, Whose presence not our sight attests Till wonder with the splendour blent, And passion for the beauty flown, Make evanescence permanent, The thing at heart our endless own.

Only at gathered eve knew we The marvels of the day: for then Mount upon mountain out of sea Arose, and to our spacious ken Trebled sublime Olympus round In towering amphitheatre. Colossal on enormous mound, Majestic gods we saw confer. They wafted the Dream-messenger From off the loftiest, the crowned: That Lady of the hues of foam In sun-rays: who, close under dome, A figure on the foot's descent, Irradiate to vapour went, As one whose mission was resigned, Dispieced, undraped, dissolved to threads; Melting she passed into the mind, Where immortal with mortal weds.

Whereby was known that we had viewed The union of our earth and skies Renewed: nor less alive renewed Than when old bards, in nature wise, Conceived pure beauty given to eyes, And with undyingness imbued. Pageant of man's poetic brain, His grand procession of the song, It was; the Muses and their train; Their God to lead the glittering throng: At whiles a beat of forest gong; At whiles a glimpse of Python slain. Mostly divinest harmony, The lyre, the dance. We could believe A life in orb and brook and tree, And cloud; and still holds Memory A morning in the eyes of eve.



THE THRUSH IN FEBRUARY



I know him, February's thrush, And loud at eve he valentines On sprays that paw the naked bush Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines.

Now ere the foreign singer thrills Our vale his plain-song pipe he pours, A herald of the million bills; And heed him not, the loss is yours.

My study, flanked with ivied fir And budded beech with dry leaves curled, Perched over yew and juniper, He neighbours, piping to his world:-

The wooded pathways dank on brown, The branches on grey cloud a web, The long green roller of the down, An image of the deluge-ebb:-

And farther, they may hear along The stream beneath the poplar row. By fits, like welling rocks, the song Spouts of a blushful Spring in flow.

But most he loves to front the vale When waves of warm South-western rains Have left our heavens clear in pale, With faintest beck of moist red veins:

Vermilion wings, by distance held To pause aflight while fleeting swift: And high aloft the pearl inshelled Her lucid glow in glow will lift;

A little south of coloured sky; Directing, gravely amorous, The human of a tender eye Through pure celestial on us:

Remote, not alien; still, not cold; Unraying yet, more pearl than star; She seems a while the vale to hold In trance, and homelier makes the far.

Then Earth her sweet unscented breathes, An orb of lustre quits the height; And like blue iris-flags, in wreaths The sky takes darkness, long ere quite.

His Island voice then shall you hear, Nor ever after separate From such a twilight of the year Advancing to the vernal gate.

He sings me, out of Winter's throat, The young time with the life ahead; And my young time his leaping note Recalls to spirit-mirth from dead.

Imbedded in a land of greed, Of mammon-quakings dire as Earth's, My care was but to soothe my need; At peace among the littleworths.

To light and song my yearning aimed; To that deep breast of song and light Which men have barrenest proclaimed; As 'tis to senses pricked with fright.

So mine are these new fruitings rich The simple to the common brings; I keep the youth of souls who pitch Their joy in this old heart of things:

Who feel the Coming young as aye, Thrice hopeful on the ground we plough; Alive for life, awake to die; One voice to cheer the seedling Now.

Full lasting is the song, though he, The singer, passes: lasting too, For souls not lent in usury, The rapture of the forward view.

With that I bear my senses fraught Till what I am fast shoreward drives. They are the vessel of the Thought. The vessel splits, the Thought survives.

Nought else are we when sailing brave, Save husks to raise and bid it burn. Glimpse of its livingness will wave A light the senses can discern

Across the river of the death, Their close. Meanwhile, O twilight bird Of promise! bird of happy breath! I hear, I would the City heard.

The City of the smoky fray; A prodded ox, it drags and moans: Its Morrow no man's child; its Day A vulture's morsel beaked to bones.

It strives without a mark for strife; It feasts beside a famished host: The loose restraint of wanton life, That threatened penance in the ghost!

Yet there our battle urges; there Spring heroes many: issuing thence, Names that should leave no vacant air For fresh delight in confidence.

Life was to them the bag of grain, And Death the weedy harrow's tooth. Those warriors of the sighting brain Give worn Humanity new youth.

Our song and star are they to lead The tidal multitude and blind From bestial to the higher breed By fighting souls of love divined,

They scorned the ventral dream of peace, Unknown in nature. This they knew: That life begets with fair increase Beyond the flesh, if life be true.

Just reason based on valiant blood, The instinct bred afield would match To pipe thereof a swelling flood, Were men of Earth made wise in watch.

Though now the numbers count as drops An urn might bear, they father Time. She shapes anew her dusty crops; Her quick in their own likeness climb.

Of their own force do they create; They climb to light, in her their root. Your brutish cry at muffled fate She smites with pangs of worse than brute.

She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears A Mother whom no cry can melt; But read her past desires and fears, The letters on her breast are spelt.

A slayer, yea, as when she pressed Her savage to the slaughter-heaps, To sacrifice she prompts her best: She reaps them as the sower reaps.

But read her thought to speed the race, And stars rush forth of blackest night: You chill not at a cold embrace To come, nor dread a dubious might.

Her double visage, double voice, In oneness rise to quench the doubt. This breath, her gift, has only choice Of service, breathe we in or out.

Since Pain and Pleasure on each hand Led our wild steps from slimy rock To yonder sweeps of gardenland, We breathe but to be sword or block.

The sighting brain her good decree Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith, By reason hourly fed, that she, To some the clod, to some the wraith,

Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream. Flame, stream, are we, in mid career From torrent source, delirious dream, To heaven-reflecting currents clear.

And why the sons of Strength have been Her cherished offspring ever; how The Spirit served by her is seen Through Law; perusing love will show.

Love born of knowledge, love that gains Vitality as Earth it mates, The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains, The Life, the Death, illuminates.

For love we Earth, then serve we all; Her mystic secret then is ours: We fall, or view our treasures fall, Unclouded, as beholds her flowers

Earth, from a night of frosty wreck, Enrobed in morning's mounted fire, When lowly, with a broken neck, The crocus lays her cheek to mire.



THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER



I

Demeter devastated our good land, In blackness for her daughter snatched below. Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand, Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw The wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer's ray. Now whether night advancing, whether day, Scarce did the baldness show: The hand of man was a defeated hand.

II

Necessity, the primal goad to growth, Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one; Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth; Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun, Or why men drew the breath to carry pain. High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain, Idly the flax-wheel spun Unridered: starving lords were wasp and moth.

III

Lean grassblades losing green on their bent flags, Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags; Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees, More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled. Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world, Careless to lure or please. A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags.

IV

No smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw, Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom, In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw, Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom, And whose pale place of habitation mute, She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruit Anciently, gaped for bloom: Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl's claw.

V

The wrathful Queen descended on a vale, That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved. Iambe, maiden of the merry tale, Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved. It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn. Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone. More than for her who grieved, She could for this waste home have piped the wail.

VI

Iambe, her dear mountain-rivulet To waken laughter from cold stones, beheld A riven wheatfield cracking for the wet, And seed like infant's teeth, that never swelled, Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round. Teeth of the giants marked she where thin ground Rocky in spikes rebelled Against the hand here slack as rotted net.

VII

The valley people up the ashen scoop She beckoned, aiming hopelessly to win Her Mistress in compassion of yon group So pinched and wizened; with their aged grin, For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe, White as in chalk outlining little O, Dumb, from a falling chin; Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop.

VIII

Their tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced as when Dark underwaters the recesses choke; With cluck and upper quiver of a hen In grasp, past peeking: cry before the croak. Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fount Bountiful of old days, heard them recount This and that cruel stroke: Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men.

IX

A figure of black rock by sunbeams crowned Through stormclouds, where the volumed shades enfold An earth in awe before the claps resound And woods and dwellings are as billows rolled, The barren Nourisher unmelted shed Death from the looks that wandered with the dead Out of the realms of gold, In famine for her lost, her lost unfound.

X

Iambe from her Mistress tripped; she raised The cattle-call above the moan of prayer; And slowly out of fields their fancy grazed, Among the droves, defiled a horse and mare: The wrecks of horse and mare: such ribs as view Seas that have struck brave ships ashore, while through Shoots the swift foamspit: bare They nodded, and Demeter on them gazed.

XI

Howbeit the season of the dancing blood, Forgot was horse of mare, yea, mare of horse: Reversed, each head at either's flank, they stood. Whereat the Goddess, in a dim remorse, Laid hand on them, and smacked; and her touch pricked. Neighing within, at either's flank they licked; Played on a moment's force At courtship, withering to the crazy nod.

XII

The nod was that we gather for consent; And mournfully amid the group a dame, Interpreting the thing in nature meant, Her hands held out like bearers of the flame, And nodded for the negative sideways. Keen at her Mistress glanced Iambe: rays From the Great Mother came: Her lips were opened wide; the curse was rent.

XIII

She laughed: since our first harvesting heard none Like thunder of the song of heart: her face, The dreadful darkness, shook to mounted sun, And peal on peal across the hills held chase. She laughed herself to water; laughed to fire; Laughed the torrential laugh of dam and sire Full of the marrowy race. Her laughter, Gods! was flesh on skeleton.

XIV

The valley people huddled, broke, afraid, Assured, and taking lightning in the veins, They puffed, they leaped, linked hands, together swayed, Unwitting happiness till golden rains Of tears in laughter, laughter weeping, smote Knowledge of milky mercy from that throat Pouring to heal their pains: And one bold youth set mouth at a shy maid.

XV

Iambe clapped to see the kindly lusts Inspire the valley people, still on seas, Like poplar-tops relieved from stress of gusts, With rapture in their wonderment; but these, Low homage being rendered, ran to plough, Fed by the laugh, as by the mother cow Calves at the teats they tease: Soon drove they through the yielding furrow-crusts.

XVI

Uprose the blade in green, the leaf in red, The tree of water and the tree of wood: And soon among the branches overhead Gave beauty juicy issue sweet for food. O Laughter! beauty plumped and love had birth. Laughter! O thou reviver of sick Earth! Good for the spirit, good For body, thou! to both art wine and bread!



EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN



I

The shepherd, with his eye on hazy South, Has told of rain upon the fall of day. But promise is there none for Susan's drouth, That he will come, who keeps in dry delay. The freshest of the village three years gone, She hangs as the white field-rose hangs short-lived; And she and Earth are one In withering unrevived. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!

II

Ah, what is Marriage, says each pouting maid, When she who wedded with the soldier hides At home as good as widowed in the shade, A lighthouse to the girls that would be brides: Nor dares to give a lad an ogle, nor To dream of dancing, but must hang and moan, Her husband in the war, And she to lie alone. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!

III

They have not known; they are not in the stream; Light as the flying seed-ball is their play, The silly maids! and happy souls they seem; Yet Grief would not change fates with such as they. They have not struck the roots which meet the fires Beneath, and bind us fast with Earth, to know The strength of her desires, The sternness of her woe. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!

IV

Now, shepherd, see thy word, where without shower A borderless low blotting Westward spreads. The hall-clock holds the valley on the hour; Across an inner chamber thunder treads: The dead leaf trips, the tree-top swings, the floor Of dust whirls, dropping lumped: near thunder speaks, And drives the dames to door, Their kerchiefs flapped at cheeks. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! And welcome waterspouts of blessed rain!

V

Through night, with bedroom window wide for air, Lay Susan tranced to hear all heaven descend: And gurgling voices came of Earth, and rare, Past flowerful, breathings, deeper than life's end, From her heaved breast of sacred common mould; Whereby this lone-laid wife was moved to feel Unworded things and old To her pained heart appeal. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! And down in deluges of blessed rain!

VI

At morn she stood to live for ear and sight, Love sky or cloud, or rose or grasses drenched. A lureful devil, that in glow-worm light Set languor writhing all its folds, she quenched. But she would muse when neighbours praised her face, Her services, and staunchness to her mate: Knowing by some dim trace, The change might bear a date. Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! Thrice beauteous is our sunshine after rain!



MOTHER TO BABE



I

Fleck of sky you are, Dropped through branches dark, O my little one, mine! Promise of the star, Outpour of the lark; Beam and song divine.

II

See this precious gift, Steeping in new birth All my being, for sign Earth to heaven can lift, Heaven descend on earth, Both in one be mine!

III

Life in light you glass When you peep and coo, You, my little one, mine! Brooklet chirps to grass, Daisy looks in dew Up to dear sunshine.



WOODLAND PEACE



Sweet as Eden is the air, And Eden-sweet the ray. No Paradise is lost for them Who foot by branching root and stem, And lightly with the woodland share The change of night and day.

Here all say, We serve her, even as I: We brood, we strive to sky, We gaze upon decay, We wot of life through death, How each feeds each we spy; And is a tangle round, Are patient; what is dumb We question not, nor ask The silent to give sound, The hidden to unmask, The distant to draw near.

And this the woodland saith: I know not hope or fear; I take whate'er may come; I raise my head to aspects fair, From foul I turn away.

Sweet as Eden is the air, And Eden-sweet the ray.



THE QUESTION WHITHER



I

When we have thrown off this old suit, So much in need of mending, To sink among the naked mute, Is that, think you, our ending? We follow many, more we lead, And you who sadly turf us, Believe not that all living seed Must flower above the surface.

II

Sensation is a gracious gift, But were it cramped to station, The prayer to have it cast adrift Would spout from all sensation. Enough if we have winked to sun, Have sped the plough a season; There is a soul for labour done, Endureth fixed as reason.

III

Then let our trust be firm in Good, Though we be of the fasting; Our questions are a mortal brood, Our work is everlasting. We children of Beneficence Are in its being sharers; And Whither vainer sounds than Whence, For word with such wayfarers.



OUTER AND INNER



I

From twig to twig the spider weaves At noon his webbing fine. So near to mute the zephyrs flute That only leaflets dance. The sun draws out of hazel leaves A smell of woodland wine. I wake a swarm to sudden storm At any step's advance.

II

Along my path is bugloss blue, The star with fruit in moss; The foxgloves drop from throat to top A daily lesser bell. The blackest shadow, nurse of dew, Has orange skeins across; And keenly red is one thin thread That flashing seems to swell.

III

My world I note ere fancy comes, Minutest hushed observe: What busy bits of motioned wits Through antlered mosswork strive. But now so low the stillness hums, My springs of seeing swerve, For half a wink to thrill and think The woods with nymphs alive.

IV

I neighbour the invisible So close that my consent Is only asked for spirits masked To leap from trees and flowers. And this because with them I dwell In thought, while calmly bent To read the lines dear Earth designs Shall speak her life on ours.

V

Accept, she says; it is not hard In woods; but she in towns Repeats, accept; and have we wept, And have we quailed with fears, Or shrunk with horrors, sure reward We have whom knowledge crowns; Who see in mould the rose unfold, The soul through blood and tears.



NATURE AND LIFE



I

Leave the uproar: at a leap Thou shalt strike a woodland path, Enter silence, not of sleep, Under shadows, not of wrath; Breath which is the spirit's bath In the old Beginnings find, And endow them with a mind, Seed for seedling, swathe for swathe. That gives Nature to us, this Give we her, and so we kiss.

II

Fruitful is it so: but hear How within the shell thou art, Music sounds; nor other near Can to such a tremor start. Of the waves our life is part; They our running harvests bear: Back to them for manful air, Laden with the woodland's heart! That gives Battle to us, this Give we it, and good the kiss.



DIRGE IN WOODS



A wind sways the pines, And below Not a breath of wild air; Still as the mosses that glow On the flooring and over the lines Of the roots here and there. The pine-tree drops its dead; They are quiet, as under the sea. Overhead, overhead Rushes life in a race, As the clouds the clouds chase; And we go, And we drop like the fruits of the tree, Even we, Even so.



A FAITH ON TRIAL



On the morning of May, Ere the children had entered my gate With their wreaths and mechanical lay, A metal ding-dong of the date! I mounted our hill, bearing heart That had little of life save its weight: The crowned Shadow poising dart Hung over her: she, my own, My good companion, mate, Pulse of me: she who had shown Fortitude quiet as Earth's At the shedding of leaves. And around The sky was in garlands of cloud, Winning scents from unnumbered new births, Pointed buds, where the woods were browned By a mouldered beechen shroud; Or over our meads of the vale, Such an answer to sun as he, Brave in his gold; to a sound, None sweeter, of woods flapping sail, With the first full flood of our year, For their voyage on lustreful sea: Unto what curtained haven in chief, Will be writ in the book of the sere. But surely the crew are we, Eager or stamped or bowed; Counted thinner at fall of the leaf. Grief heard them, and passed like a bier. Due Summerward, lo, they were set, In volumes of foliage proud, On the heave of their favouring tides, And their song broadened out to the cheer When a neck of the ramping surf Rattles thunder a boat overrides. All smiles ran the highways wet; The worm drew its links from the turf; The bird of felicity loud Spun high, and a South wind blew. Weak out of sheath downy leaves Of the beech quivered lucid as dew, Their radiance asking, who grieves; For nought of a sorrow they knew: No space to the dread wrestle vowed, No chamber in shadow of night. At times as the steadier breeze Flutter-huddled their twigs to a crowd, The beam of them wafted my sight To league-long sun upon seas: The golden path we had crossed Many years, till her birthland swung Recovered to vision from lost, A light in her filial glance. And sweet was her voice with the tongue, The speechful tongue of her France, Soon at ripple about us, like rills Ever busy with little: away Through her Normandy, down where the mills Dot at lengths a rivercourse, grey As its bordering poplars bent To gusts off the plains above. Old stone chateau and farms, Home of her birth and her love! On the thread of the pasture you trace, By the river, their milk, for miles, Spotted once with the English tent, In days of the tocsin's alarms, To tower of the tallest of piles, The country's surveyor breast-high. Home of her birth and her love! Home of a diligent race; Thrifty, deft-handed to ply Shuttle or needle, and woo Sun to the roots of the pear Frogging each mud-walled cot. The elders had known her in arms. There plucked we the bluet, her hue Of the deeper forget-me-not; Well wedding her ripe-wheat hair.

I saw, unsighting: her heart I saw, and the home of her love There printed, mournfully rent: Her ebbing adieu, her adieu, And the stride of the Shadow athwart. For one of our Autumns there! . . . Straight as the flight of a dove We went, swift winging we went. We trod solid ground, we breathed air, The heavens were unbroken. Break they, The word of the world is adieu: Her word: and the torrents are round, The jawed wolf-waters of prey. We stand upon isles, who stand: A Shadow before us, and back, A phantom the habited land. We may cry to the Sunderer, spare That dearest! he loosens his pack. Arrows we breathe, not air. The memories tenderly bound To us are a drifting crew, Amid grey-gapped waters for ground. Alone do we stand, each one, Till rootless as they we strew Those deeps of the corse-like stare At a foreign and stony sun.

Eyes had I but for the scene Of my circle, what neighbourly grew. If haply no finger lay out To the figures of days that had been, I gathered my herb, and endured; My old cloak wrapped me about. Unfooted was ground-ivy blue, Whose rustic shrewd odour allured In Spring's fresh of morning: unseen Her favourite wood-sorrel bell As yet, though the leaves' green floor Awaited their flower, that would tell Of a red-veined moist yestreen, With its droop and the hues it wore, When we two stood overnight One, in the dark van-glow On our hill-top, seeing beneath Our household's twinkle of light Through spruce-boughs, gem of a wreath.

Budding, the service-tree, white Almost as whitebeam, threw, From the under of leaf upright, Flecks like a showering snow On the flame-shaped junipers green, On the sombre mounds of the yew. Like silvery tapers bright By a solemn cathedral screen, They glistened to closer view. Turf for a rooks' revel striped Pleased those devourers astute. Chorister blackbird and thrush Together or alternate piped; A free-hearted harmony large, With meaning for man, for brute, When the primitive forces are brimmed. Like featherings hither and yon Of aery tree-twigs over marge, To the comb of the winds, untrimmed, Their measure is found in the vast. Grief heard them, and stepped her way on. She has but a narrow embrace. Distrustful of hearing she passed. They piped her young Earth's Bacchic rout; The race, and the prize of the race; Earth's lustihead pressing to sprout.

But sight holds a soberer space. Colourless dogwood low Curled up a twisted root, Nigh yellow-green mosses, to flush Redder than sun upon rocks, When the creeper clematis-shoot Shall climb, cap his branches, and show, Beside veteran green of the box, At close of the year's maple blush, A bleeding greybeard is he, Now hale in the leafage lush. Our parasites paint us. Hard by, A wet yew-trunk flashed the peel Of our naked forefathers in fight; With stains of the fray sweating free; And him came no parasite nigh: Firm on the hard knotted knee, He stood in the crown of his dun; Earth's toughest to stay her wheel: Under whom the full day is night; Whom the century-tempests call son, Having striven to rend him in vain.

I walked to observe, not to feel, Not to fancy, if simple of eye One may be among images reaped For a shift of the glance, as grain: Profitless froth you espy Ashore after billows have leaped. I fled nothing, nothing pursued: The changeful visible face Of our Mother I sought for my food; Crumbs by the way to sustain. Her sentence I knew past grace. Myself I had lost of us twain, Once bound in mirroring thought. She had flung me to dust in her wake; And I, as your convict drags His chain, by the scourge untaught, Bore life for a goad, without aim. I champed the sensations that make Of a ruffled philosophy rags. For them was no meaning too blunt, Nor aspect too cutting of steel. This Earth of the beautiful breasts, Shining up in all colours aflame, To them had visage of hags: A Mother of aches and jests: Soulless, heading a hunt Aimless except for the meal. Hope, with the star on her front; Fear, with an eye in the heel; Our links to a Mother of grace; They were dead on the nerve, and dead For the nature divided in three; Gone out of heart, out of brain, Out of soul: I had in their place The calm of an empty room. We were joined but by that thin thread, My disciplined habit to see. And those conjure images, those, The puppets of loss or gain; Not he who is bare to his doom; For whom never semblance plays To bewitch, overcloud, illume. The dusty mote-images rose; Sheer film of the surface awag: They sank as they rose; their pain Declaring them mine of old days.

Now gazed I where, sole upon gloom, As flower-bush in sun-specked crag, Up the spine of the double combe With yew-boughs heavily cloaked, A young apparition shone: Known, yet wonderful, white Surpassingly; doubtfully known, For it struck as the birth of Light: Even Day from the dark unyoked. It waved like a pilgrim flag O'er processional penitents flown When of old they broke rounding yon spine: O the pure wild-cherry in bloom!

For their Eastward march to the shrine Of the footsore far-eyed Faith, Was banner so brave, so fair, So quick with celestial sign Of victorious rays over death? For a conquest of coward despair; - Division of soul from wits, And these made rulers;—full sure, More starlike never did shine To illumine the sinister field Where our life's old night-bird flits. I knew it: with her, my own, Had hailed it pure of the pure; Our beacon yearly: but strange When it strikes to within is the known; Richer than newness revealed. There was needed darkness like mine. Its beauty to vividness blown Drew the life in me forward, chased, From aloft on a pinnacle's range, That hindward spidery line, The length of the ways I had paced, A footfarer out of the dawn, To Youth's wild forest, where sprang, For the morning of May long gone, The forest's white virgin; she Seen yonder; and sheltered me, sang; She in me, I in her; what songs The fawn-eared wood-hollows revive To pour forth their tune-footed throngs; Inspire to the dreaming of good Illimitable to come: She, the white wild cherry, a tree, Earth-rooted, tangibly wood, Yet a presence throbbing alive; Nor she in our language dumb: A spirit born of a tree; Because earth-rooted alive: Huntress of things worth pursuit Of souls; in our naming, dreams. And each unto other was lute, By fits quick as breezy gleams. My quiver of aims and desires Had colour that she would have owned; And if by humaner fires Hued later, these held her enthroned: My crescent of Earth; my blood At the silvery early stir; Hour of the thrill of the bud About to burst, and by her Directed, attuned, englobed: My Goddess, the chaste, not chill; Choir over choir white-robed; White-bosomed fold within fold: For so could I dream, breast-bare, In my time of blooming; dream still Through the maze, the mesh, and the wreck, Despite, since manhood was bold, The yoke of the flesh on my neck. She beckoned, I gazed, unaware How a shaft of the blossoming tree Was shot from the yew-wood's core. I stood to the touch of a key Turned in a fast-shut door.

They rounded my garden, content, The small fry, clutching their fee, Their fruit of the wreath and the pole; And, chatter, hop, skip, they were sent, In a buzz of young company glee, Their natural music, swift shoal To the next easy shedders of pence. Why not? for they had me in tune With the hungers of my kind. Do readings of earth draw thence, Then a concord deeper than cries Of the Whither whose echo is Whence, To jar unanswered, shall rise As a fountain-jet in the mind Bowed dark o'er the falling and strewn.

* * *

Unwitting where it might lead, How it came, for the anguish to cease, And the Questions that sow not nor spin, This wisdom, rough-written, and black, As of veins that from venom bleed, I had with the peace within; Or patience, mortal of peace, Compressing the surgent strife In a heart laid open, not mailed, To the last blank hour of the rack, When struck the dividing knife: When the hand that never had failed In its pressure to mine hung slack.

But this in myself did I know, Not needing a studious brow, Or trust in a governing star, While my ears held the jangled shout The children were lifting afar: That natures at interflow With all of their past and the now, Are chords to the Nature without, Orbs to the greater whole: First then, nor utterly then Till our lord of sensations at war, The rebel, the heart, yields place To brain, each prompting the soul. Thus our dear Earth we embrace For the milk, her strength to men.

And crave we her medical herb, We have but to see and hear, Though pierced by the cruel acerb, The troops of the memories armed Hostile to strike at the nest That nourished and flew them warmed. Not she gives the tear for the tear. Weep, bleed, rave, writhe, be distraught, She is moveless. Not of her breast Are the symbols we conjure when Fear Takes leaven of Hope. I caught, With Death in me shrinking from Death, As cold from cold, for a sign Of the life beyond ashes: I cast, Believing the vision divine, Wings of that dream of my Youth To the spirit beloved: 'twas unglassed On her breast, in her depths austere: A flash through the mist, mere breath, Breath on a buckler of steel. For the flesh in revolt at her laws, Neither song nor smile in ruth, Nor promise of things to reveal, Has she, nor a word she saith: We are asking her wheels to pause. Well knows she the cry of unfaith. If we strain to the farther shore, We are catching at comfort near. Assurances, symbols, saws, Revelations in legends, light To eyes rolling darkness, these Desired of the flesh in affright, For the which it will swear to adore, She yields not for prayers at her knees; The woolly beast bleating will shear. These are our sensual dreams; Of the yearning to touch, to feel The dark Impalpable sure, And have the Unveiled appear; Whereon ever black she beams, Doth of her terrible deal, She who dotes over ripeness at play, Rosiness fondles and feeds, Guides it with shepherding crook, To her sports and her pastures alway. Not she gives the tear for the tear: Harsh wisdom gives Earth, no more; In one the spur and the curb: An answer to thoughts or deeds; To the Legends an alien look; To the Questions a figure of clay. Yet we have but to see and hear, Crave we her medical herb. For the road to her soul is the Real: The root of the growth of man: And the senses must traverse it fresh With a love that no scourge shall abate, To reach the lone heights where we scan In the mind's rarer vision this flesh; In the charge of the Mother our fate; Her law as the one common weal.

We, whom the view benumbs, We, quivering upward, each hour Know battle in air and in ground For the breath that goes as it comes, For the choice between sweet and sour, For the smallest grain of our worth: And he who the reckoning sums Finds nought in his hand save Earth. Of Earth are we stripped or crowned. The fleeting Present we crave, Barter our best to wed, In hope of a cushioned bower, What is it but Future and Past Like wind and tide at a wave! Idea of the senses, bred For the senses to snap and devour: Thin as the shell of a sound In delivery, withered in light. Cry we for permanence fast, Permanence hangs by the grave; Sits on the grave green-grassed, On the roll of the heaved grave-mound. By Death, as by Life, are we fed: The two are one spring; our bond With the numbers; with whom to unite Here feathers wings for beyond: Only they can waft us in flight. For they are Reality's flower. Of them, and the contact with them, Issues Earth's dearest daughter, the firm In footing, the stately of stem; Unshaken though elements lour; A warrior heart unquelled; Mirror of Earth, and guide To the Holies from sense withheld: Reason, man's germinant fruit. She wrestles with our old worm Self in the narrow and wide: Relentless quencher of lies, With laughter she pierces the brute; And hear we her laughter peal, 'Tis Light in us dancing to scour The loathed recess of his dens; Scatter his monstrous bed, And hound him to harrow and plough. She is the world's one prize; Our champion, rightfully head; The vessel whose piloted prow, Though Folly froth round, hiss and hoot, Leaves legible print at the keel. Nor least is the service she does, That service to her may cleanse The well of the Sorrows in us; For a common delight will drain The rank individual fens Of a wound refusing to heal While the old worm slavers its root.

I bowed as a leaf in rain; As a tree when the leaf is shed To winds in the season at wane: And when from my soul I said, May the worm be trampled: smite, Sacred Reality! power Filled me to front it aright. I had come of my faith's ordeal.

It is not to stand on a tower And see the flat universe reel; Our mortal sublimities drop Like raiment by glisterlings worn, At a sweep of the scythe for the crop. Wisdom is won of its fight, The combat incessant; and dries To mummywrap perching a height. It chews the contemplative cud In peril of isolate scorn, Unfed of the onward flood. Nor view we a different morn If we gaze with the deeper sight, With the deeper thought forewise: The world is the same, seen through; The features of men are the same. But let their historian new In the language of nakedness write, Rejoice we to know not shame, Not a dread, not a doubt: to have done With the tortures of thought in the throes, Our animal tangle, and grasp Very sap of the vital in this: That from flesh unto spirit man grows Even here on the sod under sun: That she of the wanton's kiss, Broken through with the bite of an asp, Is Mother of simple truth, Relentless quencher of lies; Eternal in thought; discerned In thought mid-ferry between The Life and the Death, which are one, As our breath in and out, joy or teen. She gives the rich vision to youth, If we will, of her prompting wise; Or men by the lash made lean, Who in harness the mind subserve, Their title to read her have earned; Having mastered sensation—insane At a stroke of the terrified nerve; And out of the sensual hive Grown to the flower of brain; To know her a thing alive, Whose aspects mutably swerve, Whose laws immutably reign. Our sentencer, clother in mist, Her morn bends breast to her noon, Noon to the hour dark-dyed, If we will, of her promptings wise: Her light is our own if we list. The legends that sweep her aside, Crying loud for an opiate boon, To comfort the human want, From the bosom of magical skies, She smiles on, marking their source: They read her with infant eyes. Good ships of morality they, For our crude developing force; Granite the thought to stay, That she is a thing alive To the living, the falling and strewn. But the Questions, the broods that haunt Sensation insurgent, may drive, The way of the channelling mole, Head in a ground-vault gaunt As your telescope's skeleton moon. Barren comfort to these will she dole; Dead is her face to their cries. Intelligence pushing to taste A lesson from beasts might heed. They scatter a voice in the waste, Where any dry swish of a reed By grey-glassy water replies.

'They see not above or below; Farthest are they from my soul,' Earth whispers: 'they scarce have the thirst, Except to unriddle a rune; And I spin none; only show, Would humanity soar from its worst, Winged above darkness and dole, How flesh unto spirit must grow. Spirit raves not for a goal. Shapes in man's likeness hewn Desires not; neither desires The sleep or the glory: it trusts; Uses my gifts, yet aspires; Dreams of a higher than it. The dream is an atmosphere; A scale still ascending to knit The clear to the loftier Clear. 'Tis Reason herself, tiptoe At the ultimate bound of her wit, On the verges of Night and Day. But is it a dream of the lusts, To my dustiest 'tis decreed; And them that so shuffle astray I touch with no key of gold For the wealth of the secret nook; Though I dote over ripeness at play, Rosiness fondle and feed, Guide it with shepherding crook To my sports and my pastures alway. The key will shriek in the lock, The door will rustily hinge, Will open on features of mould, To vanish corrupt at a glimpse, And mock as the wild echoes mock, Soulless in mimic, doth Greed Or the passion for fruitage tinge That dream, for your parricide imps To wing through the body of Time, Yourselves in slaying him slay. Much are you shots of your prime, You men of the act and the dream: And please you to fatten a weed That perishes, pledged to decay, 'Tis dearth in your season of need, Down the slopes of the shoreward way; - Nigh on the misty stream, Where Ferryman under his hood, With a call to be ready to pay The small coin, whitens red blood. But the young ethereal seed Shall bring you the bread no buyer Can have for his craving supreme; To my quenchless quick shall speed The soul at her wrestle rude With devil, with angel more dire; With the flesh, with the Fates, enringed. The dream of the blossom of Good Is your banner of battle unrolled In its waver and current and curve (Choir over choir white-winged, White-bosomed fold within fold): Hopeful of victory most When hard is the task to sustain Assaults of the fearful sense At a mind in desolate mood With the Whither, whose echo is Whence; And humanity's clamour, lost, lost; And its clasp of the staves that snap; And evil abroad, as a main Uproarious, bursting its dyke. For back do you look, and lo, Forward the harvest of grain! - Numbers in council, awake To love more than things of my lap, Love me; and to let the types break, Men be grass, rocks rivers, all flow; All save the dream sink alike To the source of my vital in sap: Their battle, their loss, their ache, For my pledge of vitality know. The dream is the thought in the ghost; The thought sent flying for food; Eyeless, but sprung of an aim Supernal of Reason, to find The great Over-Reason we name Beneficence: mind seeking Mind. Dream of the blossom of Good, In its waver and current and curve, With the hopes of my offspring enscrolled! Soon to be seen of a host The flag of the Master I serve! And life in them doubled on Life, As flame upon flame, to behold, High over Time-tumbled sea, The bliss of his headship of strife, Him through handmaiden me.'



CHANGE IN RECURRENCE



I

I stood at the gate of the cot Where my darling, with side-glance demure, Would spy, on her trim garden-plot, The busy wild things chase and lure. For these with their ways were her feast; They had surety no enemy lurked. Their deftest of tricks to their least She gathered in watch as she worked.

II

When berries were red on her ash, The blackbird would rifle them rough, Till the ground underneath looked a gash, And her rogue grew the round of a chough. The squirrel cocked ear o'er his hoop, Up the spruce, quick as eye, trailing brush. She knew any tit of the troop All as well as the snail-tapping thrush.

III

I gazed: 'twas the scene of the frame, With the face, the dear life for me, fled. No window a lute to my name, No watcher there plying the thread. But the blackbird hung peeking at will; The squirrel from cone hopped to cone; The thrush had a snail in his bill, And tap-tapped the shell hard on a stone.



HYMN TO COLOUR



I

With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared, And made them on each side a shadow seem. Through wooded vales the land of dawn we neared, Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dream To fall on daylight; and night puts away Her darker veil for grey.

II

In that grey veil green grassblades brushed we by; We came where woods breathed sharp, and overhead Rocks raised clear horns on a transforming sky: Around, save for those shapes, with him who led And linked them, desert varied by no sign Of other life than mine.

III

By this the dark-winged planet, raying wide, From the mild pearl-glow to the rose upborne, Drew in his fires, less faint than far descried, Pure-fronted on a stronger wave of morn: And those two shapes the splendour interweaved, Hung web-like, sank and heaved.

IV

Love took my hand when hidden stood the sun To fling his robe on shoulder-heights of snow. Then said: There lie they, Life and Death in one. Whichever is, the other is: but know, It is thy craving self that thou dost see, Not in them seeing me.

V

Shall man into the mystery of breath, From his quick beating pulse a pathway spy? Or learn the secret of the shrouded death, By lifting up the lid of a white eye? Cleave thou thy way with fathering desire Of fire to reach to fire.

VI

Look now where Colour, the soul's bridegroom, makes The house of heaven splendid for the bride. To him as leaps a fountain she awakes, In knotting arms, yet boundless: him beside, She holds the flower to heaven, and by his power Brings heaven to the flower.

VII

He gives her homeliness in desert air, And sovereignty in spaciousness; he leads Through widening chambers of surprise to where Throbs rapture near an end that aye recedes, Because his touch is infinite and lends A yonder to all ends.

VIII

Death begs of Life his blush; Life Death persuades To keep long day with his caresses graced. He is the heart of light, the wing of shades, The crown of beauty: never soul embraced Of him can harbour unfaith; soul of him Possessed walks never dim.

IX

Love eyed his rosy memories: he sang: O bloom of dawn, breathed up from the gold sheaf Held springing beneath Orient! that dost hang The space of dewdrops running over leaf; Thy fleetingness is bigger in the ghost Than Time with all his host!

X

Of thee to say behold, has said adieu: But love remembers how the sky was green, And how the grasses glimmered lightest blue; How saint-like grey took fervour: how the screen Of cloud grew violet; how thy moment came Between a blush and flame.

XI

Love saw the emissary eglantine Break wave round thy white feet above the gloom; Lay finger on thy star; thy raiment line With cherub wing and limb; wed thy soft bloom, Gold-quivering like sunrays in thistle-down, Earth under rolling brown.

XII

They do not look through love to look on thee, Grave heavenliness! nor know they joy of sight, Who deem the wave of rapt desire must be Its wrecking and last issue of delight. Dead seasons quicken in one petal-spot Of colour unforgot.

XIII

This way have men come out of brutishness To spell the letters of the sky and read A reflex upon earth else meaningless. With thee, O fount of the Untimed! to lead, Drink they of thee, thee eyeing, they unaged Shall on through brave wars waged.

XIV

More gardens will they win than any lost; The vile plucked out of them, the unlovely slain. Not forfeiting the beast with which they are crossed, To stature of the Gods will they attain. They shall uplift their Earth to meet her Lord, Themselves the attuning chord!

XV

The song had ceased; my vision with the song. Then of those Shadows, which one made descent Beside me I knew not: but Life ere long Came on me in the public ways and bent Eyes deeper than of old: Death met I too, And saw the dawn glow through.



MEDITATION UNDER STARS



What links are ours with orbs that are So resolutely far: The solitary asks, and they Give radiance as from a shield: Still at the death of day, The seen, the unrevealed. Implacable they shine To us who would of Life obtain An answer for the life we strain To nourish with one sign. Nor can imagination throw The penetrative shaft: we pass The breath of thought, who would divine If haply they may grow As Earth; have our desire to know; If life comes there to grain from grass, And flowers like ours of toil and pain; Has passion to beat bar, Win space from cleaving brain; The mystic link attain, Whereby star holds on star.

Those visible immortals beam Allurement to the dream: Ireful at human hungers brook No question in the look. For ever virgin to our sense, Remote they wane to gaze intense: Prolong it, and in ruthlessness they smite The beating heart behind the ball of sight: Till we conceive their heavens hoar, Those lights they raise but sparkles frore, And Earth, our blood-warm Earth, a shuddering prey To that frigidity of brainless ray.

Yet space is given for breath of thought Beyond our bounds when musing: more When to that musing love is brought, And love is asked of love's wherefore. 'Tis Earth's, her gift; else have we nought: Her gift, her secret, here our tie. And not with her and yonder sky? Bethink you: were it Earth alone Breeds love, would not her region be The sole delight and throne Of generous Deity?

To deeper than this ball of sight Appeal the lustrous people of the night. Fronting yon shoreless, sown with fiery sails, It is our ravenous that quails, Flesh by its craven thirsts and fears distraught. The spirit leaps alight, Doubts not in them is he, The binder of his sheaves, the sane, the right: Of magnitude to magnitude is wrought, To feel it large of the great life they hold: In them to come, or vaster intervolved, The issues known in us, our unsolved solved: That there with toil Life climbs the self-same Tree, Whose roots enrichment have from ripeness dropped. So may we read and little find them cold: Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide Our eyes; no branch of Reason's growing lopped; Nor dreaming on a dream; but fortified By day to penetrate black midnight; see, Hear, feel, outside the senses; even that we, The specks of dust upon a mound of mould, We who reflect those rays, though low our place, To them are lastingly allied.

So may we read, and little find them cold: Not frosty lamps illumining dead space, Not distant aliens, not senseless Powers. The fire is in them whereof we are born; The music of their motion may be ours. Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth and voiced Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced. Of love, the grand impulsion, we behold The love that lends her grace Among the starry fold. Then at new flood of customary morn, Look at her through her showers, Her mists, her streaming gold, A wonder edges the familiar face: She wears no more that robe of printed hours; Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers.



WOODMAN AND ECHO



Close Echo hears the woodman's axe, To double on it, as in glee, With clap of hands, and little lacks Of meaning in her repartee. For all shall fall, As one has done, The tree of me, Of thee the tree; And unto all The fate we wait Reveals the wheels Whereon we run: We tower to flower, We spread the shade, We drop for crop, At length are laid; Are rolled in mould, From chop and lop: And are we thick in woodland tracks, Or tempting of our stature we, The end is one, we do but wax For service over land and sea. So, strike! the like Shall thus of us, My brawny woodman, claim the tax. Nor foe thy blow, Though wood be good, And shriekingly the timber cracks: The ground we crowned Shall speed the seed Of younger into swelling sacks.

For use he hews, To make awake The spirit of what stuff we be: Our earth of mirth And tears he clears For braver, let our minds agree; And then will men Within them win An Echo clapping harmony.



THE WISDOM OF ELD



We spend our lives in learning pilotage, And grow good steersmen when the vessel's crank! Gap-toothed he spake, and with a tottering shank Sidled to gain the sunny bench of Age. It is the sentence which completes that stage; A testament of wisdom reading blank. The seniors of the race, on their last plank, Pass mumbling it as nature's final page. These, bent by such experience, are the band Who captain young enthusiasts to maintain What things we view, and Earth's decree withstand, Lest dreaded Change, long dammed by dull decay, Should bring the world a vessel steered by brain, And ancients musical at close of day.



EARTH'S PREFERENCE



Earth loves her young: a preference manifest: She prompts them to her fruits and flower-beds; Their beauty with her choicest interthreads, And makes her revel of their merry zest; As in our East much were it in our West, If men had risen to do the work of heads. Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads The ways they walk; by what they speak oppressed. How wrought they in their zenith? 'Tis not writ; Not all; yet she by one sure sign can read: Have they but held her laws and nature dear, They mouth no sentence of inverted wit. More prizes she her beasts than this high breed Wry in the shape she wastes her milk to rear.



SOCIETY



Historic be the survey of our kind, And how their brave Society took shape. Lion, wolf, vulture, fox, jackal and ape, The strong of limb, the keen of nose, we find, Who, with some jars in harmony, combined, Their primal instincts taming, to escape The brawl indecent, and hot passions drape. Convenience pricked conscience, that the mind. Thus entered they the field of milder beasts, Which in some sort of civil order graze, And do half-homage to the God of Laws. But are they still for their old ravenous feasts, Earth gives the edifice they build no base: They spring another flood of fangs and claws.



WINTER HEAVENS



Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive Leap off the rim of earth across the dome. It is a night to make the heavens our home More than the nest whereto apace we strive. Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive, In swarms outrushing from the golden comb. They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam: The living throb in me, the dead revive. Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath, Life glistens on the river of the death. It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt, Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs Of radiance, the radiance enrings: And this is the soul's haven to have felt.

THE END