Poems | Page 3

road and what they see?Over the bank, and what the children tell.?The path, winding like silver, trickles on,?Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss?That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk?With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain.?The children wear it. They have flattened the bank?On top, and silvered it between the moss?With the current of their feet, year after year.?But the road is houseless, and leads not to school.?To see a child is rare there, and the eye?Has but the road, the wood that overhangs?And underyawns it, and the path that looks?As if it led on to some legendary?Or fancied place where men have wished to go?And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.
THE COMBE
THE Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark.?Its mouth is stopped with bramble, thorn, and briar;?And no one scrambles over the sliding chalk?By beech and yew and perishing juniper?Down the half precipices of its sides, with roots?And rabbit holes for steps. The sun of Winter,?The moon of Summer, and all the singing birds?Except the missel-thrush that loves juniper,?Are quite shut out. But far more ancient and dark?The Combe looks since they killed the badger there,?Dug him out and gave him to the hounds,?That most ancient Briton of English beasts.
IF I SHOULD EVER BY CHANCE
IF I should ever by chance grow rich?I'll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch,?Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater,?And let them all to my elder daughter.?The rent I shall ask of her will be only?Each year's first violets, white and lonely,?The first primroses and orchises--?She must find them before I do, that is.?But if she finds a blossom on furze?Without rent they shall all for ever be hers,?Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch,?Roses, Pyrgo and Lapwater,--?I shall give them all to my elder daughter.
WHAT SHALL I GIVE?
WHAT shall I give my daughter the younger?More than will keep her from cold and hunger??I shall not give her anything.?If she shared South Weald and Havering,?Their acres, the two brooks running between,?Paine's Brook and Weald Brook,?With pewit, woodpecker, swan, and rook,?She would be no richer than the queen?Who once on a time sat in Havering Bower?Alone, with the shadows, pleasure and power.?She could do no more with Samarcand,?Or the mountains of a mountain land?And its far white house above cottages?Like Venus above the Pleiades.?Her small hands I would not cumber?With so many acres and their lumber,?But leave her Steep and her own world?And her spectacled self with hair uncurled,?Wanting a thousand little things?That time without contentment brings.
IF I WERE TO OWN
IF I were to own this countryside?As far as a man in a day could ride,?And the Tyes were mine for giving or letting,--?Wingle Tye and Margaretting?Tye,--and Skreens, Gooshays, and Cockerells,?Shellow, Rochetts, Bandish, and Pickerells,?Marlins, Lambkins, and Lillyputs,?Their copses, ponds, roads, and ruts,?Fields where plough-horses steam and plovers?Fling and whimper, hedges that lovers?Love, and orchards, shrubberies, walls?Where the sun untroubled by north wind falls,?And single trees where the thrush sings well?His proverbs untranslatable,?I would give them all to my son?If he would let me any one?For a song, a blackbird's song, at dawn.?He should have no more, till on my lawn?Never a one was left, because I?Had shot them to put them into a pie,--?His Essex blackbirds, every one,?And I was left old and alone.
Then unless I could pay, for rent, a song?As sweet as a blackbird's, and as long--?No more--he should have the house, not I:?Margaretting or Wingle Tye,?Or it might be Skreens, Gooshays, or Cockerells,?Shellow, Rochetts, Bandish, or Pickerells,?Martins, Lambkins, or Lillyputs,?Should be his till the cart tracks had no ruts.
AND YOU, HELEN
AND you, Helen, what should I give you??So many things I would give you?Had I an infinite great store?Offered me and I stood before?To choose. I would give you youth,?All kinds of loveliness and truth,?A clear eye as good as mine,?Lands, waters, flowers, wine,?As many children as your heart?Might wish for, a far better art?Than mine can be, all you have lost?Upon the travelling waters tossed,?Or given to me. If I could choose?Freely in that great treasure-house?Anything from any shelf,?I would give you back yourself,?And power to discriminate?What you want and want it not too late,?Many fair days free from care?And heart to enjoy both foul and fair,?And myself, too, if I could find?Where it lay hidden and it proved kind.
WHEN FIRST
WHEN first I came here I had hope,?Hope for I knew not what. Fast beat?My heart at sight of the tall slope?Or grass and yews, as if my feet
Only by scaling its steps of chalk?Would see something no other hill?Ever disclosed. And now I walk?Down it the last time. Never will
My heart beat so again at sight?Of any hill although as fair?And loftier. For infinite?The change, late unperceived, this year,
The twelfth, suddenly, shows me plain.?Hope now,--not health, nor cheerfulness,?Since they can come and go again,?As often one brief hour witnesses,--
Just hope has gone