Poems | Page 5

earth
This fine May morning.
But the huxter has a bottle of beer;?He drives a cart and his wife sits near?Who does not heed his lack or his hump;?And they laugh as down the lane they bump
This fine May morning.
A GENTLEMAN
"HE has robbed two clubs. The judge at Salisbury?Can't give him more than he undoubtedly?Deserves. The scoundrel! Look at his photograph!?A lady-killer! Hanging's too good by half?For such as he." So said the stranger, one?With crimes yet undiscovered or undone.?But at the inn the Gipsy dame began:?"Now he was what I call a gentleman.?He went along with Carrie, and when she?Had a baby he paid up so readily?His half a crown. Just like him. A crown'd have
been?More like him. For I never knew him mean.?Oh! but he was such a nice gentleman. Oh!?Last time we met he said if me and Joe?Was anywhere near we must be sure and call.?He put his arms around our Amos all?As if he were his own son. I pray God?Save him from justice! Nicer man never trod."
THE BRIDGE
I HAVE come a long way to-day:?On a strange bridge alone,?Remembering friends, old friends,?I rest, without smile or moan,?As they remember me without smile or moan.
All are behind, the kind?And the unkind too, no more?To-night than a dream. The stream?Runs softly yet drowns the Past,?The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and the
Past.
No traveller has rest more blest?Than this moment brief between?Two lives, when the Night's first lights?And shades hide what has never been,?Things goodlier, lovelier, dearer, than will be or have
been.
LOB
AT hawthorn-time in Wiltshire travelling?In search of something chance would never bring,?An old man's face, by life and weather cut?And coloured,--rough, brown, sweet as any nut,--?A land face, sea-blue-eyed,--hung in my mind?When I had left him many a mile behind.?All he said was: "Nobody can't stop 'ee. It's?A footpath, right enough. You see those bits?Of mounds--that's where they opened up the barrows?Sixty years since, while I was scaring sparrows.?They thought as there was something to find there,?But couldn't find it, by digging, anywhere."
To turn back then and seek him, where was the use??There were three Manningfords,--Abbots, Bohun, and
Bruce:?And whether Alton, not Manningford, it was,?My memory could not decide, because?There was both Alton Barnes and Alton Priors.?All had their churches, graveyards, farms, and byres,?Lurking to one side up the paths and lanes,?Seldom well seen except by aeroplanes;?And when bells rang, or pigs squealed, or cocks crowed,?Then only heard. Ages ago the road?Approached. The people stood and looked and turned,?Nor asked it to come nearer, nor yet learned?To move out there and dwell in all men's dust.?And yet withal they shot the weathercock, just?Because 'twas he crowed out of tune, they said:?So now the copper weathercock is dead.?If they had reaped their dandelions and sold?Them fairly, they could have afforded gold.
Many years passed, and I went back again?Among those villages, and looked for men?Who might have known my ancient. He himself?Had long been dead or laid upon the shelf,?I thought. One man I asked about him roared?At my description: "'Tis old Bottlesford?He means, Bill." But another said: "Of course,?It was Jack Button up at the White Horse.?He's dead, sir, these three years." This lasted till?A girl proposed Walker of Walker's Hill,?"Old Adam Walker. Adam's Point you'll see?Marked on the maps."
"That was her roguery,"?The next man said. He was a squire's son?Who loved wild bird and beast, and dog and gun?For killing them. He had loved them from his birth,?One with another, as he loved the earth.?"The man may be like Button, or Walker, or?Like Bottlesford, that you want, but far more?He sounds like one I saw when I was a child.?I could almost swear to him. The man was wild?And wandered. His home was where he was free.?Everybody has met one such man as he.?Does he keep clear old paths that no one uses?But once a life-time when he loves or muses??He is English as this gate, these flowers, this mire.?And when at eight years old Lob-lie-by-the-fire?Came in my books, this was the man I saw.?He has been in England as long as dove and daw,?Calling the wild cherry tree the merry tree,?The rose campion Bridget-in-her-bravery;?And in a tender mood he, as I guess,?Christened one flower Love-in-idleness,?And while he walked from Exeter to Leeds?One April called all cuckoo-flowers Milkmaids.?From him old herbal Gerard learnt, as a boy,?To name wild clematis the Traveller's-joy.?Our blackbirds sang no English till his ear?Told him they called his Jan Toy 'Pretty dear.'?(She was Jan Toy the Lucky, who, having lost?A shilling, and found a penny loaf, rejoiced.)?For reasons of his own to him the wren?Is Jenny Pooter. Before all other men?'Twas he first called the Hog's Back the Hog's Back.?That Mother Dunch's Buttocks should not lack?Their name was his care. He too could explain?Totteridge and Totterdown and Juggler's Lane:?He knows, if anyone. Why Tumbling Bay,?Inland