Poems | Page 8

me, when now I see
The old man, the child, the goose feathers at the edge
of the forest,?And hear all day long the thrush repeat his song.
THE MILL-POND
THE sun blazed while the thunder yet?Added a boom:?A wagtail flickered bright over?The mill-pond's gloom:
Less than the cooing in the alder?Isles of the pool?Sounded the thunder through that plunge?Of waters cool.
Scared starlings on the aspen tip?Past the black mill?Outchattered the stream and the next roar?Far on the hill.
As my feet dangling teased the foam?That slid below?A girl came out. "Take care!" she said--?Ages ago.
She startled me, standing quite close?Dressed all in white:?Ages ago I was angry till?She passed from sight.
Then the storm burst, and as I crouched?To shelter, how?Beautiful and kind, too, she seemed,?As she does now!
IT WAS UPON
IT was upon a July evening.?At a stile I stood, looking along a path?Over the country by a second Spring?Drenched perfect green again. "The lattermath?Will be a fine one." So the stranger said,?A wandering man. Albeit I stood at rest,?Flushed with desire I was. The earth outspread,?Like meadows of the future, I possessed.
And as an unaccomplished prophecy?The stranger's words, after the interval?Of a score years, when those fields are by me?Never to be recrossed, now I recall,?This July eve, and question, wondering,?What of the lattermath to this hoar Spring?
TALL NETTLES
TALL nettles cover up, as they have done?These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough?Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:?Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.
This corner of the farmyard I like most:?As well as any bloom upon a flower?I like the dust on the nettles, never lost?Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.
HAYMAKING
AFTER night's thunder far away had rolled?The fiery day had a kernel sweet of cold,?And in the perfect blue the clouds uncurled,?Like the first gods before they made the world?And misery, swimming the stormless sea?In beauty and in divine gaiety.?The smooth white empty road was lightly strewn?With leaves--the holly's Autumn falls in June--?And fir cones standing stiff up in the heat.?The mill-foot water tumbled white and lit?With tossing crystals, happier than any crowd?Of children pouring out of school aloud.?And in the little thickets where a sleeper?For ever might lie lost, the nettle-creeper?And garden warbler sang unceasingly;?While over them shrill shrieked in his fierce glee?The swift with wings and tail as sharp and narrow?As if the bow had flown off with the arrow.?Only the scent of woodbine and hay new-mown?Travelled the road. In the field sloping down,?Park-like, to where its willows showed the brook,?Haymakers rested. The tosser lay forsook?Out in the sun; and the long waggon stood?Without its team, it seemed it never would?Move from the shadow of that single yew.?The team, as still, until their task was due,?Beside the labourers enjoyed the shade?That three squat oaks mid-field together made?Upon a circle of grass and weed uncut,?And on the hollow, once a chalk-pit, but?Now brimmed with nut and elder-flower so clean.?The men leaned on their rakes, about to begin,?But still. And all were silent. All was old,?This morning time, with a great age untold,?Older than Clare and Cobbett, Morland and Crome,?Than, at the field's far edge, the farmer's home,?A white house crouched at the foot of a great tree.?Under the heavens that know not what years be?The men, the beasts, the trees, the implements?Uttered even what they will in times far hence--?All of us gone out of the reach of change--?Immortal in a picture of an old grange.
HOW AT ONCE
How at once should I know,?When stretched in the harvest blue?I saw the swift's black bow,?That I would not have that view?Another day?Until next May?Again it is due?
The same year after year--?But with the swift alone.?With other things I but fear?That they will be over and done?Suddenly?And I only see?Them to know them gone.
GONE, GONE AGAIN
GONE, gone again,?May, June, July,?And August gone,?Again gone by,
Not memorable?Save that I saw them go,?As past the empty quays?The rivers flow.
And now again,?In the harvest rain,?The Blenheim oranges?Fall grubby from the trees,
As when I was young--?And when the lost one was here--?And when the war began?To turn young men to dung.
Look at the old house,?Outmoded, dignified,?Dark and untenanted,?With grass growing instead
Of the footsteps of life,?The friendliness, the strife;?In its beds have lain?Youth, love, age and pain:
I am something like that;?Only I am not dead,?Still breathing and interested?In the house that is not dark:--
I am something like that:?Not one pane to reflect the sun,?For the schoolboys to throw at--?They have broken every one.
THE SUN USED TO SHINE
THE sun used to shine while we two walked?Slowly together, paused and started?Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked?As either pleased, and cheerfully parted
Each night. We never disagreed?Which gate to rest on. The to be?And the late past we gave small heed.?We turned from men or poetry
To rumours of the war remote?Only till both stood disinclined?For aught but the yellow flavorous coat?Of