Preludes 1921-1922 | Page 8

as she spoke.
.....
ZELL. Dear, you are wise of all your books, and speech?Of windy downs, and polities of men,?And the old passions weaving history,?And strong and gentle things of sea and earth,?And the poor passing of the life of man,?But not in this. You have your great-heart courage?For all such ardours as might make you seem?Some fabled hero standing against fate,?But not in this. In sifting vanity?From the right honour, and building from ambition,?You have a vision constant as the tides,?But not in this. They may look Sussex over?For any man who found a crooked word?Ever upon your lips, and vainly look,?Because, dear, truth is an old habit in you,?But not in this. Here in the night enchanted,?With not an ear to catch the whispered truth,?Let nothing but the truth between us be--?I love you, Lake; I love the fair mind moving?In equal joy among men's praise or censure;?I love the courage of its lonely flight,?Here in a land of light convenience.?I love you for the years that you have given?To Sussex plough and pasture till they are grown?Surer and richer in your wit than any.?I love you for the love in which you gather?My mind that from youth on has gone unmated,?And then I love you for the bearing kept?In you when slight occasions something royal?Take on because you silently are there.?I know you, Lake, for a man worthy honour,?And well to honour is well to delight.?But, dear, with all this giving of my love,?Great and unmeasured giving, sending back?In joy the worship that you bring to me,?I love your glowing body, and you love mine.?No words, or thrift of philosophic thought,?Can put that love out of the love we are.?At night, alone, when the dark covers me,?I ache for you, body for body I ache.?And then I know that over you as well?The dear, forlorn, resistless pain is full.?We may persuade, virtuously persuade,?That this is but an accident of love,?Not of love's very being, a thing to bind?In brave captivity at the world's bidding,?But I know, as you know it, that persuasion?So made is outcast in the house of truth.?I love you, and the thing I love is made?All wonderful of flesh and spirit both,?Body and mind inseparably one,?And I must spend my love on all or nothing.?Should I but love those limbs so rightly planned?By ancestry so wise of English earth,?It were a simple harlotry in me.?But, Lake, to love the life and not the house,?The living house so admirably built?Of tissue flawless as the material stars,?Wherein the life I love is manifest,?Were harlotry no less I know than that.?You, the dear Lake of my idolatry,?For I am something near it, as you are,?Are one life, whereto pilgrim thought conspires?With all the cunning moulding of the flesh,?And of my brain and body is my love,?Dream to your dream, desire to your desire.?If you should die, my memory of you?Would be no tale of the mere mind conceiving,?Of contemplation thriving thus or thus,?In trance of spaces where not even wings nor breath?Recall the moving of substantial things.?Rather in me for ever should be glowing?The imaging mind mated in equal limbs,?Thought visible in lines of the athlete,?Wisdom persuading in the lover's clasp.?And how should thought know thought until the whole?Of body's beauty is by body learnt??Until the trial of that most dear seclusion?Is past, and all the dangers of mere lust?Disproved, when in possession is no stale?Regret and disillusion, how should be known?That the still hours of thought with thought are stable?Against the wearing of dissolving time??Dear, we must love by all the tokens of love,?Before the presence of love beyond dispute?Is between us and for ever fixed.
.....
Lake heard, and knew that answer could be none,?Then by the sheep-tracks on the silver downs?Silent they walked, and midnight came apace,?And by the bases of the mill they went,?Close moving, arm by arm, and down again?Towards the valley, where again they stood,?And let their lives beat out upon the night.?And as they waited on farewell, a form?Came up before them, and Martin Dane stood there,?And "by your leave," he murmured, and went on.?Then Zell, "To-morrow, when the moon is full,?Meet me beside the mill mound. Martin goes?To Farnham for the otter hunting." Lake?Took her and kissed, and with no word they parted?Where the light still looked from the hillside farm?Over the valley to his home. And he?As dreaming passed again by the mill to sleep.
.....
Firmer the mould, surer the flight of boughs,?Familiar move the bright plains of the air,?And newly stedfast the gospel he had known?Year by year written on his Sussex life,?Now seemed to Lake this day. Among his men,?All day he drew and pegged the rickyard straw,?And piled the barn from floor to the swallows' beam,?Brown throated and brown armed, the golden rose?Of summer wind glowing upon his face,?And