Preludes 1921-1922 | Page 9

all the phrasing of his body good.?And twilight fell on the full harvest home,?And the barn doors were closed, and painted wagons?Stood empty by the ricks, with sunken wheels?Smeared with the fallen husks, and voice was none,?And silence with the moon was over all.
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Lake through the eve walked his familiar paths,?Counting the labour of his years; the shed?Where morn and night the cattle came to stall,?Empty and still now but for the timbering rats;?The low smooth paven dairy, where the moon?Now sent a shaft on one full yellow bowl;?The barn so happily at teeming time again,?The rickyard stacked with hurdles by the fence,?The long loft over plough and wagon teams.?Among the heavy apple trees he passed,?By ledgy sheep track, over the new stubble,?Across the valley, and in the shadow kept?Of Martin Dane's home hop-yard, and again?Back to his own hillside. And in the south,?Beyond the moon, over the midnight sea,?Came up a cloud all heavy with black wind.
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Zell by the mill was standing when he came,?Now darkly gowned so that she seemed a shadow,?Black by the black mill, save for the white face,?And gold hair and white hands that caught the moonlight.?Together the wide wooden steps they climbed,?By broken treads and splitting rail, and he?Lifted the rusted latch, and there within?Were folded sacks perished along the seam,?Forgotten with the dust, and the bare walls,?Now weather-broken. Above them a dim light?Showed them a laddered way still up. They came?Into the high roof chamber, and a rent?In the top timbers let the moonlight in,?Half moulding to their vision spars and beams,?The mill's old ghostly life, and sail-cloth piled?From the use of generations. A window space?Just from their towery refuge let them look?Over familiar earth now tranced. And Lake?Saw yet again his roofs and acres loved,?Tenderly, as though interpreters?Of his long care and their good yielding hours?Freshly upon his senses ministered; Zell?Across the valley saw a lone slumbering light,?While from the south the mounting darkness crept,?And the wind gathered, moaning upon the mill,?Filling its frame with a low pulsing breath.
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And over love the heavenly figures went?In their unchanging change. No longer now?The moonlight shafted through the torn roof-timbers,?And star by star crossed the small field of sky,?And in those hours of peace that only comes?With passion mated and of passion born,?Lake knew within him stirring that far beauty?Of an old starry still Helvellyn night.?And Zell made all the wisdom of her words?Wisdom of life, so simple and unclouded,?Leaving no fume of trouble in the dark,?Ending for ever the brain's captivity.
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They slept. And still the south wind gathered up,?Gust upon gust to a full swelling tide,?And the great sail-timbers groaned, and blackness fell?Over the mill that trembled as in pain?Of age now nearly with all quarrels done.?Along the ridges of the downs it swept,?Beating the boughs of ash and elm, a flood?Of storm exulting in deliverance.?And fury up and down the valleys played?And rose and spilt and sank upon the hills,?And to and fro the thunder bayed, till sudden?The world about the sleeping lovers shook?With sounding doom. And Zell, waking, cried out,?And he beside her stood, and folded her?A moment as from fear, and kissed her, and they turned?To go, when from the bases of the mill?A shrieking as of life being crushed and torn?Clanged out upon the beating elements,?And the hurt timbers, whipped and wrencht, sent up?A last fierce wail, and for a moment swayed,?Then gave the life up of a hundred years,?And to the earth the mill plunged in defeat.
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Sleepers along the hill-top in the night?Stirred as a ruin above the thunder broke,?And slept again. And dawn upon a world?Of leaves and downs and sheep washed into brightness?Came on that Sussex out of a clear sky,?And on the sea the little ships went on?With sails just filled with a small virgin wind.?And slowly one by one the village came?To see the old mill that their sires had known,?And sires beyond them, blasted in a world?Where peace was lord as in immortal mood.?They stood and silence kept them until one?Saw suddenly upon the dawn breeze blown,?Out from a mound of split and twisted timber?A strand of golden hair. And strong arms worked?Until upon the grass unheeding lay?Those two dear bodies locked in a love that now?Was beyond malice and denial and fear.
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And Martin Dane home from his hunting came,?And heard, and saw them lying side by side,?And wondered how could folly pay so much?For so unsound and gossipy an end,?Gave his instructions for a decent grave,?And found a tap-room topic to his mind.
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That night the promise of the dawn was full,?And on the broken mill a clear moon shone,?Silvering all the ways the lovers knew.?And by the wreck a shadowy figure watched,?Half Lake, and half that old Helvellyn lover,?And on the night a whispered cadence fell--
Again in the world, a story has been