Preludes 1921-1922 | Page 7

born, so passionately made,?So knit of English earth and generations,?Who now upon the summer evening watched--?His manhood full upon his middle years--?A white dress moving in the distant pines.
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Down to the valley from their hills they came,?Lake Winter and the woman that he loved.?He waited by a long brown garden wall,?Mottled with moss and lichen, where in the dusk?Like a great moth a late flycatcher wove,?And watched her coming down a rutted path,?Towards him. And the flowing of her body,?Sure step through fugitive cadences of limb,?Up to the little golden arch of hair,?Was lovely as a known yet wanted tale.
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Zell Dane, the wife of Martin Dane, who held?Tollington Manor farm, was ten years wed.?Dane was an honest man by groom and horse,?Paid pew-rent and his losing wagers, thought?The British Empire lived at Westminster,?Stood by the State and rights of property,?Drank well, and knew the barmaids of a county.?He married Zell, and neither could have said?Why it was done. Ten years had gone since then,?And he was now a half forgotten habit,?She, some queer porcelain stuff beyond his knowing.
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Lake Winter came and went at Tollington,?As other neighbours, a little in Dane's mind?Suspect for certain rumours of his birth,?But known for a straight rider and plain speaker,?Who meant his words and had words for his meaning.?And Lake and Zell, between the jests at table,?Where they could match the best wits of the room,?Would talk of things that Dane and the rest counted?As pointing ways not good for level minds.?Why pose about Beethoven, and Debussy,?Or these French fellows Degas and Picasso,?When there were Marcus Stone, and A Long, Long Trail,?And "A Little Grey Home in the West," that common folk?Could understand? And, however the truth might be,?It wasn't decent openly to say?That William Wordsworth was a better poet--?Though more or less in a poet was no matter--?Because it seemed that once in his flaming youth?He had loved gloriously in France....
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Dane heard and saw,?And was a little troubled that clear heads?Should cloud and squander thus, a little scornful.?Still if it gave them pleasure, and it but meant?Mind with mind idling together so,?Winter could come and go for all he cared,?He wouldn't grudge ... and then the doubt began,?A thought that somewhere under all this play?And nimbleness was crouching the true thing,?Lust, plain lust. There was between man and woman,?So Dane had learnt, two several conditions,?A compact to keep smooth the day's affairs,?That, and plain lust. This mind play was a sham....?Winter and Zell were lusting, that was all...?Then let them... damn it, let the matter be...?Time would show all, and there were crops and hounds.
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They stood together by the dusky wall.?And long their lips met, in a hushed world fading,?A night of beauty fading in their own.?And then "I made a rhyme for you to-day,?When the last sheaves were binding I made it,?thus--"
I have no strange or subtle thought,?And the old things are best,?In curious tongues I am untaught,?Yet I know rest.
I know the sifting oakleaves still?Upon a twilit sky,?I hear the fernowl on the hill?Go wheeling by.
I know my flocks and how they keep?Their tunes of field and fold,?My scholarship can sow and reap,?From green to gold.
The circled stars from down to sea?I reckon as my gains,?The swallows are as dear to me?As loaded wains.
Yet these were ghosts and fugitive,?Until upon your step they came?By revelation's lips to live?In your dear name.
I saw you walking as dusk fell,?And leaves and wains and heaven and birds?Were miracles my blood may tell,?And not my words.
"And yet I would not lose the tidings come?On so dear words, though the blood knows it all,?As the song says." She spoke; and from the valley?Slowly towards the mill, by ghostly flocks?That stole about the meadows of the moonrise,?They walked, and made this argument of love.
LAKE. How shall they stand for wisdom, who forbid?The body's love, which is so small a thing,?Yet let the souls, or minds, or what you will?Be mated, as though spirit were the drudge,?For no-one's heed, and limbs alone to be,?As though clay were the gold, inviolate??If I could grudge love coming anywhere,?Falling even on whom I loved in all,?I think the body at least should have no share?Of jealousy from me, which should be spent?Rather on minds meeting above my own,?Myself an exile from their understanding.?Beloved, in the mating of our minds?I am all peace to walk thus in your presence,?And in that peace your body of my desire,?And all my earth, as passionate as any,?Seem snares to tempt us to the loss of all,?Since by them the world threatens this our peace,?Which else we may so gather, undenied.?Then is not flesh merely the trouble of love,?When love goes thus, as love between us now?
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Zell took his hand, and her life was in his veins,?And his words beat back upon him