Poems, 1908-1919
RECIPROCITY
I DO not think that skies and meadows are
Moral, or that the fixture of a star
Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees
Have wisdom in their windless silences.
Yet these are things invested in my mood
With constancy, and peace, and fortitude,
That in my troubled season I can cry
Upon the wide composure of the sky,
And envy fields, and wish that I might be
As little daunted as a star or tree.
THE HOURS
Those hours are best when suddenly
The voices of the world are still,
And in that quiet place is heard
The voice of one small singing bird,
Alone within his quiet tree;
When to one field that crowns a hill,
With but the sky for neighbourhood,
The crowding counties of my brain
Give all their riches, lake and plain,
Cornland and fell and pillared wood;
When in a hill-top acre, bare
For the seed’s use, I am aware
Of all the beauty that an age
Of earth has taught my eyes to see;
When Pride and Generosity
The Constant Heart and Evil Rage,
Affection and Desire, and all
The passions of experience
Are no more tabled in my mind,
Learning’s idolatry, but find
Particularity of sense
In daily fortitudes that fall
From this or that companion,
Or in an angry gossip’s word;
When one man speaks for Every One,
When Music lives in one small bird,
When in a furrowed hill we see
All beauty in epitome —
Those hours are best; for those belong
To the lucidity of song.
A TOWN WINDOW
Beyond my window in the night
Is but a drab inglorious street,
Yet there the frost and clean starlight
As over Warwick woods are sweet.
Under the grey drift of the town
The crocus works among the mould
As eagerly as those that crown
The Warwick spring in flame and gold.
And when the tramway down the hill
Across the cobbles moans and rings,
There is about my window-sill
The tumult of a thousand wings.
MYSTERY
Think not that mystery has place
In the obscure and veilèd face,
Or when the midnight watches are
Uncompanied of moon or star,
Or where the fields and forests lie
Enfolded from the loving eye
By fogs rebellious to the sun,
Or when the poet’s rhymes are spun
From dreams that even in his own
Imagining are half-unknown.
These are not mystery, but mere
Conditions that deny the clear
Reality that lies behind
The weak, unspeculative mind,
Behind contagions of the air
And screens of beauty everywhere,
The brooding and tormented sky,
The hesitation of an eye.
Look rather when the landscapes glow
Through crystal distances as though
The forty shires of England spread
Into one vision harvested,
Or when the moonlit waters lie
In silver cold lucidity;
Those countenances search that bear
Witness to very character,
And listen to the song that weighs
A life’s adventure in a phrase —
These are the founts of wonder, these
The plainer miracles to please
The brain that reads the world aright;
Here is the mystery of light.
THE COMMON LOT
When youth and summer-time are gone,
And age puts quiet garlands on,
And in the speculative eye
The fires of emulation die,
But as to-day our time shall be
Trembling upon eternity,
While, still inconstant in debate,
We shall on revelation wait,
And age as youth will daily plan
The sailing of the caravan.
PASSAGE
When you deliberate the page
Of Alexander’s pilgrimage,
Or say – “It is three years, or ten,
Since Easter slew Connolly’s men,”
Or prudently to judgment come
Of Antony or Absalom,
And think how duly are designed
Case and instruction for the mind,
Remember then that also we,
In a moon’s course, are history.
THE WOOD
I walked a nut-wood’s gloom. And overhead
A pigeon’s wing beat on the hidden boughs,
And shrews upon shy tunnelling woke thin
Late winter leaves with trickling sound. Across
My narrow path I saw the carrier ants
Burdened with little pieces of bright straw.
These things I heard and saw, with senses fine
For all the little traffic of the wood,
While everywhere, above me, underfoot,
And haunting every avenue of leaves,
Was mystery, unresting, taciturn.
And haunting the lucidities of life
That are my daily beauty, moves a theme,
Beating along my undiscovered mind.
HISTORY
Sometimes,