Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy
Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet.
* * *
Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers,
Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise
High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger;
Yet am I the light and living of her eyes.
Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming,
Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames. -
Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting,
Arms up, she dropped: our souls were in our names.
* * *
Soon will she lie like a white-frost sunrise.
Yellow oats and brown wheat,
barley pale as rye,
Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher,
Felt the
girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly.
Soon will she lie like a blood-red
sunset.
Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring!
Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants,
Nightingale and
swallow, song and dipping wing.
* * *
Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April
Sp
reading bough on bough a
primrose mountain, you
Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields,
Youngest green transfused in silver shining through:
Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry:
Fair as in image my seraph love appears
Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eye-lids:
Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears.
* * *
Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,
I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need.
Every
woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood,
Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed.
Flushing like the dogwood
crimson in October;
Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown;
Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam:
All seem to know what is for heaven alone.
THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD
Carols nature,
counsel men.
Different notes as rook from wren
Hear we when our steps begin,
And the choice is cast within,
Where a
robber raven's tale
Urges passion's nightingale.
Hark to the three. Chimed they in one,
Life were music of the sun.
Liquid first, and then the caw,
Then the cry that knows not law.
I
As the birds do, so do we,
Bill our mate, and choose our tree.
Swift to building work addressed,
Any straw will help a nest.
Mates are warm, and this is truth,
Glad the young that come of youth.
They have bloom i' the blood and sap
Chilling at no thunder-clap.
Man and woman on the thorn
Trust not Earth, and have her scorn.
They who in her lead confide,
Wither me if they spread not wide!
Look for aid to little things,
You will get them quick as wings,
Thick as feathers; would you feed,
Take the leap that springs the need.
II
Contemplate the rutted road:
Life is both a lure and goad.
Each to hold in
measure just,
Trample
appetite to dust.
Mark the fool and
wanton spin:
Keep to
harness as a skin.
Ere you follow nature's lead,
Of her powers in you have heed;
Else a shiverer you will find
You have challenged humankind.
Mates are chosen marketwise:
Coolest bargainer best buys.
Leap not, nor let leap the heart:
Trot your track, and drag your cart.
So your end may be in wool,
Honoured, and with
manger full.
III
O the rosy light! it fleets,
Dearer dying than all sweets.
That is life: it waves and goes;
Solely in that cherished Rose
Palpitates, or else 'tis death.
Call it love with all thy
breath.
Love! it lingers: Love! it nears:
Love! O Love! the Rose appears,
Blushful, magic, reddening air.
Now the choice is on thee: dare!
Mortal seems the touch, but makes
Immortal the hand that takes.
Feel what sea within thee shames
Of its force all other claims,
Drowns them. Clasp! the world will be
Heavenly Rose to swelling sea.
THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH
I chanced upon an early walk to spy
A troop of children through an
orchard gate:
The boughs hung low, the grass was high;
They had but to lift hands or wait
For fruits to fill them; fruits were all their sky.
They shouted,
running on from tree to tree,
And played the game the wind plays, on and round.
'Twas
visible in
visible glee
Pursuing; and a fountain's sound
Of
laughter spouted, pattering fresh on me.
I could have watched them till the
daylight fled,
Their pretty bower made such a light of day.
A small one tumbling sang, 'Oh! head!'
The rest to comfort her straightway
Seized on a branch and thumped down apples red.
The tiny creature flashing through green grass,
And laughing with her feet and eyes among
Fresh apples, while a little lass
Over as o'er breeze-ripples hung:
That sight I saw, and passed as aliens pass.
My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes,
Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers;
Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains,
Across a heath I walked for hours,
And met its rival tenants, rays and rains.
Still in my view mile-distant firs appeared,
When, under a patched channel-bank enriched
With foxglove whose late bells drooped seared,
Behold, a family had pitched
Their camp, and labouring the low tent upreared.
Here, too, were many children, quick to scan
A new thing coming;
swarthy cheeks, white teeth:
In many-coloured rags they ran,
Like iron runlets of the heath.
Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can.
Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at sea
Tipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid
From either ridge unequally),
Lean, swift and voluble, bestrid
A starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee.
They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and broke
In act to follow, but as one they snuffed
Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke
Of provender, its pale flame puffed,
And rolled athwart dwarf furzes grey-blue smoke.
Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam,
The mother-pot perusing, all, stretched flat,
Paused for its bubbling-up supreme:
A dog
upright in
circle sat,
And oft his nose went with the flying steam.
I turned and looked on heaven
awhile, where now
The moor-faced
sunset broadened with red light;
Threw high aloft a golden bough,
And seemed the desert of the night
Far down with
melloworchards to endow.
EARTH AND MAN
I
On her great
venture, Man,
Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breast
Which is his well of strength, his home of rest,
And fair to scan.
II
More aid than that embrace,
That
nourishment, she cannot give: his heart
Involves his fate; and she who urged the start
Abides the race.
III
For he is in the lists
Contentious with the elements, whose dower
First
sprang him; for swift vultures to devour
If he desists.
IV
His
breath of
instant thirst
Is
warning of a creature matched with strife,
To meet it as a bride, or let fall life
On life's accursed.
V
No longer forth he bounds
The lusty animal, afield to roam,
But peering in Earth's entrails, where the gnome
Strange themes propounds.
VI
By
hungersharply sped
To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use,
In each new ring he bears a giant's thews,
An infant's head.
VII
And ever that old task
Of
reading what he is and
whence he came,
Whither to go, finds wilder letters flame
Across her mask.
VIII
She hears his wailful prayer,
When now to the In
visible he raves
To rend him from her, now of his mother craves
Her calm, her care.
IX
The thing that shudders most
Within him is the burden of his cry.
Seen of his dread, she is to his blank eye