tremulous
Ever-wailful trees bemoaning him, a bruised
purple cyclamen.
SEED-TIME
I
Flowers of the willow-herb are wool;
Flowers of the briar berries red;
Speeding their seed as the
breeze may rule,
Flowers of the
thistleloosen the thread.
Flowers of the clematis drip in beard,
Slack from the fir-tree youngly climbed;
Chaplets in air, flies
foliage seared;
Heeled upon earth, lie clusters rimed.
II
Where were skies of the
mantle stained
Orange and
scarlet, a coat of frieze
Travels from North till day has waned,
Tattered, soaked in the ditch's dyes;
Tumbles the rook under grey or slate;
Else enfolding us, damps to the bone;
Narrows the world to my neighbour's gate;
Paints me Life as a wheezy crone.
III
Now seems none but the
spider lord;
Star in
circle his web waits prey,
Silvering bush-mounds, blue brushing sward;
Slow runs the hour, swift flits the ray.
Now to his thread-
shroud is he nigh,
Nigh to the
tangle where wings are sealed,
He who frolicked the jewelled fly;
All is adroop on the down and the weald.
IV
Mists more lone for the sheep-bell enwrap
Nights that tardily let slip a morn
Paler than moons, and on noontide's lap
Flame dies cold, like the rose late born.
Rose born late, born withered in bud! -
I, even I, for a
zenith of sun
Cry, to
fulfil me,
nourish my blood:
O for a day of the long light, one!
V
Master the blood, nor read by chills,
Earth admonishes: Hast thou ploughed,
Sown, reaped, harvested grain for the mills,
Thou hast the light over shadow of cloud.
Steadily eyeing, before that wail
Animal-
infant, thy mind began,
Momently nearer me: should sight fail,
Plod in the track of the husbandman.
VI
Verily now is our season of seed,
Now in our Autumn; and Earth discerns
Them that have served her in them that can read,
Glassing, where under the surface she burns,
Quick at her wheel, while the fuel, decay,
Brightens the fire of renewal: and we?
Death is the word of a bovine day,
Know you the breast of the springing To-be.
HARD WEATHER
Bursts from a rending East in flaws
The young green leaflet's harrier, sworn
To strew the garden, strip the shaws,
And show our Spring with
banner torn.
Was ever such virago morn?
The wind has teeth, the wind has claws.
All the wind's wolves through woods are loose,
The wild wind's falconry aloft.
Shrill underfoot the grassblade shrews,
At
gallop, clumped, and down the croft
Bestrid by shadows,
beaten, tossed;
It seems a
scythe, it seems a rod.
The howl is up at the howl's accost;
The shivers greet and the shivers nod.
Is the land ship? we are rolled, we drive
Tritonly, cleaving hiss and hum;
Whirl with the dead, or mount or dive,
Or down in dregs, or on in scum.
And drums the distant, pipes the near,
And vale and hill are grey in grey,
As when the surge is crumbling sheer,
And sea-mews wing the haze of spray.
Clouds--are they bony witches?--swarms,
Darting swift on the robber's
flight,
Hurry an
infant sky in arms:
It peeps, it becks; 'tis day, 'tis night.
Black while over the loop of blue
The swathe is closed, like
shroud on corse.
Lo, as if swift the Furies flew,
The Fates at heel at a cry to horse!
Interpret me the
savage whirr:
And is it Nature scourged, or she,
Her offspring's executioner,
Reducing land to
barren sea?
But is there meaning in a day
When this
fierce angel of the air,
Intent to throw, and haply slay,
Can for what
breath of life we bear,
Exact the wrestle?--Call to mind
The many meanings glistening up
When Nature to her nurslings kind,
Hands them the fruitage and the cup!
And seek we rich significance
Not otherwhere than with those tides
Of pleasure on the sunned expanse,
Whose flow deludes, whose ebb derides?
Look in the face of men who fare
Lock-mouthed, a match in lungs and thews
For this
fierce angel of the air,
To twist with him and take his bruise.
That is the face
beloved of old
Of Earth, young mother of her brood:
Nor broken for us shows the mould
When
muscle is in mind renewed:
Though farther from her nature rude,
Yet nearer to her spirit's hold:
And though of gentler mood serene,
Still forceful of her fountain-jet.
So shall her blows be shrewdly met,
Be luminously read the scene
Where Life is at her grindstone set,
That she may give us edgeing keen,
String us for battle, till as play
The common strokes of fortune shower.
Such meaning in a dagger-day
Our wits may clasp to wax in power.
Yea, feel us warmer at her breast,
By spin of blood in lusty drill,
Than when her honeyed hands caressed,
And Pleasure, sapping, seemed to fill.
Behold the life at ease; it drifts.
The sharpened life commands its course.
She winnows, winnows
roughly; sifts,
To dip her chosen in her source:
Contention is the vital force,
Whence pluck they brain, her prize of gifts,
Sky of the senses! on which height,
Not disconnected, yet released,
They see how spirit comes to light,
Through
conquest of the inner beast,
Which Measure tames to
movement sane,
In
harmony with what is fair.
Never is Earth misread by brain:
That is the welling of her, there
The mirror: with one step beyond,
For
likewise is it voice; and more,
Benignest kinship bids respond,
When wail the weak, and them restore
Whom days as fell as this may rive,
While Earth sits ebon in her gloom,
Us atomies of life alive
Unheeding, bent on life to come.
Her children of the labouring brain,
These are the champions of the race,
True parents, and the sole humane,
With understanding for their base.
Earth yields the milk, but all her mind
Is vowed to thresh for stouter stock.
Her
passion for old giantkind,
That scaled the mount, uphurled the rock,
Devolves on them who read aright
Her meaning and devoutly serve;
Nor in her starlessness of night
Peruse her with the craven nerve:
But even as she from grass to corn,
To eagle high from grubbing mole,
Prove in strong brain her noblest born,
The station for the
flight of soul.
THE SOUTH-WESTER
Day of the cloud in fleets! O day
Of
wedded white and blue, that sail
Immingled, with a
footing ray
In shadow-sandals down our vale! -
And swift to ravish golden meads,
Swift up the run of turf it speeds,
Thy bright of head and dark of heel,
To where the
hilltop flings on sky,
As hawk from wrist or dust from wheel,
The
tiptoe sealers tossed to fly:-
Thee the last thunder's caverned peal
Delivered from a wailful night:
All dusky round thy cradled light,
Those brine-born issues, now in bloom
Transfigured, wreathed as raven's plume
And briony-leaf to watch thee lie:
Dark eyebrows o'er a dreamful eye
Nigh
opening: till in the braid
Of
purpled vapours thou wert rosed:
Till that new babe a Goddess maid
Appeared and
vividly disclosed
Her beat of life: then
crimson played
On edges of the plume and leaf:
Shape had they and fair feature brief,
The wings, the smiles: they flew the breast,
Earth's milk. But what
imperial march
Their standards led for earth, none guessed
Ere
upward of a coloured arch,
An arrow straining eager head
Lightened, and high for
zenith sped.
Fierier followed; followed Fire.
Name the young lord of Earth's desire,
Whose look her wine is, and whose mouth
Her music! Beauteous was she seen