The Project Gutenberg eBook of As the wind blows

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Title: As the wind blows

Author: Eden Phillpotts

Release date: March 18, 2026 [eBook #78234]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Macmillan Co, 1920

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78234

Credits: Tim Miller, chenzw, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AS THE WIND BLOWS ***

[Pg 1]

AS THE WIND BLOWS

[Pg 3]

AS THE WIND BLOWS

BY
EDEN PHILLPOTTS

AUTHOR OF “THE GIRL AND THE FAUN,” “DANCE OF THE MONTHS,” “EVANDER,” ETC.

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.

LONDON: ELKIN MATHEWS

MCMXX

[Pg 4]

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH

[Pg 5]

	PAGE
ON EYLESBARROW	7
NOCTURNE	8
THE HUNTING	9
THE STRIKING HOURS	10
NIGHT	11
SWINBURNE	12
JUNE	13
BELLS OF VARENNA	14
IN THE VALLEY	16
GAFFER’S SONG	18
SCANDAL	19
WELCOME	20
THE NEOLITH	21
IN A WOOD	24
GHOSTIES AT THE WEDDING	26
DAWN WIND	27
DART	28
BY RUNDLESTONE	30
A SONG TO SILVER EYES	31
ENOUGH	32
SONG OF THE LARCHES	32
A SONG	33
BUONARROTI’S “DAWN”	34
[Pg 6]A DARTMOOR STREAM	35
THE FALL	37
LAPWINGS	38
TO AN OPAL	39
JACK O’ LANTERN	40
THE OLD ROAD	41
THE DOUBTFUL ONES	42
LITANY TO PAN	44
A SONG	45
CHERRYBROOK	46
THE HUNTER’S MOON	47
VOICES	48
WIND OF THE WEST	50
THE LOVER AND THE WIND	51
A SONG	52
THE GRAVE OF KEATS	53
TIGER	55
THE PUDDLE	61
VISION	62
IN GALLIPOLI	63
THEN AND NOW	65
VIGIL	66
DARTMOOR NIGHT	68
THE FRUIT OF THE TREE	70
WHERE MY TREASURE IS	80

[Pg 7]

ON EYLESBARROW

Hither, at set of autumn sun,

Each golden child of Hesper flies

From gardens of old deities,

Where Zeus the maiden Hera won.

Their footsteps kindled stone by stone

The time-worn barrow, where it stands,

Above wide, valley border-lands,

Austere and imminent and alone.

Their fingers smoothed each granite frown

And blossomed where no flow’r may live,

And gave, what never flow’r can give,

Of living flame-light for a crown.

And from their flickering kirtles fell

A gleam upon its stubborn ways,

To touch their nakedness with rays

Of amaranth and asphodel.

O Hesperids, remember him

Whose sun is westering to the change,

Along uneven paths and strange,

By shadowed aisles and frontiers dim.

Flash but one token, pure and rare,

From the abundance of your grace,

For many a storm hath stripped the face

Of this, his life, and left it bare.

[Pg 8]

Dance but one measure in a heart

Sad and unprofitably proud,

Ere to your chariots of cloud

Ye leap again and so depart.

NOCTURNE

Twilight and falling dew; a little bell

And answering bell, from campanile far,

Chime and are silent; one triumphant star

Conquers the after-glow, that like a shell,

Nacreous and rose, vibrating as it dies,

Faints on the lifted forehead of the snow,

Falls from the deepening purple of the skies

And falling fades upon the hill below.

Unnumbered olive-trees, like hooded wights,

Stand solemn in their companies and grey;

Mule-mounted men go clattering down the way

To yonder galaxy of earth-born lights.

The crepuscule from sea and radiant land

Hath drunk the colour; night lifts up her hand

For peace before the coming of the moon—

All darkling heaven will be silver soon.

[Pg 9]

THE HUNTING

When red sun fox steals down the sky,

And darkness dims the heavens high,

There leap again upon his tracks

The eager, starry, hunting packs.

They glitter, glitter, gold and green,

With sparks of frosty fire between,

And Dian bright as day;

While in the gloaming, far below,

Brown owl doth shout “Hi! Tally Ho

Sun fox hath gone away!”

To music of the spheres they sweep

Over the western world asleep;

Then in the east, with sudden rush,

Sun fox shall whisk his white-tipped brush.

The field is fading, gold and green,

With sparks of frosty fire between,

And Dian growing grey;

While morning leaps the hither hill

And herald lark shouts with a will,

“Sun fox hath gone away!”

Oh, Huntress fond and silly stars—

White Venus, fiery, futile Mars,

In vain your pack ye whirl and cast

Upon the marches of the vast;

[Pg 10]

In vain ye glitter, gold and green,

With sparks of frosty fire between,

And Dian’s arrows fly

In shattered shafts of ebbing light;

For ne’er shall day be caught by night,

And sun fox cannot die.

THE STRIKING HOURS

My brother, can the heart of ocean say

When winds may woo her bosom; when the ships,

Or sudden galleon of an azure day,

Shall fling her foam to rainbows? Can eclipse

Hide up their silver when the full moons will?

Are the cloud-cisterns of the latter rain

At beck of every, summer-starven rill?

Life cannot call the time; nor man may feign

That he shall haply choose when he would have:

To will the striking hours he is not free,

That chime between his cradle and his grave,

Or speed, or slow the hands of destiny.

A bunch of stars upon the vine of heaven

Grows ripe and falls and passes when complete;

The galaxy of grapes to your mouth given,

Bursting their bloomy chalices, are sweet

One little moment; for they will not stay

Your pleasure and their consummation hold

While you misdoubt and linger and delay

Before their cups of purple and of gold.

When to a feast the gods would make you free

At their own time, or never, shall it be.

[Pg 11]

NIGHT

Another day has ended and again

The fading emeralds of the quiet west

Grow dusky o’er the hill-top and the plain,

Dying along each drowsy vale and crest,

Where Earth lifts up her bosom to the breast

Of Night oncoming. Now once more she brings

To the least folded flow’r her primal rest,

Opens the mantle of her darkenings

And sprinkles the white dew from both her starry wings.

The moth and beetle, owl and flittermouse—

All creatures that do call the moon their sun—

Steal silent forth, each from his little house.

They mount and fly, and others creep and run,

Where fox and hare and brock have all begun

The task of living. Now alert, awake,

They seek their joy and substance; every one

Pads out into the dingle, heath and brake;

While hungry fishes stir the silver of the lake.

For servants of the day another boon

Brings Night, and as the working hours decrease,

Lifts up her evening star and sickle moon

To disenthral, unfetter and release;

Bidding the long-drawn tale of labour cease.

She comes with twilight healing for each smart

Of soul and body, lays her unguent peace

With fingers cool on every aching part;

Anoints the tired flesh, soothes the day-foundered heart.

[Pg 12]

She asks no worship from our drooping eyes;

She needs no prayer to minister our plight;

Hers not our little deeds and destinies,

But still to smooth the pillow, lower the light;

Play nurse for every world-aweary wight;

Comfort and succour; at a touch redeem;

And pour her ancient anodyne of might:

Omnipotent sleep, inviolate, supreme,

Insensible as death, without one sigh or dream.

SWINBURNE

Children and lovers and the cloud-robed sea

Shall mourn him first; and then the motherland,

Weeping in silence by his empty hand

And fallen sword, that flashed for Liberty.

Song-bringer of a glad new minstrelsy,

He came and found joy sleeping and swift fanned

Old pagan fires, then snatched an altar brand

And wrote, “The fearless only shall be free!”

Oh, by the flame that made thine heart a home,

By the wild surges of thy silver song,

Seer before the sunrise, may there come

Spirits of dawn to light this aching wrong

Called Earth! Thou saw’st them in the foregrow roam;

But we still wait and watch, still thirst and long.

[Pg 13]

JUNE

June, who goes garlanded, who, never sleeping,

Laughs from behind the eastern hills at night,

And flashes to the hidden skylark keeping

His morning watch and thrilling from the height

Ere yet the stars are dim.

June, who unseals all fountains at their sources,

And pours life like a river overflowing

In proud and passionate desire, who courses

To throne our feeling higher than our knowing

And heap it to the brim.

June, when the new-born find their feet and wings,

Scent the sweet grass and air and taste their being,

And in their wanderings and wonderings,

Their motion and their hearing and their seeing

Conquer the earth and sky.

June, with her feast of flow’rs and lyric rapture,

Whose fair days fly the fleetest of the year,

So pure and fresh that only youth may capture

Their rainbow shapes without a thought of fear,

Without a single sigh.

[Pg 14]

BELLS OF VARENNA

Drowsy and sweet along the Larian Lake

Your melody is stealing;

Your fitful pealing

Floats on the pinion of a summer night.

Aloft the murmuring upland echoes wake

And wing upon the mountains,

Whence flying fountains

Thin their wild whiteness out o’er many a height,

Bells of Varenna,

Bells of Varenna—

Ancient bells,

Solemn bells,

Bells,

Bells.

A tall grey campanile and a spire

Of russet red upspringing,

Meet for your ringing,

O most melodious, mediæval chime,

Arise and point with fane of moonlight fire

To forests and snow ridges

And far-flung bridges

And ruined castles of the olden time,

Bells of Varenna,

Bells of Varenna—

Dulcet bells,

Dreaming bells,

Bells,

Bells.

[Pg 15]

Along a floor of crystal, where the moon,

From her blue mansion bending,

Awaits the sending

Of your deep benison and soft “Good-night,”

Canorous cadence comes. Too soon, too soon,

Faint off the last far throbbing

And silver sobbing

By Como’s patined pathway, still and bright,

Bells of Varenna,

Bells of Varenna—

Sleeping bells,

Weary bells,

Bells,

Bells.

[Pg 16]

IN THE VALLEY

Heather and potentilla fold

The rocks with purple and with gold;

The burn beneath sings clear and cold.

Here man and woman kept a tryst;

Here often met; here first they kissed

Under the white and secret mist.

And here, within this holy place,

He came and thundered her disgrace,

And looked his last upon her face.

And while he cursed her ruined name,

Her young soul fainted, sick with shame,

Before the death knell of her fame.

Had heath and potentil but known

His wrath and her despairing moan,

Their twinkling flowers had surely flown.

And had the burn but felt that cry,

Or understood their agony,

She must have wept her silver dry.

The grey hills heard the lover take

An oath, that made their echoes ache,

To hate all women for her sake.

[Pg 17]

The sunshine saw the woman cast

Herself to earth when he had past,

Her little pitcher broke at last.

But heath and potentil are gay;

The waters sing upon their way,

Though all this happened yesterday.

For June must joy, though joy departs,

And life must laugh, though sorrow smarts,

And buds must break as well as hearts.

[Pg 18]

GAFFER’S SONG

The boys don’t hoe like they used to do,

And the maids don’t sew like they used to do;

The hen don’t lay

And the hound don’t bay,

And the wind don’t blow like it used to do.

The men don’t drink like they used to do,

And the girls don’t wink like they used to do;

The bud don’t swell

And the flow’rs don’t smell;

And the folk don’t think like they used to do.

The milk don’t cream like it used to do,

And the ewes don’t teem like they used to do;

The corn don’t kern

And the sun don’t burn;

And my head won’t scheme like it used to do.

Bad men ban’t hung like they used to be,

Good songs ban’t sung like they used to be;

The jolly and wise

Have all flown to the skies;

And I ban’t so young as I used to be.

[Pg 19]

SCANDAL

The owl alighted in a yew

Beside the portals of my house;

The hour was nearly half-past two

And, as he ate his juicy mouse,

A cuckoo clock made cheerful chime

Within and shouted out the time.

“O gracious God!” the owl began,

And rolled his round eyes at the moon,

“What a black piece of work is man—

Well might we miss cuckoo in June,

How mad, misguided, inhumane

To keep a cuckoo on a chain!

“But all the feathered folk must know;

This infamy I’ll bring to light

And tell the horror high and low

And scream the crime by day and night.

No bird shall sing to him again

Who keeps a cuckoo on a chain.”

Good neighbour, of your charity

Consider that mistaken fowl;

Beware you tell not truth awry

And, hooting with your brother owl,

Into the public ear complain

I keep a cuckoo on a chain.

[Pg 20]

WELCOME

The hard azure on high

That bends over the Spring

Falls a tinkling, a thrill—

Sudden, silvery, shrill;

For the lark’s in the sky

And his lyre-shapen wing

Lifts the song in a spiral at will.

In the East is the wind;

At the fringe of the wood

Shiver catkins of gold

Or the fleece and the fold.

Sure the eaning ewes find

That the sunlight is good,

Though chill Eurus, his scythe’s on the wold.

Dawns a sweet lemon light

Through the red-bosomed earth;

Leaps and sparkles a train

Along dingle and lane;

For the primrosen bright,

They are come to their birth

And the daffodil’s dancing again.

[Pg 21]

THE NEOLITH

Sole standing in utter loneliness—superbly alone—

A monolith ruggedly lifts, with the roseal ling at his feet.

Only the murmur of bees and the twinkle and throb of the heat

On the league-long height, and the shade from his granite thrown.

Roll upon roll of the Moor flung out on a sky-line free;

Clouds at the zenith blue; in the flower-clad earth beneath

The dust of a neolith: one who has swept this heath

As the chieftain of vanished hordes and their fate and their destiny.

When he died, that no mocking phantom, or jealous shade

Of him mighty, should darken their lodge in the distant glen,

They brought their lord hither, on shoulders of mourning men,

And tore at their hair and howled long and fierce music made.

Then they sought for a stone of girth that should evermore mark his place

And be seen for remembrance, afar on the frowning hill,

Of that leader of men, whose right arm and resistless will

Had lifted his clan to power and to splendour and pride of face.

He was cooped with his knees to his chin in a granite kist,

And a granite flake over his head that should last till doom.

[Pg 22]

So near doth he seem that one feels him not dead in his tomb,

But crouching, alive and alert, with a warrior’s axe in his fist.

Does he hear the old gods of the thunder? Can summer sun

Reach down to his pit? May his dog’s ears discern the rain

Hissing over the heather, or tell if the purple stain

From a cloud-shadow dims his grey stone? When the ponies run,

Can he mark the dull drumming above of their unshod feet?

Does he chill when the snowdrift is clogged on the frozen ground?

Does he thrill to the shout of the stream, or the bay of the hound,

Or heed the sad curlew’s cry and the brown snipe bleating his bleat?

Nay, for nothing lies under the grass but the broken stones

Or mayhap a primeval crock, or a fleck of red rust,

For the hero is earth of the earth, and its dust is his dust,

And his flesh is the flesh of the peat, and its bones are his very bones.

That master of men is ascended, for joy and for bane,

And life after life hath he lived and relinquished since then—

In the heather and herbage and birds, in the beetles and foxes and men,

Each in their turn sprung of earth; each in their turn earth again.

[Pg 23]

Yesterday clad with great thews, that builded a chieftain of might;

To-day where the milkwort and fern and the starry tormentil

Spread joy by the auburn beck and loveliness on the hill;

To-morrow a moorman’s fire at the fall of a winter’s night.

And the aura, so azure clear, that is running above the red,

Was the glow of a savage heart imprisoned within the brand;

And the warmth on your hand was the sun on a stone-man’s hand

In the far off urgent days that were lived by the ancient dead.

So mutable myriads wake to the ring of their morning chime;

So mutable myriads pass at the set of their final sun;

And only Matter remains—the august, the unchanging one—

But no shape and no shadow of aught that she moulds on the wheel of Time.

And ye who would bring man his soul from a mystical matrix apart;

And ye who would lift up man’s life to a land beyond Matter’s ken,

Must proclaim how her rape overtook her, and wherefore, and when,

Ere we bend to your idols, or take these your fairyland stories to heart.

[Pg 24]

IN A WOOD

There runs a pathway through the wood

Where lace the boughs and all is good.

The beech-boles don a robe of white

And gleam like ghosts at dayspring light,

When first the pure, canorous note

Throbs from a waking blackbird’s throat;

And down the long aisle dim

Another answers him.

Often they met, the girl and boy

At this still hour; it was her joy

To share a kiss at peep of day

Before he took his working way.

Then light of heart the youngster went,

Leaving the little maid content

To seek her home near by

The forest boundary.

But when at evening back he came

Where the beech-boles were all aflame

With ruddy fire along the glade,

She leapt from out some stealthy shade.

And dawdling once when sunset shone,

He cut their letters, one in one,

Upon an ancient stem,

And drew a heart around them.

[Pg 25]

Then rose the red, accursed star,

And honour swept her boy afar;

While she, sore hindered and forlorn,

Still heard the blackbird sing at morn,

Still felt her heart with each sun sink,

Knowing he stood upon the brink,

Prayed on in hope and trust—

Until the boy was dust.

Life brought its anodyne of years,

To dull young griefs and dry young tears,

And Time, who knows not to stand still,

Sent a new lover up the hill.

A wife and mother now she goes

And plays with her first baby’s toes—

The name in memory

Spoken without a sigh.

And grey upon the beech’s rind,

Foregone, forgotten, out of mind,

Two woven letters may be told

When dawns are white and eves are gold;

Where his aubade the blackbird makes,

Or sleepy, sweet good-even takes;

And down the long aisle dim

Another answers him.

[Pg 26]

GHOSTIES AT THE WEDDING

Turn down a glass afore his place;

Draw up the dog-eared chair;

For though we shall not see his face,

I think he will be there

Our wedding day to share.

Turn up the glass where she would be

And put a red rose there.

Her quick, grey eyes we cannot see,

But weren’t they everywhere,

And shall not they be here?

Though them old blids are in the grave

And their good light’s gone out,

We’d sooner their kind ghosties have

Than all the living rout

As will be there no doubt.

For some are dead as cannot die,

Some flown as cannot flee.

You still do fancy ’em near by.

’Tis so with him and she,

At any rate to we.

[Pg 27]

DAWN WIND

Wind of the Dawn am I, and only She

Who knows the music of my every song

Can hear the whisper lingering along

Melodiously.

Melodiously along the moonlit corn,

With silver fingering all my peaceful way,

I nightly wander towards another day

Soon to be born.

Lo! from the East he comes; and I rejoice

And throbbing on into the ruddy light

Leap like a giant from the dying night

With organ voice.

Along the rosy, misty, magic lands

That gleam above each dewy-scented lea

The children of the morning welcome me

And clap their hands.

[Pg 28]

DART

Elfin river, stealing from far-off granite cradle,

Musical the place names upon thy tidal water;

Tuckenhay and Greenway, Stoke Gabriel and Dittisham,

Sharpham and Duncannon, beside thy margin’s mirror—

Sweet bells all a-chiming for native ear that knows them.

Rainbows in November, above the hillside footed,

Burn along the brake fern to set the auburn flaming

In transparent wonders of emerald and purple;

Till descends the hailstorm, with lash and scourge ice-knotted,

Hurtling through the coppice; from larch and cherry robbing

Amber dust and crimson. Chattering then and hissing,

And fretting first thy bosom into a sudden torment,

He draws his tatters round him and huddles off to seaward.

So the sun returning, by hover and by ripple,

Charms thy fleeting turmoil and wins thee back to laughter.

At the river ferry a little bell is calling;

And where the red earth arches, low on the blue above it,

Man and horses ploughing, herald a cloud behind them

Of the great, white sea-fowl that feed along the furrow.

Cobweb grey thine orchards, still the last apples ling’ring,

Topaz and ruby tangled upon the frosted lichen;

While broad, oaken hangers, a rapture for the sunset,

Meet the steadfast beech scrub, like red-hot fire aglowing,

Till their conflagrations, that blaze along the tide way,

Melt in flame and mingle their wonder with thy crystal.

Massy, rounded elm-trees roll out along the river,

[Pg 29]

And above, in billows far mightier and vaster,

Sail the light-laden clouds, that lift another forest

Bossed and round as they are and carry up their image,

Crested, crowned and golden, into the hyaline azure.

Pale that lifted glory and faint those sun-touched summits

Seen against the ardour of thine own earth-born elm-trees.

Down beside the reed-rond, pulse of the sea, a-weary,

Doth bring a wreath of flow’rs to mark the place of parting.

High above them glitters the wide weir’s silver apron

And the bright salmon leap, springing from salt to sweetness.

Farewell, worthy worship in all thy times and seasons;

By thy magic subtle of many a deep and rapid;

By thy sunny reaches and mystery of shadow;

Thy gentle hillsides green and dear delight of forests;

By the surprise of coombs, the hanging woods and dingles;

The happy days and sad; the murmur of thy voices;

Thy changing, winsome moods and little lovelinesses,

Thou art all Devon, and so incomparably England.

[Pg 30]

BY RUNDLESTONE

Her cottage solitary stood

Beside the granite Rundlestone—

Lonely enough, but not so lone

That fortune missed it, ill and good.

And faring by that way once more

I sought to see the friend of old,

And found an orange-lily’s gold

Still burning by her cottage door.

There seemed no stir about the place;

No voice responded to my call;

I heard no tardy footsteps fall,

Nor welcomed her familiar face.

From open window overhead

There came a dull and fitful flap,

Where the blind bulged and filled the gap

And billowed as the breezes sped.

Empty the house, for she had gone

Full many a moon before that day,

Passing in steadfast faith away

To join her man beneath his stone.

And now, when currents of the mind

Drift to my thought her vanished name,

I see the orange-lily flame

And hear the flapping of a blind.

[Pg 31]

A SONG TO SILVER EYES

Now that the dayspring surely comes

To wake a dreaming world once more

And light a thousand, thousand homes

With message from the Eastern shore;

Though dawn doth shiver sad and grey

And sombre clouds hide earth and sea,

My love shall be the sun to me

And glad’ my going through the day.

When mournful darkness falls again

To sink old earth in slumber deep,

Save where the sisters, sorrow, pain,

Their sobbing, throbbing vigils keep;

Though faint my heart and dim my sight

Beneath the storm’s immensity,

My love shall be a star to me

And guide my going through the night.

[Pg 32]

ENOUGH

The larch, the birch and the eagle fern

And granite grey;

The cry of the kine and the song of the burn

Down Dartmoor way.

A league-long tramp to a lifted stone

Under the sky;

Long lustral hours superbly alone—

My soul and I.

For you be the kingdoms that you list,

The seas you will;

And mine a white rainbow in the mist

On a heather hill.

SONG OF THE LARCHES

Not foliage, but emerald fires

Run through our legions in the spring,

Until their myriad points and spires

Are hidden past remembering.

Through hanging wood, by dell and dene

Again we ray ourselves in green.

Not foliage, but aureate fires

Leap through our legions in the fall.

When autumn lights her saffron pyres

And the red sun sinks to a ball,

Like golden smoke across the grey

We fling our worn-out robes away.

[Pg 33]

A SONG

Shadows we are and shadows seek

And haunt the place where shadows move;

But I, who know thy blessed love,

Scorn shadowland and all things weak.

Thou art alone reality;

The rest is dream within a dream.

My life knows nothing but doth seem

Save only thee, save only thee.

Through noon of day and noon of night

There steals a golden thought and rare,

That still we breathe the self-same air,

Still glory in the same delight.

That soul to soul and sense to sense—

Our heavens woven into one—

We’re shining, each the other’s sun,

Before we vanish and go hence.

And if thy love should faint and die,

The deep, eternal after-glow

Shall burn for ever where I go—

A cloud of light in my grey sky.

[Pg 34]

BUONARROTI’S “DAWN”

Spirit of twilight chill and upper air

Stretched desolate upon the rack of morn;

Thou hooded grief from mountain marble torn,

Gazing sad-lidded on the sky’s despair,

While the grey stars, like tears, descend forlorn;

Earth’s broken heart and man’s unsleeping care

Wait on thy pillow, crying to be borne—

The only burden thou shalt ever bear.

No infant hope may dream on thy deep breast,

No little lip may soothe with infant might

Thy mouth’s immortal woe; for thee, oppressed,

Dawn dim epiphanies beyond all light,

Where man’s long agony and cry for rest

But torture dayspring into darker night.

[Pg 35]

A DARTMOOR STREAM

When Shakespeare wrote, you sang the song I hear,

And when Eliza reigned, your lint-white locks

Flashed where they flash to-day, among the rocks,

And showered their tresses twined into the brown pool clear.

You danced and flung your foam upon the fern,

And sang along your green and granite ways

Even as now, in far-off Golden days,

When toiled the tinner men beside your heathery urn.

Their ruins shrink beside you; foxglove springs

Above the roofless hut and smelting place;

No more their shadows fall upon your face,

Or mediæval chime of pick and hammer rings.

But they were children in your lap beside

The early men of stone, whose lodges stand,

Like mushroom circles grey upon the land

Above the cotton-grass that marks your cradle wide.

The bear has lapped your crystal on his rounds;

The stricken elk beside you dropped at last—

A flint home in his shoulder, deep and fast—

To smear your emerald moss from red of deathly wounds.

[Pg 36]

And now, where once the wolf pack hunting went,

With ululation through the snowy nights,

Leap motor cars upon the highway heights,

And by their hooting horns the silent air is rent.

All one to you: machine and beast and man,

And Time, that leads them off and brings them in;

You strive above all circumstance, to win

Your immemorial dream and predetermined plan.

Unchanging, ever-changing, you possess

Your spirit quickened with an ardour still

Of workmanship—a patient, steadfast will

To rarer beauty yet and purer loveliness.

[Pg 37]

THE FALL

I’ll sing a song of kings and queens

And falling leaves and flying rain,

With Time to mow, and Fate who gleans

Their good and evil, boon and bane.

I’ll sing a song of leaves and rains

And flying queens and falling kings,

Yet doubt not reason still remains

Snug hidden at the core of things.

For every year an autumn brings

To round the root and fat the sheaves

And haply garner queens and kings

With falling rain and flying leaves.

The rain is salt with tears of queens,

The leaves are red with blood of kings;

Unknowing what the mystery means,

We puzzle at these mighty things.

For why great kings and rains should fall,

And wherefore leaves and queens should fly,

Or such rare wonders be at all,

You cannot tell; no more can I.

Yet this we know: new leaves and rain

Anon shall crown the vernal scene,

But dust of dynasts not again

Blows up into a king or queen.

[Pg 38]

LAPWINGS

When white ice tinkles on the rutted roads

And icicles are bearding from the thatch;

When fens are froze, the lapwings make despatch

And all a-mewing come from their frost-bound abodes.

With rush of wings upon the northern wind

Across the wintry blue, like sparks of gold

They flash into the valleys, hunger-bold,

And seek their comforting with doubtful human-kind.

They love the lew, where yellow corn-stacks stand,

And puff their feathers in the pallid sun,

Go daintily about and peep and run,

Like pixy pilgrim folk of some far fairy-land.

And near to bud-break, when young grey-eyed Spring,

Clad in the silver of an April rain,

Calls from the hill-tops, home they go again

And lift their kitten cries to give her welcoming.

[Pg 39]

TO AN OPAL

Wrapt in the radiant air’s own milky tress,

That’s less than cloud and more than cloudlessness,

Dawn-light and moon-light art thou; dreaming fire,

That dies along the west: a pulse; a pyre

Burning beneath the brow of some red eave;

The very staple that the salt winds weave

Into the vaporous east, or sobbing south,

When some grey hurricane sucks at the mouth

Of the dear, wild-haired sea, and with huge mirth

Rains back his rape of kisses on the earth.

The blooms of old-world flow’rs in ancient garths;

The dancing aureole of winter hearths;

The argent flame that haunts eternal snows;

Spray of the burn and petal of the rose;

Gleam of the dragon-fly or halcyon’s wing;

The dew-bedappled kirtle of the Spring;

The amber ripple of the kerning corn;

Splendour of fruit; where ripeness, like a morn,

Breaks through the bloom; the rainbow’s liquid light;

The northern dancers of an arctic night;

Nacre of pearl and foam upon the sea—

All these, thou glimmering epitome

Of the world’s glory, throb and nestle here

Within the little compass of a tear.

[Pg 40]

JACK O’ LANTERN

Where the dim marrish oozes out and fills

The lap of the hills,

While drowsy gloom broods deep upon the wold,

They keep their place and take their trembling flight

And fringe the night

With pallid flowers of azure and faint gold.

Along the darkness elfin lanterns flicker,

Now slow, now quicker—

A pale corona set upon the mire.

They float and fly and leap and sink together

Upon one tether,

Where ancient fens excern their lambent fire.

Thin, shaking, blue—spectres of flame—they travel

And break and ravel,

Then fade and flash again and fade again.

They wave their lamps upon the quag; they quiver

And soar and shiver

And flit, like little ghosts, above the plain.

Born from the heavy breath of sleeping Earth,

In feeble mirth

They trail and slink and linger, rise and fall;

Then, shuddering before the chill of day,

Soon speed away,

Blow out their lights and vanish, one and all.

[Pg 41]

THE OLD ROAD

How short the road with you, my friend,

How short the road with you—

The hills and vales, the heights and dales

And each unfolding view;

For side by side and foot by foot,

Though long that summer noon,

The twilight fell too soon, my friend,

The twilight fell too soon.

How far the road alone, my friend,

How far the road alone;

The hills how steep, the dales how deep,

Their ancient magic flown;

For now the way, together trod,

You cannot tread again,

Is twenty miles of pain, my friend,

Is twenty miles of pain.

Still winds the patient road, my friend;

Still winds the patient road,

Whereon I go, now high, now low,

With my appointed load;

And glories shared I felt were gone

For ever when you past,

Have brought you back at last, my friend,

Have brought you back at last.

[Pg 42]

THE DOUBTFUL ONES

They lie about, the naughty folk, a-mingling with the rest,

And just so green the grave-grass on their mounds as on the best;

For Nature’s poor at morals, and to her they’re all the same,

With their virtues no great matter and their vices no great shame.

Tom White bides there: they say he slew his first to wed another,

And that’s the hill that hides Jack Ford, as robbed his own grandmother.

This lump of earth, where dandelions be keeping such a state,

Is Katherine Jay’s, the baby’s friend, once known as “cruel Kate.”

They dug up thirteen childer in her garden, so ’tis said;

And when they ran the creature down, she’d cut her evil thread.

Near by we teeled Bart. Coombstock—one as took his own life too:

He hanged hisself at seventy-three, though why for no man knew.

And Martin Cobley, in a pit beside they godly Foxes,

Did six months of his middle time for breaking the alms boxes.

Where yonder row of Caunters lie—a famed and far-spread clan—

Have crept their black sheep, Rupert, him once called “the gentleman.”

[Pg 43]

A reckless love-hunter was he, and made an end of life

When Noah Bassett shot him dead for playing with his wife.

Poor Nelly Dingle, buried by the lich-gate on the left,

Burned six good stacks of wheat the night they flung her out for theft;

And they small hillocks, down-along, of babies side by side,

Be “chrisomers,” as never got baptised afore they died,

There do they rest—the doubtful ones—and sleep so sweet and sound

As any proper saint of God that ever went to ground;

But when the graves be opened and they birds begin to sing—

Lord! Won’t it be a funny dish to set before the King!

[Pg 44]

LITANY TO PAN

By the abortions of the teeming Spring,

By Summer’s starved and withered offering,

By Autumn’s stricken hope and Winter’s sting,

Oh, hear!

By the ichneumon on the writhing worm,

By the swift, far-flung poison of the germ,

By soft and foul brought out of hard and firm,

Oh, hear!

By the fierce battle under every blade,

By the etiolation of the shade,

By drought and thirst and things undone half made,

Oh, hear!

By all the horrors of re-quickened dust,

By the eternal waste of baffled lust,

By mildews and by cankers and by rust,

Oh, hear!

By the fierce scythe of Spring upon the wold,

By the dead eaning mother in the fold,

By stillborn, stricken young and tortured old,

Oh, hear!

By fading eyes pecked from a dying head,

By the hot mouthful of a thing not dead,

By all thy bleeding, struggling, shrieking red,

Oh, hear!

[Pg 45]

By all the agonies of all the past,

By earth’s cold dust and ashes at the last,

By her return to the unconscious vast,

Oh, hear!

A SONG

How I have lived while others slept,

With the white moon and thee!

Heaven-high my adoration leapt

Sea-deep my ecstasy.

And now one memory I keep

Till life and I shall part:

She loved me well enough to sleep

In peace upon my heart.

[Pg 46]

CHERRYBROOK

Far more than others feel or see;

Far more than others hear or know,

Awakes and lives and throbs for me

When by the Cherrybrook I go.

For others, Bellevor’s green side

And yellow furzes burning bright;

Grouse heather, foaming like a tide,

And stones that dance, or drowse in light.

For others, just a singing stream

Of flashing stickles, cherry red,

That mirrors in her breast the beam,

Like golden beads upon a thread.

For me, a river of regret

In every reach so still and clear—

A streamlet, where I follow yet

The Shadow of a brother dear.

I see his trout-rod catch the sun;

I hear the music of his reel;

Knowing his kindly days are done,

His good life gone beyond appeal.

Now other rods are twinkling high;

But the grey shape I used to bless,

Lacking, the stream runs lonely by

And Cherrybrook’s an emptiness.

[Pg 47]

THE HUNTER’S MOON

October day drifts into night and now,

Globing red gold upon a naked bough,

The Hunter’s Moon climbs through a ragged larch,

Swings out on Heaven and sweeps her steadfast arch

Through cloudrack dim; while underneath there lie

The darkling forests and the floods, and fly

Leaves from the summer woods. They tinkle down

Russet and sere, etiolate and brown,

Blood-red and scarlet, auburn, silver, grey—

Good millions, bearing wherewithal to pay

Debt of the trees. The busy earthworms cold

Draw in the yearly dues to rich the mould,

Storing what tree-tops earned; and thus full round

The cycle spins; for sure the sodden ground

Is but a bank, that hoards to give again,

Wherein the beetle and the mole and rain

Balance their books beneath the Hunter’s Moon,

While Nature budgets for another June.

[Pg 48]

VOICES

I

Harken, harken, neighbour, harken!

There be little childer jangling,

There be childer up-long wrangling

By the thorn-tree in the wood.

Nay, them noises you are hearing,

Out of yonder blue-bell clearing,

Are the wild cat’s kitlings playing,

While their mother’s hunting food.

II

Harken, harken, neighbour, harken!

There’s the pixy bells a-ringing,

And the dinky pixies singing

Through the curtain of the rain.

Nay, ’tis but a flock of plover—

Golden plover now come over,

From the places of their summer,

To their winter home again.

III

Harken, harken, neighbour, harken!

There’s some poor, unhappy devil

Homing drunk after a revel,

Drowned in snow and lost in night.

Nay, that creepy, crawly yowling

Be red fox up over howling,

Pads acold and belly empty,

Hunger-starven for a bite.

[Pg 49]

IV

Harken, harken, neighbour, harken!

To the sound of woman’s wailing—

A sad woman, quailing, railing,

Like the sob of wind-swept leaves.

Nay, that ban’t no cry of woman,

Nor the moan of any human:

’Tis the murmur of the hill-tops

And “the calling of the cleaves.”

[Pg 50]

WIND OF THE WEST

I bear the banner of the sun at noon;

I light the million jewelled lamps of June;

I weave, from sky and purple sea below,

The rosy cradle where a baby moon

Rocks in the after-glow.

Awake ye bells, shine out ye stars of Spring;

And let the music of the wild wood ring;

Deck my dear harp anew with golden green—

My ancient forest harp, whereon I sing

Of all this budding scene.

A song of rainbows gleaming on the rain;

Of sap and scent and sunlight come again;

Of the young laughing year’s unmeasured mirth;

Of quickened Nature’s mother-pang, whose pain

Forewent this vernal birth.

[Pg 51]

THE LOVER AND THE WIND

“Wind of the South with the wild, wet mouth,

Cease from thy wailing and fury of railing;

Whisper to me in my vigils of pain

That soon I shall meet her,

And soon I shall greet her,

And thrill with the passion of kisses again.

“Wind of the South with the wild, wet mouth,

Silence thy raving and hark to my craving;

Echo a hope through my vigils of pain.

I hunger to hold her,

I throb to enfold her

And melt in the fire of her body again.”

“Suffering man, since thy race began

I have been weeping and I have been keeping

A myriad vigils of sorrow and pain.

No more shalt thou meet her,

No more shalt thou greet her,

Or thrill with the passion of kisses again.

“Suffering man, the arc of thy span

To-morrow is bounded and finished and rounded.

Thou shalt forget all thy vigils of pain,

Nor hunger to hold her,

Nor throb to enfold her,

Nor cry for the fire of her body again.”

[Pg 52]

A SONG

The red’s in the heather, the gold’s on the fern—

Heigho! Heigho!

A nip to the wind and the year at the turn—

Heigho, Johnny!

The aglet and rowan, shine bright on the bough—

Heigho! Heigho!

But seedtime, or harvest be one to him now—

Heigho, Johnny!

All one the wild weather, the wind and the rain—

Heigho! Heigho!

For she that made summer will not come again—

Heigho, Johnny!

Was left in the lurch at a young woman’s whim—

Heigho! Heigho!

Who cared not a cuss for the ruin of him—

Heigho, Johnny!

Oh, little we mind what the seasons may bring—

Heigho! Heigho!

When hearts are a winter without any spring—

Heigho, Johnny!

[Pg 53]

THE GRAVE OF KEATS

I

Where silver swathes of newly fallen hay

Fling up their incense to the Roman sun;

Where violets spread their dusky leaves and run

In a dim ripple, and a glittering bay

Lifts overhead his living wreath; where day

Burns fierce upon his endless night and none

Can whisper to him of the thing he won,

Love-starved young Keats hath cast his gift of clay.

And still the little marble makes a moan

Under the scented shade; one nightingale

With many a meek and mourning monotone

Throbs of his sorrow; sings how oft men fail

And leave their dearest light-bringers alone

To shine unseen, and all unfriended pale.

II

Oh, leave the lyre upon his humble stone,

The rest erase; if Keats were come again,

The quickest he to blot this cry of pain,

The first to take a sorrowing world’s atone.

’Tis not the high magistral way to moan

When a mean present leaps and sweeps amain

Athwart the prophets’ vision; not one groan

Escapes their souls, and lingers not one strain.

They answer to their ideals; their good

Outshines all flare and glare of futile marts.

[Pg 54]

They stand beside their altars while the flood

Ephemeral rolls on and roars and parts.

It shall not chill a poet’s golden blood;

It cannot drown the masters’ mighty hearts.

[Pg 55]

TIGER

To the barking of the monkeys, to the shrieking of the birds;

To the bellow of the bison and stampeding of the herds;

At fiery edge of sunset, from the jungle to the wold,

Death stalks in shining ebony and orange-tawny gold.

He slouched with loose, low shamble from the glade,

And as he flung his feet along the track,

Machine-like glided each great shoulder-blade

Under his pelt. He stopped and scratched his back

Against a stump; then sat a little while,

Curling his ring-straked tail around his paws,

Yawning with a gigantic, sleepy smile

That showed the ruddy gulf between his jaws.

The fangs were white and sound, for he was young—

A male of four full years, in all his pride,

Perfect, lean, knit of rubber and steel, and strung

With sinews taut; content and satisfied,

Since the twice five great, crooked daggers set

Deep in his awful pads had never failed

To win his belly all it wanted yet—

A tiger who unfailingly prevailed.

And no beast kinglier than himself he knew,

For he had tracked and hunted, caught and slain

All that his fellow-tigers caught and slew,

Though horns might miss by inches eye and brain.

A forthright beast and huge, his yellow eyes

Glowered steadfast into life; he felt no ill

Of heart or conscience, or the pang that flies

Through higher mammals, plagued with choice of will

[Pg 56]

And all the handicaps of consciousness.

He knew not right nor wrong; no evil thought

Sullied his wits; his task no more or less

Than faithfully to do all he was taught.

While the dread smeech and terror of his breath

Down a hot wind at dusk, to fearful flocks

Threatened the unknown, unnamed horror, death,

And sent them hurtling to the plains and rocks,

To him they stood for life and all it meant

Of being—food and sport and work and play,

Love and prosperity and full content,

With strength to solve the problems of each day.

His brain began to brood and meditate,

Thinking on action, while the red sun set,

For he had come from far with a new mate

To a new valley. She was sleeping yet

In the bamboos behind him, great with young,

Where prickly cactus hemmed the lair and palm

Over their couch its sombre frondage hung.

There would she bide a little safe from harm,

While he must go afield and do his part

And fetch a tender antelope, or goat,

To win her praise and glad her weary heart

With a hot supper for a hungry throat.

He pondered now within his broad, flat skull,

Then stretched and with his lifted nose and ear

Winnowed the silence of the evening lull

To learn if grass-eaters were stirring near;

When down the wind, though not a lizard ran

And no hoof thudded on the dusty bent,

He smelt a something fragrant and began

To twitch his nostrils at the ravishment.

[Pg 57]

A subtle scent and new! His whiskers pricked;

His body huddled flat and seemed to shrink;

His great nape bristled up; his jowl he licked;

Then, like a banded snake, began to sink

And trickle through the spear grass. By a stone

He sudden lifted, then he set and stilled,

While footfall of some game, that went alone,

Came innocently pattering, to be killed.

Couchant, like a set trap, with head out-thrust,

The hunter crouched, quivering his black tail-tip,

Until it drew a fan upon the dust

Behind him. Then his jaws began to drip,

As though a gargoyle, where red lichens grew,

Was dribbling. Now the thing that he had heard

Approached—a little creature, strange and new—

That went not on four feet, nor yet a bird.

He strung himself to spring, while at a trot,

The Indian runner on his lonely road

Jogged forward, dreaming of a supper-pot.

Bound was he for a village, where abode

One, passing fair, the runner’s master meant

To wed ere long—a radiant maid to whom,

By fleet-foot messenger, the suitor sent

Two poems of his own writing.

Then the gloom,

Where a first firefly winked her golden spark

Upon the deepening purple, broke and tore—

The twilight stillness ended on a stark,

Harsh, grating, deep-mouthed, solitary roar,

Hollow as death; while from his secret place

The tiger loosed the lightning of his thighs,

Leapt on the man and with unwitting grace

Struck him to instant nothing. Levin flies

[Pg 58]

Less merciful. A huddled, crumpled clout,

Brown, oozing red, dissolved beneath the mass

Of living teeth and brawn. The brains were out;

Head, a cracked egg-shell leaking on the grass.

Thus in a heap to mother earth they came,

Both quick and dead; and then the great cat sought

His grim, familiar, ghastly after-game;

But he had hit too hard and spoiled his sport.

He drew and coaxed with hooked and playful paws,

Hoping to find the life had not quite gone,

And moved by those infernal, feline laws,

That made him frolic when his work was done.

For oft his perishing food would feebly strive,

Driven by life’s undying hope, and led

To struggle still from death while yet alive;

But his first man the tiger found was dead.

And when the conqueror tasted, his rough tongue

Thrilled a new, joyous lust into his brain,

For the soft, furless stuff his palate stung

With mad, delicious twang—oft, oft again

Would he smell up the wind for such another.

He hoped the dainty creatures went in packs,

And that his prey had kids and many a brother

To steal at cool of evening on his tracks.

He gaped and gripped the mangled clod of earth

Under its ribs, heaved up a muzzle white,

Sounded a grunt, that seemed akin to mirth,

And bore his dripping coolie out of sight.

So to his mate, and as the cross-cut saws

Bite upon teak with backward, forward hiss,

He purred, then dropped the banquet from his jaws

And woke the tigress with a bloody kiss.

[Pg 59]

Eyes shut, heads sideway, cheek by cheek they ate,

To sound of squash and gulch and cracking bone,

Deciding swiftly, as they fed, the fate

Of the two love songs. They were deftly sewn

Within the compass of a gold-cloth bag,

Tied with a silken cord, stamped with a seal.

The tiger crunched and gulped the sodden rag

With all the other mysteries of his meal.

For, while a poem himself, he was no poet,

Being devoid of vision, wit, or ruth;

But many who live poetry, never know it

And would be much surprised to learn the truth.

Sated at last, they sauntered forth to find

A water-hole; but as they washed their jowls

And cleaned their whiskers, sudden on the wind

Broke din of brass and drums and human howls.

For there had gone another runner by,

And smelt the blood and seen the reeking trail,

And flown, and shouted “Bagh!” and raised the cry

That tiger were again upon the vale.

From jungle edge they peered and torches red

Turned each bewildered eye into a gem

Of glinting emerald—then sudden dread

Awoke at flash of fire, unknown to them.

Fear touched their primitive hearts; they ran and roared,

Awakening old echoes down the glade;

Shoulder to shoulder from the gleam abhorred

They padded, wondering to be afraid.

Until no blink of the accursed thing

Tortured the night, they galloped, sweating hot,

Then, all unknowing what the day would bring,

They stopped and sulked and snarled; and so forgot.

[Pg 60]

Anon they sleep, nor guess the dawn shall see,

Of hunters white and beaters brown, some score

Surround them in a circle steadfastly,

To set the cosmos on its feet once more.

They sleep, nor dream the pangs of “dum-dum” lead

That wait on sunrise, when they two shall feel

All they have measured to uncounted dead,

And suffer sentences without appeal.

Upon their mighty necks will dance the feet

Of the unpelted things that lay them low;

For of the fruit forbidden did they eat

And both must go where the bad tigers go.

To the trumpeting of elephants and blaze of morning light,

To the nosing rifle barrels, to the stinking of cordite,

With a crash and smash and struggle and a yell their tale is told;

Death blots the shining ebony and orange-tawny gold.

[Pg 61]

THE PUDDLE

I cursed the puddle when I found

Unseeing I had walked therein,

Forgetting the uneven ground,

Because my eyes

Were on the skies,

To glean their glory and to win

The sunset’s trembling ecstasies.

And then I marked the puddle’s face,

When still and quiet grown again,

Was but concerned, as I, to trace

The wonder spread

Above its head,

And mark and mirror and contain

The gold and purple, rose and red.

[Pg 62]

VISION

There have been seers of olden time who said,

When dreaming men are rapt into the state

Where only shadow people congregate,

That never may they see the faces of their dead.

But I have seen the faces I have lost,

And none so clear and none so shadowless

In all that moonshine dance and frolic stress

Of dream futility, as some I loved the most.

Not as I knew him last my brother stood,

A man upon whose kindly face a stain

Lay in the letters of life’s care and pain;

But as a little lad, when all the world was good.

High in the darkness of a pine, elate

About our long-forgotten forest play,

I hung, where he had found a squirrel’s dray:

For I was twelve again, and he was only eight.

I saw his boyhood’s look, as bright and fair

As ever shone from huddle of a dream;

Reality’s own self shall never seem

More real than his young laugh and flaxen, Saxon hair.

And waking old, I blessed the memory

Of my child-brother’s unforgotten face,

Thanking, as it had been a deed of grace,

The tenderness of dreams that brought him back to me.

[Pg 63]

IN GALLIPOLI

There is a fold of lion-coloured earth,

With stony feet in the Ægean blue,

Whereon of old dwelt loneliness and dearth

Sun-scorched and desolate; and when there flew

The winds of winter in those dreary aisles

Of crag and cliff, a whirling snow-wreath bound

The foreheads of the mountains, and their miles

Of frowning precipice and scarp were wound

With stilly white, that peered through brooding mist profound.

But now the myrtle and the rosemary,

The mastic and the rue, the scented thyme

With fragrant fingers gladdening the grey,

Shall kindle on a desert grown sublime.

Henceforth that haggard land doth guard and hold

The treasure of a sovereign nation’s womb—

Her fame, her worth, her pride, her purest gold.

Oh, call ye not the sleeping place a tomb

That lifts to heaven’s light such everlasting bloom.

They stretch, now high, now low, the little scars

Upon the rugged pelt of herb and stone;

Above them sparkle bells and buds and stars

Young Spring hath from her emerald kirtle thrown.

Asphodel, crocus and anemone

With silver, azure, crimson once again

Ray all that earth, and from the murmuring sea

Come winds to flash the leaves on shore and plain

Where evermore our dead—our radiant dead shall reign.

[Pg 64]

Imperishable as the mountain height

That marks their place afar, their numbers shine,

Who with the first-fruits of a joyful might

To human liberty another shrine

Here sanctified; nor vainly have they sped

That made this desert dearer far than home,

And left one sanctuary more to tread

For England, whose memorial pathways roam

Beside her hero sons, beneath the field and foam.

[Pg 65]

THEN AND NOW

When I was young and leapt into the Spring—

An eager, quick-eyed, all-inquiring thing—

I hunted wood and valley, sea and shore

Yet knew not how to feel the wonders that I saw.

Now am I old and creep into the Spring—

A grey-haired, dim-eyed, still inquiring thing.

By ancient ways, a shadow, still I steal,

Yet know not how to see the wonders that I feel.

Come Youth again, while to another Spring

My memories the old adventure bring.

Wonder and wander yet once more with me.

I’ll teach you how to feel, and you my eyes shall be.

[Pg 66]

VIGIL

There is a glen beneath a lonely hill,

Where the deep tangles of the red brake fern

Huddle to death and beautifully burn,

While maiden birches flame along the sunset still.

Like morning lamps they fade; their gold expires

Among the silvery shadows of each stem.

Delicious light gently departs from them

Where winter bloweth out the autumn’s final fires.

Furzes, all agate-budded for the spring,

Hedge round about the coomb and, higher still,

A mist of naked branches hides the hill,

And pines bring warmth and scent and dusky sheltering.

How oft have I within this vernal wood

Watched the green mantle and the sweet sap mount.

Trees are mine own familiars; them I count

Among the changeless hearts that make my chiefest good.

How often, when the first of blossoms come,

Do I behold the opening of their eyes.

Mine is the worship; theirs the shy surprise

That I so well should know each punctual haunt and home.

Here have I watched full many a night from far

Like lover shadowy, ere set of sun,

Dark-eyed steal hither, and when day was done,

Mist meet the gentle moon; dew, the eternal star.

[Pg 67]

Once more the stroke of every madcap wind

Doth shake the bough and dash the ripe fruit down,

Or shower red leaves and berries for a crown,

October’s stormy hair to glorify and bind.

Again I see; again I sigh to see

The fading, flaming year sink to her end,

Another summer—sure another friend—

Decline and die and pass with music solemnly.

Farewell, ye happy, rainbow-winged hours;

The autumn’s dew and bitter, silver breath

Shall freeze your rosy feet, and strike to death

Your spirits where ye drowse amid the withered flowers.

Farewell ye domes and canopies of June

Raining upon the earth in red and gold;

Hiding the sodden bosom of the wold;

Flying like little ghosts, beneath the hunter’s moon.

Beside the passing year my watch I keep

And mark the sad-eyed gloamings steal away,

And feel the low and lemon light of day

Fade, like an aching care, upon the fringe of sleep.

[Pg 68]

DARTMOOR NIGHT

Now twilight spreads her cool and amber plume,

Descending on the solitudes until

All detail dies: the valley and the hill

Together darkling roll and merge into the gloom.

Faints the far emerald west and day is done;

White Venus, throbbing on the dusky gold,

Swings out her lamp above the weald and wold,

While little, earth-born flames make answer one by one.

A child upon her mighty mother’s breast,

Earth cuddles in the bosom of old Night,

Who, gathering coomb and woodland, heath and height,

Opens her dewy wings to hide their dreamless rest.

The mists are trailing grey by watersmeet,

Night-hidden in the forest far below,

And where their pearly-paven vapours flow,

The Huntress upward steals to find her starry seat.

Her waxing splendours over moss and mire

Flood fen and barrow, reeve and pool and burn,

The lone, high tors, the tracks that wind and turn

Where the quartz crystal shines with dim and tremulous fire.

She marks the stone-man’s lodges empty lie;

The broken folds, the tinner’s delving place;

She lights the cairn, the cross, the faltering trace

Of bygone dead who homed in this immensity.

[Pg 69]

From cottage window fades the ruby gem

And glimmer moonbeams only; while the moon,

Mounting to heaven upon her silver shoon,

A sovereign sceptre holds and wears the diadem.

O Queen of sleep and silence, thou shalt reign,

With lustral glory poured to soothe and bless

The least small life in all the wilderness,

Till morning stars awake and sing the dawn again.

[Pg 70]

THE FRUIT OF THE TREE

The seraphim, beneath their burning blades,

Moved in a wave of light; while overhead

Gleamed the pale moon, a ghost behind the tongues

Of all those flaming swords; and rearward crept

The brutes of Paradise—the tiger, ounce,

The leopard and the minions of the night.

Stealthy they stalked, with growls that showed the fang,

While in a broken thread of fiery beads,

Golden and green and ruby, through the dark,

Fierce glowed their eyes behind that angel host.

And now they roared for mingled grief and fear,

Because, before the moving seraphim,

Flung out for ever from the dingles deep

And all those pleasant places of sweet shade

Beside the rivers and beneath the trees,

Two, whom the great cats loved, were driven forth.

Bewildered and disgraced, the primal pair,

Now glimmering with moonlight on their heads

And streaks of flickered gold that splashed along

Their thighs and backs, reflected from the swords,

Together went. Hand clasped in hand they moved

Before the marching angels, till at last

The confines of the only home they knew

Were reached and the soft herbage made an end.

Over their heads the tracery of trees

Ceased, and the naked moon among her stars

Hung in the nightly sky and threw a light,

Cold as grey ashes, on the earth beneath.

Starkly the desert struck upon their toes

[Pg 71]

With harsh and flinty welcome; Eve’s right foot,

Set down upon a thistle, cried to her

Of a new grief; she moaned in pain, and he,

Adam, with tenderness bent down to it

And licked the blood that sparkled on her skin

In drops the moonlight robbed of sanguine stain

And turned to bright, black pearls. Thus driven forth

Were they for their transgression, and the guard

Took open order on the fringe of Eden,

Against whose frontier dark the sentinels

Stood silently, lit by their burning swords,

To hold the garden precincts; while between

Each seraph and his neighbour still peeped out

The creatures of the earth and howled farewell

To those white things that had befriended them,

And taught their cubs to play in Paradise.

They crouched and lashed their tails and shook the night

That Eve and Adam to the wilderness

Should pass away without one lynx or pard

To purr beside them. All would have rushed forth

But that the ring of fire struck on their hearts

And sent them snarling back. For there had been

A precious bond, a close and curious link

Twixt Adam and his partner and the brutes—

A harmony of happiness and peace

Now vanished from the earth. But then, indeed,

The first man and his woman stood so near

To all their neighbours, sharing their delights

And moving in that new-made world so nigh

To beast and bird and saurian, that they—

The conscious creatures—knowing little more

Than woodland wisdom shared with all the rest,

Guessed not the gap between. Had ape or sloth

[Pg 72]

Broke heavenly ordinance and ate the Fruit,

Then had they been the lords of good and ill,

And haply ruled the kingdoms of the earth

With kinder wit than man. Yet it fell out

The creatures in the image of their God

Won the beasts’ homage by their shapes upright,

Yet shared their subjects’ ignorance. The stag,

The tawny bear, the elephant, the wolf,

The monkey folk and all the greater fowls,

Composed their theme and filled their human minds

With fascination. And betwixt themselves,

When Adam spoke to Eve or she to him,

Their converse was abrupt and cynical,

Untinged by human ruth, or tender care

Each for the other’s inner happiness.

And when the shadows lengthened and their God

Walked for awhile between them through the cool

Of dewy evenings, in their simple way,

They chattered to Him of the names they gave

Unto the great gier-eagle on the crag,

Or hippo, with his mighty nose asnort

Above the mud of Paradise. And He

Would listen with celestial gravity

And go His way again. The couple lacked

Much food for thought; indeed, they never thought;

For what had they to think about beside

The living present and the daily joy

Of food and drink and sleep, and playtime shared

With lesser things as beautiful as they?

Thus did they live through days not fuller fraught

With care and vision of to-morrow’s dawn

Than their companions of the hoof and pad

And claw and shining wing. Their mingled life

[Pg 73]

Was neither more complete nor beautiful

Than that of the striped tiger and his mate,

Who dwelt together in a porphyry den

A stone’s throw from the holt that Adam wove

Of living boughs and green wood broken down

Wherein to sleep by Eve. The very birds—

The warbler and the chaffinch and the wren,

Or the red mouse that loved the seeding grass—

Built snugger homes than they; and they would laugh

And wonder how the little, busy things,

Having no hands, could weave so close and true;

Or how the spider lined her nest with silk

To hold her pearly eggs. And when they slept

They dreamed of good to-morrows and no more,

Such as the children dream.

Then came to them

The scorching breath of knowledge, and their jest:

To make God laugh when He should come and see

Them clad with leaves and flowers, as their friends

Were clothed with pelt and feathers—their poor jest,

When they perceived them naked, brought them down

And cast them out into another world

Beyond the joys of Eden.

That first night

Their incipient spirits wept some mournful while,

Till the moon sank upon a dreary rim

Of desolation and they watched the stars

Sink to earth’s edge and vanish one by one,

Like tears that stole adown night’s cheek; and then

They turned to look again where Paradise

Lay in a purple shadow on the east

[Pg 74]

Under her palms and mountains; while along

Those far-flung boundaries dim sparks of fire

Twinkled to mark the soldier angels stand.

Adam at last, in hollow of a dune,

Whose horrent hair along its crest sprang up

In withered bents, a place of shelter found

Where the night wind came not; and there the man

His limping partner brought, then laid her down

To sleep till day; but it was keen and chill

And, finding that Eve slumbered, Adam came

As close as he well might to warm his blood

And draw a little of her golden mane

About his frozen bosom.

Thus they slept,

Until there broke on earth another day,

Whose light unwitting touched a wondrous sight

More pregnant and more precious to the world

Than Earth until that dayspring hour had known.

For when young Eve awakened, from her eyes

Flashed a new glory, something that till now

Had never trembled in those azure deeps;

And, with her arms about her dreaming man,

She called to him, and he arose to see

A change in her fair face, the which he read

In light of his own quickening. Her voice

Proclaimed a new evangel from her heart,

And full upon the thin and desert air

Poured in the ear of Adam such sweet words

That he forgot his hunger and his grief

And looked at her, the dew in her bright hair,

As subject on a queen.

[Pg 75]

“My love!” she cried;

And since the word had never till that dawn

Set the air singing, he forgot all else

And listened open-mouthed. “My own true love,

Dost thou not feel within thy bosom’s home

A strange new spirit, born for me and thee?

Dost thou not pant with such a joy that never,

Until this daybreak on the wilderness,

Thy soul hath throbbed to feel? In that sharp grief,

While the white seraphim did drive us out,

I felt the first faint thrill that fought the grief,

And when you bent and licked my wounded foot,

Even then there flashed to me a sudden bliss

That ministered the pain!”

“And I,” said he,

“If I had felt as now I feel—on fire

With tender adoration for my Eve—

Oh, then, I never should have played the coward

And flung the blame on you, my better part,

But taken it myself. This light within,

That burns far brighter than the eastern sky,

Doth show how mean and vile and base a thing

I did to bleat that thou hadst tempted me;

For now I grow to something greater far,

More wise and more discerning than before

I ate the Fruit of the Tree. O would that I

Had claimed the punishment, as meet I should,

And been cast out and suffered happily

Knowing that thou wert safe in Paradise;

For then had I but laughed at thorns and flint

And the cold night beneath the setting stars,

Knowing my Eve safe in our little lair.”

[Pg 76]

“Man, man!” she answered, “what our lair to me,

And what all Eden and the golden sun,

Without my Adam? What the crystal founts

And aubade of the birds in misty denes?

And what the morning mellowness of fruits,

Or subtle, magic fragrance born by night

From moony blossoms, that obeyed the moon

And oped, all others shutting? Eden’s self

Had been this ugly desert spread for Eve

Without thee; but beside thee, close and close,

Near as thy shadow, then these antres vast

And dreary vague of lion-coloured dust

Is paradise enough. For we have won

From that thrice-blessed Fruit a dearer thing

Than all the blossomy paths of Paradise

Knew how to offer. Through the taste of it

We are become above the cherubim,

Who never feel, beneath the rainbow light

That dreams upon their bosoms, what a man

And woman feel when love unveils their eyes.”

“We must tell God,” said Adam. “When He knows

What hides within the amethystine rind

Of that sweet globe forbidden, then will He

Make haste to eat of it Himself, and so,

Touched by ineffable and sacred love,

Seek us, all naked in the desert sand,

With pity on His awful brow. And then

Us will He soon forgive, for if He eats,

A tender, lambent flame of gentle ruth

Must burn within His everlasting Heart

And crown Him with pure mercy.” Thus the man;

And then the woman’s voice throbbed cheerfully.

“Him will we tell how this that He denied

[Pg 77]

Has lifted us above all lesser life

And made us wiser than the seraphim,

Who drove me forth so roughly that they scorched

My shoulder with their swords. But this I know:

If Michael and his winged ones had ate

From that kind fruit, as you and I did eat,

A gentle pity would have taught them sheathe

Their brands and made them weep to do us harm.

For what to them were we but beings twain,

No better than the silly, little apes

That would not come to us from out the wood

Until I tempted them with sugary fruits

And almonds that they loved? But now, but now

Are we above all creatures lifted up

And wedded into one—aye, wedded so

That life for me is Adam, and for him

Nothing but Eve. Let that our Maker hear,

And when He learns what now thou art to me

And I to thee, and what this lifeless dust

And shadeless solitude do seem to be

With thy brown hand in mine, then will He know

That we, His creatures, now have haply found

A dearer and more precious Paradise

Than all the hosts of Heaven yet thought upon.

Him we must tell, and from our wondrous cup

He too shall drink, that He, our God, may know

The blessed taste of mercy.”

“I will bid

The seraphim to pray to Him for mates!”

Cried Adam, in a fervour that all Heaven

Should share the knowledge dazzling. “Yea, let Him

Cast down his hosts in slumber and withdraw

[Pg 78]

A woman angel from each winged side,

So that they cast away their writhing swords

Far from them and rejoice, as we rejoice,

To share a life with dearer life than theirs.”

They spurred each other on, and laughed to think

Of the divine delight when God should hear

Their wondrous rede; and then together turned

Where Paradise, like a low silver cloud,

Fretted the dawn. But now to them there flew

Out of the waxing sky a messenger,

Who bade them keep their faces to the void

And nevermore approach the sinless paths

Their innocent feet had trod before they fell.

“Wisdom hath spoken, and it is decreed”—

With unimpassioned voice the angel spoke—

“That now ye thieves of wisdom through your span

Shall suffer first and bear the eternal fruit

Of your unnatural sin. And when the years

Have worn and withered you and broke you down,

Since Time hath now dominion over you,

Then shall you die and turn again to dust

From which the Almighty, in too generous mood,

Did lift you up. Begone—your way lies there!

And know that since the parents’ sin must be

On children visited for evermore,

Ye shall have seed and bring the race of man

Upon this earth to taste the bitter drink

That ye have brewed for every human lip.”

“But we have much to tell our God!” cried Eve;

While he, the servant of Omnipotence,

With level tones indifferent, broke to them

That never more their Maker should they see.

Thereon he spread his wings, and in the light

[Pg 79]

Of the red morning opened, petal-wise,

His gorgeous pinions, like a new-born flower

All opal tinted. So he flew away,

And soon was lost to sight upon the clouds

That day had fringed with fire.

A little while

The pair stood very silent; then young Eve,

Mother of all men, from her wide blue eyes

Shaking the tear, that like a diamond hung

One moment on her lashes, smiled and set

Her arms about our primal father’s neck.

“Be of good cheer; we have each other still,

My own brave heart!” said she; “and what this death

Shall prove, concerning which the angel spake,

We know not and we fear not; for ’tis sure

That death can never be so strong, or good,

Or radiant and enduring and supreme

As love, that we have won to light our way

And guide us through all deserts and all griefs.

And since He will not let us speak to Him,

Or tell Him of our treasure, it shall flow

For babes and sucklings. With their mother’s milk

I’ll teach my little children how to love.”

[Pg 80]

WHERE MY TREASURE IS

Eternal Mother, when my race is run,

Will that I pass beneath the risen sun,

Suffer my sight to dim upon some spot

That changes not.

Let my last pillow be the land I love

With fair infinity of blue above;

The roaming shadow of a silver cloud,

My only shroud.

A little lark above the morning star,

Shall shrill the tidings of my end afar;

The muffled music of a lone sheep-bell

Shall be my knell.

And where stone heroes trod the Moor of old;

Where ancient wolf howled round a granite fold;

Hide thou, beneath the heather’s new-born light,

My endless night.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of As the wind blows

AS THE WIND BLOWS

CONTENTS

ON EYLESBARROW

NOCTURNE

THE HUNTING

THE STRIKING HOURS

NIGHT

SWINBURNE

JUNE

BELLS OF VARENNA

IN THE VALLEY

GAFFER’S SONG

SCANDAL

WELCOME

THE NEOLITH

IN A WOOD

GHOSTIES AT THE WEDDING

DAWN WIND

DART

BY RUNDLESTONE

A SONG TO SILVER EYES

ENOUGH

SONG OF THE LARCHES

A SONG

BUONARROTI’S “DAWN”

A DARTMOOR STREAM

THE FALL

LAPWINGS

TO AN OPAL

JACK O’ LANTERN

THE OLD ROAD

THE DOUBTFUL ONES

LITANY TO PAN

A SONG

CHERRYBROOK

THE HUNTER’S MOON

VOICES

I

II

III

IV

WIND OF THE WEST

THE LOVER AND THE WIND

A SONG

THE GRAVE OF KEATS

I

II

TIGER

THE PUDDLE

VISION

IN GALLIPOLI

THEN AND NOW

VIGIL

DARTMOOR NIGHT

THE FRUIT OF THE TREE

WHERE MY TREASURE IS

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE