Renascence: A Book of Verse :: THE-VALLEY-of-DELIVERANCE

THE-VALLEY-of-DELIVERANCE

Walter Crane

THE·VALLEY·of·DELIVERANCE

I

SEA-BLUE infinitude of silent hills!

That fold, like waves that crested are and smooth,

The wide-spread vale that slowly eve instils

With misty lakes, and all thy summits sooth.

II

In baths of amber light where melt and merge

The wandering purples into green and gold,

Athwart the slumbrous fields, and moorland verge

O’ersailed by slow cloud-shadows softly rolled.

III

With alternations new and grateful change

Of burning tones to cool in magic show,

As oft the opalescent sea do range

Or in the sun-built arch transfused do glow.

IV

O silent hills! ye hold a meaning more

Than speech; ye are not voiceless, O ye vales!

But eloquent of time and treasured lore

Of memory, and filled with untold tales.

V

That well nigh dim my gazing eyes with tears,

Whereas they follow those familiar lines;

Dear as the features shaped by hopes and fears

On friendship’s face, oft read and sought for signs.

VI

For dear to me the crags—the weather-worn;

The slopes of green, the waving woodland towers

Whose crested pageantry of leaves adorn

The shadowed graves of faded summer hours.

VII

Full well I know the belts of larch that fringe

The dark verge of the lonely moor, which seems

The limit of the world, touched with the tinge

Of dying light, and burned with day’s last beams.

VIII

And oft, as now, I pressed the purple bloom—

The heather-plumaged breast of this high moor;

And heard, as now I hear, the wandering boom

Of these winged gleaners of the honeyed store.

IX

O well loved vale! For I am bound to thee

By subtle threads of thought that memory weaves;

Yea, sitting in thy shadow, Liberty,

Like dawn first knew I, opening life’s leaves;

X

XII

On life, and life’s dark mystery which broods

And clings, a shadow, to the sad-eyed world;

Born in the horror of primÆval woods,

And in death’s cloud impenetrable furled.

XIII

Beyond the gathering years since first I knew

Thee, happy vale, my yearning spirit reads,

Beyond night’s mist on thy horizon blue,

Where glow day’s embers, ere the night succeeds—

XIV

The Legends rich of unforgotten time—

Azure, and white, and gray enfolded days,

That long have passed away, unto the chime

Of brief on lingering hours, their restful ways:

XV

And, even now, clear imaged on my brain

Their semblance comes again—I see them move

In long procession slow, with joy or pain

Enrobed, with faces hid, and eyes of doubt or love:

XVI

Until the day which died with yestern sun

Begins to merge in that unending line;

And soon her lingering sister will be one

For on her face the light has ceased to shine.

XVII

So pass the days, with days unborn, to die,

And gather them to years in time’s swift pace,

But we would fain forecast futurity,

Or read fate’s rune upon the sky’s calm face.

XVIII

And I could well believe that in the shade

Of this still vale the secret sign lies hid—

The secret that shall shape my life, unsaid,

As in a casket treasured with close lid;

XIX

Mid fir-woods dark, or tumbled crags, unknown,

Or in brown deeps, where swift the river flows

Among tumultuous rocks, whence I have heard

Vague murmurings, ofttimes, beneath the boughs.

XX

But silence with her finger locks the lips,

When stand we watching at Futura’s gate;

Though eager thought would climb, and climbing slips;

While, all unwatched, each hour doth carve our fate.

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