  INTRODUCTION TO A NARRATIVE POEMThe vapour, twining and twitching, seems to throw Black, precipitous boulders to and fro Light as a bandied scoff; and, look, the cliff— Whose root claws at the midworld fire with stiff Unmolten, adamantine fingers—fails, Lurches. Above, cold and eternal gales Run worrying, shredding, eternal sunlight; snatch At the heather; puff at the flocks of cotton; scratch White scars along the bents. If strangers climb To this plateau that buffets back slow time, They stand awhile impotent, grey with fear, And feel solidity’s foundation stir. But even here a cottage free from harms Lies havened, hugged and sheltered by the arms Of a narrow, green recess. A few stunt oaks, Elders, and barren apples beard the rocks; But, sleeker than a pool, the lawn beneath Burns white and blue, bewildering the heath. On a low wood-bench, rifted by years of rain, Warped at one end, split far along the grain, A meagre man with a waste, weary smile Reads to a boy and girl, or plays awhile Some quiet, grown-up game. He suddenly bows Head between hands: no more his children rouse Flicker or flame, by question or caress, Winter of grief. At last he rises, and, With empty scrutiny, feet that understand No path but falter at random, stumbles out Where tigrish winds whirry and havoc and shout. His back-blown hair, wet, smarting eyes, recall The conscious pang of life; and he must fall Faint on the ground, or whet his courage keen, Clench all his being, prise a path between The loud, inimical flaws. With even might He batters on, to earth’s and air’s despite, In storm and tumult winning peace and light. Yet, in these roads of quiet, muniment From fury of nature, home from discontent Surely of earth’s mean, trafficking miseries, In this domain of flower and fragrance, this Green plat of smooth, immotionable ground, Why does the panther sorrow skulk around And leap like fear from unsuspected fourm? Weigh this doubt rather—if the embittered swarm Of multitudinous grief thins ever or stays From most unmerited sally; for in what ways A man may tread, and fate how seeming fair, His intimate heart is troubled, and despair Lays present ambush. Many feel the sting Of casual time like bramble-thorns, that bring A not-enduring spasm: in other blood, More sensitive, urging a froward, perilous flood, It racks like tropic ivy, whose embrace Nor drug, nor simple, medicine back the mind; They go forgetting all their manhood, find No recollection save the venom of death That whistles about their brain and sears their breath. Thus almost had it been with him, thus grief
Came turbulent, and left him no relief. SUMMER BATHINGThe ruckling pool, torn grey by Pendry Weir, Became Cocytus to my boy time fear. Two haw-trees, pulping fat their close, green fruits Turned cuttlefish below, wagging no roots But narrow tentacles. Old Jacob Fry Tells how he drained this pool one hot July When drought had sucked the white stream thick and slow: Fish, four-foot deep, shone thirty feet below. Leaning to drop a stone, the farmboy whews Bewildered that his confident ear should lose All thud for grounding. Now he fears to stay, And walks by whistling on another day. Here, when the black bees blundered in the heat Half-drunk, rifling the fine-flurred meadowsweet, I stripped and bathed. At first, numb for delight, I lost all thought but this—Come, you must fight Free from the swirl. But when blank eyes grew clear Like a pit-pattering mouse came fluttered fear. Now here and there slide snakish eels, now voles Bolt hizzing over the brook to round, black holes. These groping roots perhaps will grip my flesh Till I grow tired of screaming: so the mesh Will move, my bones will crackle, I sink down; So to an end. Or in some cave of brown Old fiends may sprawling meditate false deeds; One, ware of prey, slip out lean fingers, pluck Unusual meat through water’s rush and ruck. Yet, braving all, to prove wild fancy vain, I held my breath and sank. The brook, astrain And fierce to be free, spun snarling overhead; Dull roars droned round, cold currents buffeted. Proud of this daring shewn—but doubtful, too, Of tempting fortune far—I battled through To the root-held scroll of turf on the sagging bank, And carefully muscled up. The sheep-field drank The wide-spent, white-spilt sun, the wrapping air Swung flame-like past, and, while I ran, the bare Close-nibbled grass pushed hot against my feet. The yeanlings rose and rushed with timid bleat Full-tilt at the mothering ewe; fed sleek with clover, Three cows, in mild amazement bending over The gap-set palings, rubbed their necks or chewed. But in mid-course I staggered, having trod Firm on a flat and spiny thistle; stayed Nursing my foot, half grinning, half dismayed: Then lay full length, as light-heel time were not; Pale fears, fantastic perils, all forgot. COUNTRY CHURCHYARDThis grave, moss-grown, marks him who once went free; Now pent—no, portionless; from sharp life lost; Mere mouldered bone-work. His unheeded name Who, curious, pausing, may decipher? See; Thin gulled by running rain, by chipping frost Frustrated, muffled under a yellow, same, Fat scurf of lichen, the dim characters Withstand conjecture, aimless and awry. Yet here lies one who, living, peopled earth With indestructible fancy. Now he hears No nature’s music, who for hours would lie To hear the blue-caps click their quick, small mirth. MUSEUMThe day was death. A chalk road, pale in dust, Accused with leprous finger the long moors. The drab, damp air so blanketed the town No doddered oak swung leathern leaf. The chimneys Pushed oddling pillars at the loose-hung sky. May, pansy, lilac, dense as the night steam Of lowland swamps, fettered the sodden air, And, through the haze, along the ragstone houses, Blood-lichens dulled to a rotten-apple brown. Behind close doors pale women drooped and dragged In customary toils. They dusted shelves Or changed from chair to chair dull, cotton cushions: Soon, vacantly, they bore them back and wiped With languid arms the black, unspotted shelves. Such mind’s own symbols of despair they went That never movement shook a face to grief— At first they looked no more than cheerless women, But dug deep in the plaster of their flesh Those eyes were year-dead, underpouched with blue. A word would sear the silence of a week. Of a sudden, turning a byeway corner, a cripple, Bloodless with age, lumbered along the road. The motes of dust whirled at his iron-shod crutches And quickly settled. A dog whined. The old Cripple looked round and saw no man, but gave A cruel, crackling chuckle, swung a yard, And stopped to look about and laugh again. She turned and slid the table-cover straight. Her mother could not answer, but she thought ‘It must be Beggar Joe, gone lately mad.’ He lumbered along the road and turned a corner. His tapping faded and the day was death. LOST LANDSWhen from this alien multitude of man These, kind or kindred, speak in approbation Of what I strove to write, for all my pleasure I feel my gross dismerit and fall shamed. Set no regard on me: not I can pierce Clogged air and homely falsehood in prophetic Dream or sudden awakening. Sinewed phrases, There are my petty troublings of weak sight. Shame took me once, and shame has tracked me since: My friend spoke of a man who lives bewildered, Even in London striding over mountains, Through populous roads companioning the dead. Stars move around him and the dew falls grey; Thin firs pry through the mist. Old fables quicken— Undine laughs by the waters, vague, uneasy: Maiden Mary sings to the sleepy Child. Then I remembered boyhood, in whose hours Thistles were knights, old men were murderous, daytime Intractable as dream. I knew that either Hid with coarse walls imaginable worlds. Now I am dulled, habitual now with known Earth. Never shall other-country pathways Bring me, familiar, through amazing valleys Fire-white with blossom, dark with ancient boughs. |
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