Silence

It was bright day and all the trees were still
In the deep valley, and the dim Sun glowed;
The clay in hard-baked fire along the hill
Leapt through dark trunks to apples green and gold,
Smooth, hard and cold, they shone like lamps of stone:
They were bright bubbles bursting from the trees,
Swollen and still among the dark green boughs;
On their bright skins the shadows of the leaves
Seemed the faint ghosts of summers long since gone,
Faint ghosts of ghosts, the dreams of ghostly eyes.
There was no sound between those breathless hills.
Only the dim Sun hung there, nothing moved;
The thronged, massed, crowded multitude of leaves
Hung like dumb tongues that loll and gasp for air:
The grass was thick and still, between the trees.
There were big apples lying on the ground,
Shining, quite still, as though they had been stunned
By some great violent spirit stalking through,
Leaving a deep and supernatural calm
Round a dead beetle upturned in a furrow.
A valley filled with dark, quiet, leaf-thick trees,
Loaded with green, cold, faintly shining suns;
And in the sky a great dim burning disc! —
Madness it is to watch these twisted trunks
And to see nothing move and hear no sound!
Let's make a noise, Hey!... Hey!... Hullo! Hullo!

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Kent in War

The pebbly brook is cold to-night,
Its water soft as air,
A clear, cold, crystal-bodied wind
Shadowless and bare,
Leaping and running in this world
Where dark-horned cattle stare:
Where dark-horned cattle stare, hoof-firm
On the dark pavements of the sky,
And trees are mummies swathed in sleep
And small dark hills crowd wearily;
Soft multitudes of snow-grey clouds
Without a sound march by.
Down at the bottom of the road
I smell the woody damp
Of that cold spirit in the grass,
And leave my hill-top camp —
Its long gun pointing in the sky —
And take the Moon for lamp.
I stop beside the bright cold glint
Of that thin spirit in the grass,
So gay it is, so innocent!
I watch its sparkling footsteps pass
Lightly from smooth round stone to stone,
Hid in the dew-hung grass.
My lamp shines in the globes of dew,
And leaps into that crystal wind
Running along the shaken grass
To each dark hole that it can find —
The crystal wind, the Moon my lamp,
Have vanished in a wood that's blind.
High lies my small, my shadowy camp,
Crowded about by small dark hills;
With sudden small white flowers the sky
Above the woods' dark greenness fills;
And hosts of dark-browed, muttering trees
In trance the white Moon stills.
I move among their tall grey forms,
A thin moon-glimmering, wandering Ghost,
Who takes his lantern through the world
In search of life that he has lost,
While watching by that long lean gun
Up on his small hill post.

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Talking with Soldiers

The mind of the people is like mud,
From which arise strange and beautiful things,
But mud is none the less mud,
Though it bear orchids and prophesying Kings,
Dreams, trees, and water's bright babblings.
It has found form and colour and light,
The cold glimmer of the ice-wrapped Poles;
It has called a far-off glow Arcturus,
And some pale weeds, lilies of the valley.
It has imagined Virgil, Helen and Cassandra;
The sack of Troy, and the weeping for Hector —
Rearing stark up 'mid all this beauty
In the thick, dull neck of Ajax.
There is a dark Pine in Lapland,
And the great, figured Horn of the Reindeer,
Moving soundlessly across the snow,
Is its twin brother, double-dreamed,
In the mind of a far-off people.
It is strange that a little mud
Should echo with sounds, syllables, and letters,
Should rise up and call a mountain Popocatapetl,
And a green-leafed wood Oleander.
These are the ghosts of invisible things;
There is no Lapland, no Helen and no Hector,
And the Reindeer is a darkening of the brain,
And Oleander is but Oleander.
Mary Magdalena and the vine Lachryma Christi
Were like ghosts up the ghost of Vesuvius,
As I sat and drank wine with the soldiers,
As I sat in the Inn on the mountain,
Watching the shadows in my mind.
The mind of the people is like mud,
Where are the imperishable things,
The ghosts that flicker in the brain —
Silent women, orchids, and prophesying Kings,
Dreams, trees, and water's bright babblings!

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Song

Gently, sorrowfully sang the maid
Sowing the ploughed field over,
And her song was only:
'Come, O my lover!'
Strangely, strangely shone the light,
Stilly wound the river:
'Thy love is a dead man,
He'll come back never.'
Sadly, sadly passed the maid
The fading dark hills over;
Still her song far, far away said:
'Come, O my lover!'

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The Princess

The stone-grey roses by the desert's rim
Are soft-edged shadows on the moonlit sand,
Grey are the broken walls of Khangavar,
That haunt of nightingales, whose voices are
Fountains that bubble in the dream-soft Moon.
Shall the Gazelles with moonbeam pale bright feet
Entering the vanished gardens sniff the air —
Some scent may linger of that ancient time,
Musician's song, or poet's passionate rhyme,
The Princess dead, still wandering love-sick there.
A Princess pale and cold as mountain snow,
In cool, dark chambers sheltered from the sun,
With long dark lashes and small delicate hands:
All Persia sighed to kiss her small red mouth
Until they buried her in shifting sand.
And the Gazelles shall flit by in the Moon
And never shake the frail Tree's lightest leaves,
And moonlight roses perfume the pale Dawn
Until the scarlet life that left her lips
Gathers its shattered beauty in the sky.

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Peace

In low chalk hills the great King's body lay,
And bright streams fell, tinkling like polished tin,
As though they carried off his armoury,
And spread it glinting through his wide domain.
Old bearded soldiers sat and gazed dim-eyed
At the strange brightness flowing under trees,
And saw his sword flashing in ancient battles,
And drank, and swore, and trembled helplessly.
And bright-haired maidens dipped their cold white arms,
And drew them glittering colder, whiter, still;
The sky sparkled like the dead King's blue eye
Upon the sentries that were dead as trees.
His shining shield lay in an old grey town,
And white swans sailed so still and dreamfully,
They seemed the thoughts of those white, peaceful hills
Mirrored that day within his glazing eyes.
And in the square the pale cool butter sold,
Cropped from the daisies sprinkled on the downs,
And old wives cried their wares, like queer day owls,
Piercing the old men's sad and foolish dreams.
And Time flowed on till all the realm forgot
The great King lying in the low chalk hills;
Only the busy water dripping through
His hard white bones knew of him lying there.

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Death

When I am dead a few poor souls shall grieve
As I grieved for my brother long ago.
Scarce did my eyes grow dim,
I had forgotten him;
I was far-off hearing the spring winds blow,
And many summers burned
When, though still reeling with my eyes aflame,
I heard that faded name
Whispered one Spring amid the hurrying world
From which, years gone, he turned.
I looked up at my windows and I saw
The trees, thin spectres sucked forth by the moon.
The air was very still
Above a distant hill;
It was the hour of night's full silver moon.
'O are thou there my brother?' my soul cried;
And all the pale stars down bright rivers wept,
As my heart sadly crept
About the empty hills, bathed in that light
That lapped him when he died.
Ah! it was cold, so cold; do I not know
How dead my heart on that remembered day!
Clear in a far-away place
I see his delicate face
Just as he called me from my solitary play,
Giving into my hands a tiny tree.
We planted it in the dark, blossomless ground
Gravely, without a sound;
Then back I went and left him standing by
His birthday gift to me.
In that far land perchance it quietly grows
Drinking the rain, making a pleasant shade;
Birds in its branches fly
Out of the fathomless sky
Where worlds of circling light arise and fade.
Blindly it quivers in the bright flood of day,
Or drowned in multitudinous shouts of rain
Glooms o'er the dark-veiled plain —
Buried below, the ghost that's in his bones
Dreams in the sodden clay.
And, while he faded, drunk with beauty's eyes
I kissed bright girls and laughed deep in dumb trees,
That stared fixt in the air
Like madmen in despair
Gaped up from earth with the escaping breeze.
I saw earth's exaltation slowly creep
Out of their myriad sky-embracing veins.
I laughed along the lanes,
Meeting Death riding in from the hollow seas
Through black-wreathed woods asleep.
I laughed, I swaggered on the cold hard ground —
Through the grey air trembled a falling wave —
'Thou'rt pale, O Death!' I cried,
Mocking him in my pride;
And passing I dreamed not of that lonely grave,
But of leaf-maidens whose pale, moon-like hands
Above the tree-foam waved in the icy air,
Sweeping with shining hair
Through the green-tinted sky, one moment fled
Out of immortal lands.
One windless Autumn night the Moon came out
In a white sea of cloud, a field of snow;
In darkness shaped of trees,
I sank upon my knees
And watched her shining, from the small wood below —
Faintly Death flickered in an owl's far cry — -
We floated soundless in the great gulf of space,
Her light upon my face —
Immortal, shining in that dark wood I knelt
And knew I could not die.
And knew I could not die — O Death, didst thou
Heed my vain glory, standing pale by thy dead?
There is a spirit who grieves
Amid earth's dying leaves;
Was't thou that wept beside my brother's bed?
For I did never mourn nor heed at all
Him passing on his temporal elm-wood bier;
I never shed a tear.
The drooping sky spread grey-winged through my soul,
While stones and earth did fall.
That sound rings down the years — I hear it yet —
All earthly life's a winding funeral —
And though I never wept,
But into the dark coach stept,
Dreaming by night to answer the blood's sweet call,
She who stood there, high-breasted, with small, wise lips,
And gave me wine to drink and bread to eat,
Has not more steadfast feet,
But fades from my arms as fade from mariners' eyes
The sea's most beauteous ships.
The trees and hills of earth were once as close
As my own brother, they are becoming dreams
And shadows in my eyes;
More dimly lies
Guaya deep in my soul, the coastline gleams
Faintly along the darkening crystalline seas.
Glimmering and lovely still, 'twill one day go;
The surging dark will flow
Over my hopes and joys, and blot out all
Earth's hills and skies and trees.
I shall look up one night and see the Moon
For the last time shining above the hills,
And thou, silent, wilt ride
Over the dark hillside.
'Twill be, perchance, the time of daffodils —
'How come those bright immortals in the woods?
Their joy being young, didst thou not drag them all
Into dark graves ere Fall?'
Shall life thus haunt me, wondering, as I go
To thy deep solitudes?
There is a figure with a down-turned torch
Carved on a pillar in an olden time,
A calm and lovely boy
Who comes not to destroy
But to lead age back to its golden prime.
Thus did an antique sculptor draw thee, Death,
With smooth and beauteous brow and faint sweet smile,
Not haggard, gaunt and vile,
And thou perhaps art thus to whom men may,
Unvexed, give up their breath.
But in my soul thou sittest like a dream
Among earth's mountains, by her dim-coloured seas;
A wild unearthly Shape
In thy dark-glimmering cape,
Piping a tune of wavering melodies,
Thou sittest, ay, thou sittest at the feast
Of my brief life among earth's bright-wreathed flowers,
Staining the dancing hours
With sombre gleams until, abrupt, thou risest
And all, at once, is ceased.

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