Part 8 (1/2)

UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN

Given, not lent, And not withdrawn--once sent - This Infant of mankind, this One, Is still the little welcome Son.

New every year, New-born and newly dear, He comes with tidings and a song, The ages long, the ages long.

Even as the cold Keen winter grows not old; As childhood is so fresh, foreseen, And spring in the familiar green;

Sudden as sweet Come the expected feet.

All joy is young, and new all art, And He, too, Whom we have by heart.

A DEAD HARVEST [IN KENSINGTON GARDENS]

Along the graceless gra.s.s of town They rake the rows of red and brown, Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay, Delicate, neither gold nor grey, Raked long ago and far away.

A narrow silence in the park; Between the lights a narrow dark.

One street rolls on the north, and one, m.u.f.fled, upon the south doth run.

Amid the mist the work is done.

A futile crop; for it the fire Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.

So go the town's lives on the breeze, Even as the sheddings of the trees; Bosom nor barn is filled with these.

THE TWO POETS

Whose is the speech That moves the voices of this lonely beech?

Out of the long West did this wild wind come - Oh strong and silent! And the tree was dumb, Ready and dumb, until The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill.

Two memories, Two powers, two promises, two silences Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves The purpose of the past, Separate, apart--embraced, embraced at last.

”Whose is the word?