Part 21 (2/2)

Trees and the menace of night; Then a long, lonely, leaden mere Backed by a desolate fell, As by a spectral battlement; and then, Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, A vast, gray, listless, inexpressive sky, So beggared, so incredibly bereft Of starlight and the song of racing worlds, It might have bellied down upon the Void Where as in terror Light was beginning to be.

Hist! In the trees fulfilled of night (Night and the wretchedness of the sky) Is it the hurry of the rain?

Or the noise of a drive of the Dead, Streaming before the irresistible Will Through the strange dusk of this, the Debateable Land Between their place and ours?

Like the forgetfulness Of the work-a-day world made visible, A mist falls from the melancholy sky.

A messenger from some lost and loving soul, Hopeless, far wandered, dazed Here in the provinces of life, A great white moth fades miserably past.

Thro' the trees in the strange dead night, Under the vast dead sky, Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell, And the unimagined vast.i.tudes beyond.

XXIII--To P. A. G.

Here they trysted, here they strayed, In the leaf.a.ge dewy and boon, Many a man and many a maid, And the morn was merry June.

'Death is fleet, Life is sweet,'

Sang the blackbird in the may; And the hour with flying feet, While they dreamed, was yesterday.

Many a maid and many a man Found the leaf.a.ge close and boon; Many a destiny began - O, the morn was merry June!

Dead and gone, dead and gone, (Hark the blackbird in the may!), Life and Death went hurrying on, Cheek on cheek--and where were they?

Dust on dust engendering dust In the leaf.a.ge fresh and boon, Man and maid fulfil their trust - Still the morn turns merry June.

Mother Life, Father Death (O, the blackbird in the may!), Each the other's breath for breath, Fleet the times of the world away.

XXIV--To A. C.

Not to the staring Day, For all the importunate questionings he pursues In his big, violent voice, Shall those mild things of bulk and mult.i.tude, The Trees--G.o.d's sentinels Over His gift of live, life-giving air, Yield of their huge, unutterable selves.

Midsummer-manifold, each one Voluminous, a labyrinth of life, They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreams That haunt their leafier privacies, Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile Of laughter flickering back from s.h.i.+ne to shade, And disappearances of homing birds, And frolicsome freaks Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs.

But at the word Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, Night of the many secrets, whose effect - Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread - Themselves alone may fully apprehend, They tremble and are changed.

In each, the uncouth individual soul Looms forth and glooms Essential, and, their bodily presences Touched with inordinate significance, Wearing the darkness like the livery Of some mysterious and tremendous guild, They brood--they menace--they appal; Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring Wild hands of warning in the face Of some inevitable advance of the doom; Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing As in some monstrous market-place, They pa.s.s the news, these Gossips of the Prime, In that old speech their forefathers Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard The troubled voice of Eve Naming the wondering folk of Paradise.

Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell The tale of their dim life, with all Its compost of experience: how the Sun Spreads them their daily feast, Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine; Of the old Moon's fitful solicitude And those mild messages the Stars Descend in silver silences and dews; Or what the sweet-breathing West, Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat, Said, and their leaf.a.ge laughed; And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year - The sting of the stirring sap Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring, Their summer amplitudes of pomp, Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill, Embittered housewifery Of the lean Winter: all such things, And with them all the goodness of the Master, Whose right hand blesses with increase and life, Whose left hand honours with decay and death.

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