Preludes 1921-1922 Part 3

Lake heard, and knew that answer could be none, Then by the sheep-tracks on the silver downs Silent they walked, and midnight came apace, And by the bases of the mill they went, Close moving, arm by arm, and down again Towards the valley, where again they stood, And let their lives beat out upon the night.

And as they waited on farewell, a form Came up before them, and Martin Dane stood there, And "by your leave," he murmured, and went on.

Then Zell, "To-morrow, when the moon is full, Meet me beside the mill mound. Martin goes To Farnham for the otter hunting." Lake Took her and kissed, and with no word they parted Where the light still looked from the hillside farm Over the valley to his home. And he As dreaming pa.s.sed again by the mill to sleep.

Firmer the mould, surer the flight of boughs, Familiar move the bright plains of the air, And newly stedfast the gospel he had known Year by year written on his Suss.e.x life, Now seemed to Lake this day. Among his men, All day he drew and pegged the rickyard straw, And piled the barn from floor to the swallows' beam, Brown throated and brown armed, the golden rose Of summer wind glowing upon his face, And all the phrasing of his body good.

And twilight fell on the full harvest home, And the barn doors were closed, and painted wagons Stood empty by the ricks, with sunken wheels Smeared with the fallen husks, and voice was none, And silence with the moon was over all.

Lake through the eve walked his familiar paths, Counting the labour of his years; the shed Where morn and night the cattle came to stall, Empty and still now but for the timbering rats; The low smooth paven dairy, where the moon Now sent a shaft on one full yellow bowl; The barn so happily at teeming time again, The rickyard stacked with hurdles by the fence, The long loft over plough and wagon teams.

Among the heavy apple trees he pa.s.sed, By ledgy sheep track, over the new stubble, Across the valley, and in the shadow kept Of Martin Dane's home hop-yard, and again Back to his own hillside. And in the south, Beyond the moon, over the midnight sea, Came up a cloud all heavy with black wind.

Zell by the mill was standing when he came, Now darkly gowned so that she seemed a shadow, Black by the black mill, save for the white face, And gold hair and white hands that caught the moonlight.

Together the wide wooden steps they climbed, By broken treads and splitting rail, and he Lifted the rusted latch, and there within Were folded sacks perished along the seam, Forgotten with the dust, and the bare walls, Now weather-broken. Above them a dim light Showed them a laddered way still up. They came Into the high roof chamber, and a rent In the top timbers let the moonlight in, Half moulding to their vision spars and beams, The mill's old ghostly life, and sail-cloth piled From the use of generations. A window s.p.a.ce Just from their towery refuge let them look Over familiar earth now tranced. And Lake Saw yet again his roofs and acres loved, Tenderly, as though interpreters Of his long care and their good yielding hours Freshly upon his senses ministered; Zell Across the valley saw a lone slumbering light, While from the south the mounting darkness crept, And the wind gathered, moaning upon the mill, Filling its frame with a low pulsing breath.

And over love the heavenly figures went In their unchanging change. No longer now The moonlight shafted through the torn roof-timbers, And star by star crossed the small field of sky, And in those hours of peace that only comes With pa.s.sion mated and of pa.s.sion born, Lake knew within him stirring that far beauty Of an old starry still Helvellyn night.

And Zell made all the wisdom of her words Wisdom of life, so simple and unclouded, Leaving no fume of trouble in the dark, Ending for ever the brain's captivity.

They slept. And still the south wind gathered up, Gust upon gust to a full swelling tide, And the great sail-timbers groaned, and blackness fell Over the mill that trembled as in pain Of age now nearly with all quarrels done.

Along the ridges of the downs it swept, Beating the boughs of ash and elm, a flood Of storm exulting in deliverance.

And fury up and down the valleys played And rose and spilt and sank upon the hills, And to and fro the thunder bayed, till sudden The world about the sleeping lovers shook With sounding doom. And Zell, waking, cried out, And he beside her stood, and folded her A moment as from fear, and kissed her, and they turned To go, when from the bases of the mill A shrieking as of life being crushed and torn Clanged out upon the beating elements, And the hurt timbers, whipped and wrencht, sent up A last fierce wail, and for a moment swayed, Then gave the life up of a hundred years, And to the earth the mill plunged in defeat.

Sleepers along the hill-top in the night Stirred as a ruin above the thunder broke, And slept again. And dawn upon a world Of leaves and downs and sheep washed into brightness Came on that Suss.e.x out of a clear sky, And on the sea the little ships went on With sails just filled with a small virgin wind.

And slowly one by one the village came To see the old mill that their sires had known, And sires beyond them, blasted in a world Where peace was lord as in immortal mood.

They stood and silence kept them until one Saw suddenly upon the dawn breeze blown, Out from a mound of split and twisted timber A strand of golden hair. And strong arms worked Until upon the gra.s.s unheeding lay Those two dear bodies locked in a love that now Was beyond malice and denial and fear.

And Martin Dane home from his hunting came, And heard, and saw them lying side by side, And wondered how could folly pay so much For so unsound and gossipy an end, Gave his instructions for a decent grave, And found a tap-room topic to his mind.

That night the promise of the dawn was full, And on the broken mill a clear moon shone, Silvering all the ways the lovers knew.

And by the wreck a shadowy figure watched, Half Lake, and half that old Helvellyn lover, And on the night a whispered cadence fell--

Again in the world, a story has been made, These looked upon beauty unafraid, O these were lovely, these were the great ones, they dared, And denied not, but upon love's bidding fared.

Pity them not; they would scorn that as your hate, They knew the voices, they knew the hours that mate With hours beyond all judgment of mankind, These were the proud adventurers of the mind.

Kindled for ever because of them shall be A wiser freedom. The long lanes of the sea, The golden acres of Suss.e.x shall holy keep Their names, their love, their ending. Let them sleep.

GOLD

There is a castle on a hill, So far into the sky, That birds that from the valley-beds Up to the turrets fly, Climbing towards the sun can feel The clouds go tumbling by.

But always far above the clouds The sun is shining there, It shines for ever on those walls; And the great boughs that bear Harvests of never fading fruit Are golden everywhere.

Who journeys to that castled crest Finds, with his journey done, All ages and all colours in Cascades of light that run Over the broad weirs of the air For ever from the sun.

Two things are silver: flower of plum When April yet is cold; And willowed floods that of the moon Quiet leases hold.

That castle in the sky alone Of living things is gold.

Between unfathomable blue And the bright belts of green, Midway the plains of heaven and earth, Rock-borne it stands between Woods and the sky, a golden world Where only gold is seen.

Old carvers in the stone have cut Forests and wraths and herds, And these are gold: the dials tell The sun in golden words; The very jackdaws, from the towers Wheeling, are golden birds.

The minting of the sun is on The gravel everywhere, The yellow walls are fleeces washed In pools of sunny air, That coming to that castle place All men are Jasons there.

Trancelike to stand upon that hill When the deep summer sings, Gold-clad, gold-hearted, and gold-voiced, And sings and sings and sings, Is as to wait a rising world In flight of golden wings.

And I have walked with love that way, And on that golden crest The sun was happy for my love, For she is golden-tressed.

Red gold, that of all golden things The great sun marks for best.

O golden castle of the sky Hereafter gold can be Only your image when the sun Transfigured her for me, Till she was golden-clouded Jove, And I her Danae.

Hereafter in the chambered night When linked love is told, One thought shall spare to climb that hill Into the sunbright fold, For a great summer noon when love Was gold, and gold, and gold.

BURNING BUSH

From babyhood I have known the beauty of earth-- I learnt it, I think, in the strange months before birth, I learnt it pa.s.sing and pa.s.sing by each moon From the harvest month into my natal June.

My mother, the dear, the lovely I hardly knew, Bearing me must have walked and wandered through Stubble of silver or gold, as moon or sun Lit earth in the days when my body was begun.

And then October with leaves splendid and blown She watched with my little body a little grown, And winter fell, and into our being pa.s.sed Firm frost and icy rivers and the blast Of winds that on the iron clods of plough Beat with an unseen charging. Then the bough Of spring came green, and her glad body stirred With a son's wombed leaping, and she heard Songs of the air and woods and waterways, And with them singing the coming of my days.

And nesting time drew on to summer flowers, And me unborn she taught through patient hours.

Then on that first June day, with spices blown Of roses over clover crops unmown, And grey wind-lifted leaves and blossom of bean, She gave her dear white beauty to the keen Anguish of women, and brought my body to birth Already skilled in the sculptures of the earth.

Then in the days when her b.r.e.a.s.t.s nourished me, Daily she walked, that happy girl, to see How summer prospered to bring the harvest on, And how the gardens and how the orchards shone With scarlet and blue and yellow flowers and fruit, And hear with equal love the lonely flute Of legendary satyrs in the wood, Or the still voice of Christ in bachelorhood.

And she would come I know to me her son With lovely secret gossip of journeys done In fields where some day my own feet should go.

It was not gossip in words that I could not know, Mere ease and pleasure for her mother wit, But such as I could feel the joy of it Beating about my baby blood and sense, Maternal tending of intelligence In the unwhispered rites of bosom and lip, Divinings worded in bodily fellowship.

And every shape and colour and scent she knew, Were intimations winding, folding, through My infancies of flesh and thought, each one To find its unblemished record and copy done In little moods drawn from the suckling-breast...

That now, in manhood, when I find the nest Of the chaffinch moulded in the elder tree, And looking on that lichen cup can see The images of eternity and s.p.a.ce Lavished upon a small bird's dwelling-place: Or when from some blue pa.s.sage of the sky I know that also colour can prophesy: Or, ghosted on the brushing tides of wheat, The gossip of a Galilean street, So many Sabbaths gone, I hear again, And his hands plucking that immortal grain: Or when by spectral ancestries I pa.s.s Again to Eden, as the orchard gra.s.s Gives out the scent of mellow apples blown From windy boughs--all these, I know, were known By that dear mother when the boy to come Was the zeal and gospel of her martyrdom.

Then came the time when I could walk with her, We pilgrims of the fields, with everywhere Strange leaves, and spreading of earth, and hedgerow themes, And mossy walls, and bubbling of the streams, And the way of clouds, and the full moon to wane, The bird-song in the lilacs after rain, And month by month the coming of the flowers, for me to learn in speech, as had been ours Knowledge unspoken while she fashioned me...

And then she died; and I went on to be Through lonely boyhood her disciple still, A wanderer by many a Berkshire hill, By water-meadows of the Oxford plain, By the thick oaks of Avon, with the strain Of an old yeoman wisdom dreaming on New beauty ever following beauty gone, Until I knew my earth and her raiment fair In every difference of the seasons' wear, Long years her scholar, with learning of her ways To slip unleasht all singing into praise Should learning yet by some enchantment be Bidden to pa.s.sion's better husbandry.

And the enchanted bidding fell. And you, O Love, it was that spelt the earth anew.

O Love, you silent wayfarer, How many years all unaware By blackthorn hedge, and spinney green With larch, I wandered, while unseen You in my shadow walked, nor made Even a whisper in the shade.