The Five Books of Youth Part 4

We hear the same wind, they and I, Under the dark autumnal sky; It blows strange music through their dreams.

Keenly it blows through mine, Singing their epitaph.

Tours, 1918

X

The green ca.n.a.l is mottled with falling leaves, Yellow leaves, fluttering silently; A whirling gust ripples the woods, and heaves The stricken branches with a sigh, Then all is still again.

Unmoving, the green waterway receives Ghosts of the dying forest to its breast; Loneliness...quiet...not a wing has stirred In the cold glades; no fish has leaped away From the heavy waters; not a drop of rain Distils from the pervading mist.

Sluggishly out of the west A grey ca.n.a.l-boat glides, half-seen, unheard; The sweating horses on the towpath sway Backward and forward in a rhythmic strain; It pa.s.ses by, a dream within a dream, Down the dark corridor of leaning boughs, Down the long waterways of endless fall.

A shiver stirs the woods; a fitful gleam Of sun gilds the sky's overhanging brows; Then shadowy silence, and the yellow stream Of dead leaves dropping to the green ca.n.a.l.

Moret-sur-Loing, 1918

XI

They who have gone down the hill are far away; From the still valleys I can hear them call; Their distant laughter faintly floats Through the unmoving air and back to me.

I am alone with the declining day And the declining forest where the notes Of all the happy minstrelsy, Birds and leaf-music and the rest, Sink separately in the hush of fall.

The sun and clouds conflicting in the west Swirl into smoky light together and fade Under the unbroken shadow; Under the shadowed peace that is the night; Under the night's great quietude of shade.

The sheep below me in the meadow Seem drifting on the haze, serene and white, Pale pastured dreams, unearthly herds that roam Where the dead reign and phantoms make their home.

They also pa.s.s, even as the clear ring Of the sad Angelus through the vales echoing.

Montigny, 1918

XII

Where two roads meet amid the wood, There stands a white sepulchral rood, Beneath whose shadow, wayfarers Would pause to offer up their prayers.

There is no house for miles around, No sound of beast, no human sound, Only the trees like sombre dreams From whose bare boughs the water drips; And the pale memory of death.

The haze hangs heavy without breath, It hangs so heavy that it seems To hold a silent finger to its lips.

In after years the spectral cross Will be quite overgrown with moss, And wayfarers will go their way Nor stop to meditate and pray.

The spring will nest in all the trees Unblighted by the memories Of autumn and the G.o.d of pain.

The leaves will whisper in the sun, Life will crown death with snowy flowers, Long hence...but now the autumn lowers, The sky breaks into gusts of rain, Turn thee to sleep, the day is nearly done.

Forest of Fontainebleau, 1918

XIII

The boy is late tonight binding his sheaves, The twilight of these autumn eyes Falls early now and chill.

The murky sun has set An hour ago behind the overhanging hill.

Great piles of fallen leaves Smoulder in every street And through the columned smoke a scarlet jet Of flame darts out and disappears.

The boy leans motionless upon his staff, With all the sorrows of his fifteen years Gazing out of his eyes into the fall, A memory ineffable and sweet Half tinged with voiceless pa.s.sion, half Plaintive with sad imaginings that drift Like echoes of far-off autumnal bells.

He starts up with a laugh, Binds up the last gaunt sheaf and turns away; Out of the dusk an inarticulate call Rings keen across the solemn Berkshire woods, And then the answer. Impotent farewells That eager voices lift Into the hush of the receding day; Full soon the silence surges in again, Peaceful, inevitable, deep as death.

The boy has lingered late in the grey fields, Knowing the first strange happiness of pain, And the low voices of October moods.

Now comes the night, the meadow yields Unto the sky a damp and pungent breath; The quiet air of the New England town Seems confident that everyone is home Safe by his fire.

The frosty stars look down Near, near above the kind familiar trees In whose dry branches roam The gentle spirits of the darkling breeze.

Deep in its caverned heart the forest sings Of mysteries unknown and vanished lore; Old wisdom; dead desire; Dreams of the past, of immemorial springs....

The wind is rising cold from the river: close the door.

Tours, 1918

XIV

O lovely shepherd Corydon, how far Thou wanderest from thine Ionian hills; Now the first star Rains pallid tears where the lost lands are, And the red sunset fills The cleft horizon with a flaming wine.

The grave significance of falling leaves Soon shall make desolate thy singing heart, When the cold wind grieves, And the cold dews rot the standing sheaves,-- Return, O Thou that art The hope of spring in these lost lands of mine.

Chalons-sur-Marne, 1917

XV

O little shepherd boy, what sobs are those That shake your slender shoulders, what despair Has run her fingers through your rumpled hair, And laid you p.r.o.ne beneath a weight of woes?

The trees upon the hill will soon be bare, A yellow blight is on the garden close, But you, you need not mourn the vanished rose, For many springs will find you just as fair.

Weep not for summer, she is past all weeping, Fear not the winter, she in turn will pa.s.s, And with the spring love waits for you, perchance, When, with the morn, faint wings stir from their sleeping, And the first petals scatter on the gra.s.s, Under the orchards and the vines of France.

Recicourt, 1917

XVI

The dull-eyed girl in bronze implores Apollo To warm these dying satyrs and to raise Their withered wreaths that rot in every hollow Or smoulder redly in the pungent haze.

The shining reapers, gone these many days, Have left their fields disconsolate and sear, Like bony sand uncovered to the gaze, In this, the ebb-tide of the year.

My wisest comrade turns into a swallow And flashes southward as the thickets blaze In awful splendour; I, who cannot follow, Confront the skies' unmitigated greys.

The cynic faun whom I have known betrays A dangerous mood at night, and seems austere Beneath the autumn noon's distempered rays, In this, the ebb-tide of the year.

Ice quenches all reflection in the shallow Lagoon whose trampled margin still displays Upheaval where the centaurs used to wallow; And where my favourite unicorns would graze, A few wild ducks scream lamentable lays Of shrill derision desperate with fear, Bleak note on note, phrase on discordant phrase, In this, the ebb-tide of the year.

Poor girl, how soon our garden world decays, Our metals tarnish, our loves disappear; Dull-eyed we haunt these unfrequented ways, In this, the ebb-tide of the year.

Cambridge, 1920

XVII

The winter night is hard as gla.s.s; The frozen stars hang stilly down; I sit inside while people pa.s.s From the dead-hearted town.

The tavern hearth is deep and wide, The flames caress my glowing skin; The icicles hang cold outside, But I sit warm within.

The faces pa.s.s in blurring white Outside the frosted window, lifting Eyes against my cheerful night, From their night of dreadful drifting.