Poems

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man

In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

Towery city and branchy between towers;

Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded;

The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did

Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers;

Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? my duty all ended,

Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome

Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it, and some

Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed.   Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Hard as hurdle arms, with a broth of goldish flue

Breathed round; the rack of ribs; the scooped flank; lank

Rope-over thigh; knee-nave; and barrelled shank–

Head and foot, shoulder and shank–

I have desired to go

Where springs not fail,

To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail

And a few lilies blow.

Have fair fallen, O fair, fair have fallen, so dear

To me, so arch-especial a spirit as heaves in Henry Purcell,

An age is now since passed, since parted; with the reversal

Of the outward sentence low lays him, listed to a heresy, here.

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise

Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour

Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier

Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;

And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield

Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,

And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

This darksome burn, horseback brown,

His rollrock highroad roaring down,

In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam

Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

My own heart let me more have pity on; let

Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,

Charitable; not live this tormented mind

With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

No worst, there is none.   Pitched past pitch of grief,

More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.

Comforter, where, where is your comforting?

Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?

Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,

But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks

Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;

To do without, take tosses, and obey.

When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,

Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?

When, when, Peacè, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite

To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but

Glory be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Earth, sweet Earth, sweet landscape, with leavès throng

And louchèd low grass, heaven that dost appeal

To, with no tongue to plead, no heart to feel;

That canst but only be, but dost that long—

Earnest, earthless, equal, attuneable, ^| vaulty, voluminous, . .stupendous

Evening strains to be tíme’s vást, ^| womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.

Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, ^| her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the height

Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, ^| stárs principal, overbend us,

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ^| flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-

built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ^| they throng; they glitter in marches.

Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ^| wherever an elm arches,

Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ^| lashes lace, lance, and pair.

Wild air, world-mothering air,

Nestling me everywhere,

That each eyelash or hair

Girdles; goes home betwixt

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage

Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—

That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;

This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age.

Elected Silence, sing to me

And beat upon my whorlèd ear,

Pipe me to pastures still and be

The music that I care to hear.

Sometimes a lantern moves along the night,

That interests our eyes. And who goes there?

I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,

With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?

How to keep–is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere

known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch

or catch or key to keep

Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing

away?

THE Eurydice–it concerned thee, O Lord:

Three hundred souls, O alas! on board,

Some asleep unawakened, all un-

warned, eleven fathoms fallen

On ear and ear two noises too old to end

Trench—right, the tide that ramps against the shore;

With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,

Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!

O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!

Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-

dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing