Poems, 1908-1919. Drinkwater John

      I DO not think that skies and meadows are

      Moral, or that the fixture of a star

      Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees

      Have wisdom in their windless silences.

      Yet these are things invested in my mood

      With constancy, and peace, and fortitude,

      That in my troubled season I can cry

      Upon the wide composure of the sky,

      And envy fields, and wish that I might be

      As little daunted as a star or tree.

      Those hours are best when suddenly

      The voices of the world are still,

      And in that quiet place is heard

      The voice of one small singing bird,

      Alone within his quiet tree;

      When to one field that crowns a hill,

      With but the sky for neighbourhood,

      The crowding counties of my brain

      Give all their riches, lake and plain,

      Cornland and fell and pillared wood;

      When in a hill-top acre, bare

      For the seed’s use, I am aware

      Of all the beauty that an age

      Of earth has taught my eyes to see;

      When Pride and Generosity

      The Constant Heart and Evil Rage,

      Affection and Desire, and all

      The passions of experience

      Are no more tabled in my mind,

      Learning’s idolatry, but find

      Particularity of sense

      In daily fortitudes that fall

      From this or that companion,

      Or in an angry gossip’s word;

      When one man speaks for Every One,

      When Music lives in one small bird,

      When in a furrowed hill we see

      All beauty in epitome —

      Those hours are best; for those belong

      To the lucidity of song.

      Beyond my window in the night

      Is but a drab inglorious street,

      Yet there the frost and clean starlight

      As over Warwick woods are sweet.

      Under the grey drift of the town

      The crocus works among the mould

      As eagerly as those that crown

      The Warwick spring in flame and gold.

      And when the tramway down the hill

      Across the cobbles moans and rings,

      There is about my window-sill

      The tumult of a thousand wings.

      Think not that mystery has place

      In the obscure and veilèd face,

      Or when the midnight watches are

      Uncompanied of moon or star,

      Or where the fields and forests lie

      Enfolded from the loving eye

      By fogs rebellious to the sun,

      Or when the poet’s rhymes are spun

      From dreams that even in his own

      Imagining are half-unknown.

      These are not mystery, but mere

      Conditions that deny the clear

      Reality that lies behind

      The weak, unspeculative mind,

      Behind contagions of the air

      And screens of beauty everywhere,

      The brooding and tormented sky,

      The hesitation of an eye.

      Look rather when the landscapes glow

      Through crystal distances as though

      The forty shires of England spread

      Into one vision harvested,

      Or when the moonlit waters lie

      In silver cold lucidity;

      Those countenances search that bear

      Witness to very character,

      And listen to the song that weighs

      A life’s adventure in a phrase —

      These are the founts of wonder, these

      The plainer miracles to please

      The brain that reads the world aright;

      Here is the mystery of light.

      When youth and summer-time are gone,

      And age puts quiet garlands on,

      And in the speculative eye

      The fires of emulation die,

      But as to-day our time shall be

      Trembling upon eternity,

      While, still inconstant in debate,

      We shall on revelation wait,

      And age as youth will daily plan

      The sailing of the caravan.

      When you deliberate the page

      Of Alexander’s pilgrimage,

      Or say – “It is three years, or ten,

      Since Easter slew Connolly’s men,”

      Or prudently to judgment come

      Of Antony or Absalom,

      And think how duly are designed

      Case and instruction for the mind,

      Remember then that also we,

      In a moon’s course, are history.

      I walked a nut-wood’s gloom. And overhead

      A pigeon’s wing beat on the hidden boughs,

      And shrews upon shy tunnelling woke thin

      Late winter leaves with trickling sound. Across

      My narrow path I saw the carrier ants

      Burdened with little pieces of bright straw.

      These things I heard and saw, with senses fine

      For all the little traffic of the wood,

      While everywhere, above me, underfoot,

      And haunting every avenue of leaves,

      Was mystery, unresting, taciturn.

      And haunting the lucidities of life

      That are my daily beauty, moves a theme,

      Beating along my undiscovered mind.

      Sometimes,