Poems New and Old. John Freeman

and word his hopeless sense escape—

       Sweet common word and lifted heavenly note—

       So, beneath that bright rain,

       While stars rise, soar and stoop,

       Dazzled and dismayed I look and droop

       And, blinded, look again.

      "Return, return!" O beeches sing you then.

       I like a tree wave all my thoughts with you,

       As your boughs wave to other tossed boughs when

       First in the windy east the dawn looks through

       Night's soon-dissolving bars.

       Return, return? But I have never strayed:

       Hush, thoughts, that for a moment played

       In that enchanted forest of the stars

       Where the mind grows numb.

       Return, return?

       Back, thoughts, from heights that freeze and deeps that burn,

       Where sight fails and song's dumb.

       And as, after long absence, a child stands

       In each familiar room

       And with fond hands

       Touches the table, casement, bed,

       Anon each sleeping, half-forgotten toy;

       So I to your sharp light and friendly gloom

       Returning, with first pale leaves round me shed,

       Recover the old joy

       Since here the long-acquainted hill-path lies,

       Steeps I have clambered up, and spaces where

       The Mount opens her bosom to the air

       And all around gigantic beeches rise.

THY HILL LEAVE NOT

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      Thy hill leave not, O Spring,

       Nor longer leap down to the new-green'd Plain.

       Thy western cliff-caves keep

       O Wind, nor branch-borne Echo after thee complain

       With grumbling wild and deep.

       Let Blossom cling

       Sudden and frozen round the eyes of trees,

       Nor fall, nor fall.

       Be still each Wing,

       Hushed each call.

      So was it ordered, so

       Hung all things silent, still;

       Only Time earless moved on, stepping slow

       Up the scarped hill,

       And even Time in a long twilight stayed

       And, for a whim, that whispered whim obeyed.

      There was no breath, no sigh,

       No wind lost in the sky

       Roamed the horizon round.

       The harsh dead leaf slept noiseless on the ground,

       By unseen mouse nor insect stirred

       Nor beak of hungry bird.

      Then were voices heard

       Mingling as though each

       Earth and grass had individual speech.

       —Has evening fallen so soon,

       And yet no Moon?

       —No, but hark: so still

       Was never the Spring's voice adown the hill!

       I do not feel her waters tapping upon

       The culvert's under stone.

       —And if 'tis not yet night a thrush should sing.

       —Or if 'tis night the owl should his far echo bring

       Near, near.—And I

       Should know the hour by his long-shaking distant cry.

       —But how should echo be? The air is dead,

       No song, no wing,

       —No footfall overhead

       Of beast—Or labourer passing, and no sound

       Of labourer's Good-night, good-night, good-night!

       —That we, here underground,

       Take to ourselves and breathe unheard Good-night!

       —O, it is lonely now with not one sound

       Neath that arched profound,

       —No throttled note

       Sweet over us to float,

       —No shadow treading light

       Of man, beast, bird.

       —If, earth in dumb earth, lie we here unstirred,

       —Why, brother, it were death renewed again

       If sun nor rain,

       —O death undying, if no dear human touch nor sound

       Fall on us underground!

THE CAVES

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      Like the tide—knocking at the hollowed cliff

       And running into each green cave as if

       In the cave's night to keep

       Eternal motion grave and deep;—

      That, even while each broken wave repeats

       Its answered knocking and with bruised hand beats

       Again, again, again,

       Tossed between ecstasy and pain;

      Still in the folded hollow darkness swells,

       Sinks, swells, and every green-hung hollow fills,

       Till there's no room for sound

       Save that old anger rolled around;

      So into every hollow cliff of life,

       Into this heart's deep cave so loud with strife,

       In tunnels I knew not,

       In lightless labyrinths of thought,

      The unresting tide has run and the dark filled,

       Even the vibration of old strife is stilled;

       The wave returning bears

       Muted those time-breathing airs.

      —How shall the million-footed tide still tread

       These hollows and in each cold void cave spread?

       How shall Love here keep

       Eternal motion grave and deep?

I WILL ASK

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      I will ask primrose and violet to spend for you

       Their smell and hue,

       And the bold, trembling anemone awhile to spare

       Her flowers starry fair;

       Or the flushed wild apple and yet sweeter thorn

       Their sweetness to keep

       Longer than any fire-bosomed flower born

       Between