Part the First

Thou mastering me God! giver of breath and bread; World’s strand, sway of the sea; Lord of living and dead; Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh, And after it almost unmade, what with dread, Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh? Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.

I did say yes O at lightning and lashed rod; Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess Thy terror, O Christ, O God; Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night: The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod Hard down with a horror of height: And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.

The frown of his face Before me, the hurtle of hell Behind, where, where was a, where was a place? I whirled out wings that spell And fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host. My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell, Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast, To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from the grace to the grace.

I am soft sift In an hourglass--at the wall Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift, And it crowds and it combs to the fall; I steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane, But roped with, always, all the way down from the tall Fells or flanks of the voel, a vein Of the gospel proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ’s gift.

I kiss my hand To the stars, lovely-asunder Starlight, wafting him out of it; and Glow, glory in thunder; Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west: Since, tho’ he is under the world’s splendour and wonder, His mystery must be instressed, stressed; For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.

Not out of his bliss Springs the stress felt Nor first from heaven (and few know this) Swings the stroke dealt-- Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver, That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt-- But it rides time like riding a river (And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss),

It dates from day Of his going in Galilee; Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey; Manger, maiden’s knee; The dense and the driven Passion, and frightful sweat; Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be, Though felt before, though in high flood yet-- What none would have known of it, only the heart, being hard at bay,

Is out with it! Oh, We lash with the best or worst Word last! How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe Will, mouthed to flesh-burst, Gush!--flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet, Brim, in a flash, full!--Hither then, last or first, To hero of Calvary, Christ,’s feet-- Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it--men go.

Be adored among men, God, three-numberèd form; Wring thy rebel, dogged in den, Man’s malice, with wrecking and storm. Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue, Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm; Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung: Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.

With an anvil-ding And with fire in him forge thy will Or rather, rather then, stealing as Spring Through him, melt him but master him still: Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul, Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill, Make mércy in all of us, out of us all Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King.

PART THE SECOND

‘Some find me a sword; some The flange and the rail; flame, Fang, or flood’ goes Death on drum, And storms bugle his fame. But wé dream we are rooted in earth--Dust! Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same, Wave with the meadow, forget that there must The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.

On Saturday sailed from Bremen, American-outward-bound, Take settler and seamen, tell men with women, Two hundred souls in the round-- O Father, not under thy feathers nor ever as guessing The goal was a shoal, of a fourth the doom to be drowned; Yet did the dark side of the bay of thy blessing Not vault them, the million of rounds of thy mercy not reeve even them in?

Into the snows she sweeps, Hurling the haven behind, The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps, For the infinite air is unkind, And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular blow, Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind; Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivellèd snow Spins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.

She drove in the dark to leeward, She struck--not a reef or a rock But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her Dead to the Kentish Knock; And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of her keel: The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock; And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel Idle for ever to waft her or wind her with, these she endured.

Hope had grown grey hairs, Hope had mourning on, Trenched with tears, carved with cares, Hope was twelve hours gone; And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone, And lives at last were washing away: To the shrouds they took,--they shook in the hurling and horrible airs.

One stirred from the rigging to save The wild woman-kind below, With a rope’s end round the man, handy and brave-- He was pitched to his death at a blow, For all his dreadnought breast and braids of thew: They could tell him for hours, dandled the to and fro Through the cobbled foam-fleece, what could he do With the burl of the fountains of air, buck and the flood of the wave?

They fought with God’s cold-- And they could not and fell to the deck (Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or rolled With the sea-romp over the wreck. Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble, The woman’s wailing, the crying of child without check-- Till a lioness arose breasting the babble, A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told.

Ah, touched in your bower of bone Are you! turned for an exquisite smart, Have you! make words break from me here all alone, Do you!--mother of being in me, heart. O unteachably after evil, but uttering truth, Why, tears! is it? tears; such a melting, a madrigal start! Never-eldering revel and river of youth, What can it be, this glee? the good you have there of your own?

Sister, a sister calling A master, her master and mine!-- And the inboard seas run swirling and bawling; The rash smart sloggering brine Blinds her; but she that weather sees one thing, one; Has one fetch in her: she rears herself to divine Ears, and the call of the tall nun To the men in the tops and the tackle rode over the storm’s brawling.

She was first of a five and came Of a coifèd sisterhood. (O Deutschland, double a desperate name! O world wide of its good! But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two of a town, Christ’s lily and beast of the waste wood: From life’s dawn it is drawn down, Abel is Cain’s brother and breasts they have sucked the same.)

Loathed for a love men knew in them, Banned by the land of their birth, Rhine refused them. Thames would ruin them; Surf, snow, river and earth Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light; Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the worth, Thou martyr-master: in thy sight Storm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers--sweet heaven was astrew in them.

Five! the finding and sake And cipher of suffering Christ. Mark, the mark is of man’s make And the word of it Sacrificed. But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own bespoken, Before-time-taken, dearest prizèd and priced-- Stigma, signal, cinquefoil token For lettering of the lamb’s fleece, ruddying of the rose-flake.

Joy fall to thee, father Francis, Drawn to the Life that died; With the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the lance, his Lovescape crucified And seal of his seraph-arrival! and these thy daughters And five-livèd and leavèd favour and pride, Are sisterly sealed in wild waters, To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to breathe in his all-fire glances.

Away in the loveable west, On a pastoral forehead of Wales, I was under a roof here, I was at rest, And they the prey of the gales; She to the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly Falling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails, Was calling ‘O Christ, Christ come quickly’: The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wild-worn Best.

The majesty! what did she mean? Breathe, arch and original Breath. Is it love in her of the being as her lover had been? Breathe, body of lovely Death. They were else-minded then, altogether, the men Woke thee with a we are perishlng in the weather of Gennesareth. Or is it that she cried for the crown then, The keener to come at the comfort for feeling the combating keen?

For how to the heart’s cheering The down-dogged ground-hugged grey Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearing Of pied and peeled May! Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or night, still higher, With belled fire and the moth-soft Milky Way, What by your measure is the heaven of desire, The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed what for the hearing?

No, but it was not these. The jading and jar of the cart, Time’s tasking, it is fathers that asking for ease Of the sodden-with-its-sorrowing heart, Not danger, electrical horror; then further it finds The appealing of the Passion is tenderer in prayer apart: Other, I gather, in measure her mind’s Burden, in wind’s burly and beat of endragonèd seas.

But how shall I ... make me room there; Reach me a ... Fancy, come faster-- Strike you the sight of it? look at it loom there, Thing that she ... there then! the Master, Ipse, the only one, Christ, King, Head: He was to cure the extremity where he had cast her; Do, deal, lord it with living and dead; Let him ride, her pride, in his triumph, despatch and have done with his doom there.

Ah! there was a heart right! There was single eye! Read the unshapeable shock night And knew the who and the why; Wording it how but by him that present and past, Heaven and earth are word of, worded by?-- The Simon Peter of a soul! to the blast Tarpeian-fast, but a blown beacon of light.

Jesu, heart’s light, Jesu, maid’s son, What was the feast followed the night Thou hadst glory of this nun? Feast of the one woman without stain. For so conceived, so to conceive thee is done; But here was heart-throe, birth of a brain, Word, that heard and kept thee and uttered thee outright.

Well, she has thee for the pain, for the Patience; but pity of the rest of them! Heart, go and bleed at a bitterer vein for the Comfortless unconfessed of them-- No not uncomforted: lovely-felicitous Providence Finger of a tender of, O of a feathery delicacy, the breast of the Maiden could obey so, be a bell to, ring of it, and Startle the poor sheep back! is the shipwrack then a harvest; does tempest carry the grain for thee?

I admire thce, master of the tides, Of the Yore-flood, of the year’s fall; The recurb and the recovery of the gulfs sides, The girth of it and the wharf of it and the wall; Stanching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind; Ground of being, and granite of it: past all Grasp God, throned behind Death with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, bodes but abides;

With a mercy that outrides The all of water, an ark For the listener; for the lingerer with a love glides Lower than death and the dark; A vein for the visiting of the past-prayer, pent in prison, The-last-breath penitent spirits--the uttermost mark Our passion-plungèd giant risen, The Christ of the Father compassionate, fetched in the storm of his strides.

Now burn, new born to the world, Doubled-naturèd name, The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame, Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne! Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came; Kind, but royally reclaiming his own; A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fire hard-hurled.

Dame, at our door Drowned, and among our shoals, Remember us in the roads, the heaven-haven of the Reward: Our King back, oh, upon English souls! Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east, More brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign rolls, Pride, rose, prince, hero of us, high-priest, Our hearts’ charity’s hearth’s fire, our thoughts’ chivalry’s throng’s Lord.

5 Penmaen Pool

For the Visitors’ Book at the Inn

WHO long for rest, who look for pleasure Away from counter, court, or school O where live well your lease of leisure But here at, here at Penmaen Pool?

You’ll dare the Alp? you’ll dart the skiff?-- Each sport has here its tackle and tool: Come, plant the staff by Cadair cliff; Come, swing the sculls on Penmaen Pool.

What’s yonder?--Grizzled Dyphwys dim: The triple-hummocked Giant’s stool, Hoar messmate, hobs and nobs with him To halve the bowl of Penmaen Pool.

And all the landscape under survey, At tranquil turns, by nature’s rule, Rides repeated topsyturvy In frank, in fairy Penmaen Pool.

And Charles’s Wain, the wondrous seven, And sheep-flock clouds like worlds of wool. For all they shine so, high in heaven, Shew brighter shaken in Penmaen Pool.

The Mawddach, how she trips! though throttled If floodtide teeming thrills her full, And mazy sands all water-wattled Waylay her at ebb, past Penmaen Pool.

But what ‘s to see in stormy weather, When grey showers gather and gusts are cool?-- Why, raindrop-roundels looped together That lace the face of Penmaen Pool.

Then even in weariest wintry hour Of New Year’s month or surly Yule Furred snows, charged tuft above tuft, tower From darksome darksome Penmaen Pool.

And ever, if bound here hardest home, You’ve parlour-pastime left and (who’ll Not honour it?) ale like goldy foam That frocks an oar in Penmaen Pool.

Then come who pine for peace or pleasure Away from counter, court, or school, Spend here your measure of time and treasure And taste the treats of Penmaen Pool.

6 The Silver Jubilee: To James First Bishop of Shrewsbury on the 25th Year of his Episcopate July 28. 1876

THOUGH no high-hung bells or din Of braggart bugles cry it in-- What is sound? Nature’s round Makes the Silver Jubilee.

Five and twenty years have run Since sacred fountains to the sun Sprang, that but now were shut, Showering Silver Jubilee.

Feasts, when we shall fall asleep, Shrewsbury may see others keep; None but you this her true, This her Silver Jubilee.

Not today we need lament Your wealth of life is some way spent: Toil has shed round your head Silver but for Jubilee.

Then for her whose velvet vales Should have pealed with welcome, Wales, Let the chime of a rhyme Utter Silver Jubilee.

7 God’s Grandeur

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? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-- Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

8 The Starlight Night

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! The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies! Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare! Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!-- Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then!--What?--Prayer, patience, alms, vows. Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs! Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows! These are indeed the barn; withindoors house The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

9 Spring

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 The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden. Have, get, before it cloy, Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

10 The Lantern out of Doors

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?

Men go by me whom either beauty bright In mould or mind or what not else makes rare: They rain against our much-thick and marsh air Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.

Death or distance soon consumes them: wind What most I may eye after, be in at the end I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.

Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd, Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.

11 The Sea and the Skylark

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.

Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend, His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour And pelt music, till none’s to spill nor spend.

How these two shame this shallow and frail town! How ring right out our sordid turbid time, Being pure! We, life’s pride and cared-for crown,

Have lost that cheer and charm of earth’s past prime: Our make and making break, are breaking, down To man’s last dust, drain fast towards man’s first slime.

_12 The Windhover:

To Christ our Lord_

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Fal- con, 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 In his ecstacy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

13 Pied Beauty

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; Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough; And àll tràdes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

14 Hurrahing in Harvest

SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise 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?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes, Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour; And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder Majestic--as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!-- These things, these things were here and but the beholder Wanting; which two when they once meet, The heart rears wings bold and bolder And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

15 Caged Skylark

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.

Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage, Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells, Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest-- Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest, But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best, But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

16 In the Valley of the Elwy

I REMEMBER a house where all were good To me, God knows, deserving no such thing: Comforting smell breathed at very entering, Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood. That cordial air made those kind people a hood All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing Will, or mild nights the new morsels of spring: Why, it seemed of course; seemed of right it should.

Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales, All the air things wear that build this world of Wales; Only the inmate does not correspond: God, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales, Complete thy creature dear O where it fails, Being mighty a master, being a father and fond.

_17 The Loss of the Eurydice

Foundered March 24. 1878_

THE Eurydice--it concerned thee, O Lord: Three hundred souls, O alas! on board, Some asleep unawakened, all un- warned, eleven fathoms fallen

Where she foundered! One stroke Felled and furled them, the hearts of oak! And flockbells off the aerial Downs’ forefalls beat to the burial.

For did she pride her, freighted fully, on Bounden bales or a hoard of bullion?-- Precious passing measure, Lads and men her lade and treasure.

She had come from a cruise, training seamen-- Men, boldboys soon to be men: Must it, worst weather, Blast bole and bloom together?

No Atlantic squall overwrought her Or rearing billow of the Biscay water: Home was hard at hand And the blow bore from land.

And you were a liar, O blue March day. Bright sun lanced fire in the heavenly bay; But what black Boreas wrecked her? he Came equipped, deadly-electric,

A beetling baldbright cloud thorough England Riding: there did storms not mingle? and Hailropes hustle and grind their Heavengravel? wolfsnow, worlds of it, wind there?

Now Carisbrook keep goes under in gloom; Now it overvaults Appledurcombe; Now near by Ventnor town It hurls, hurls off Boniface Down.

Too proud, too proud, what a press she bore! Royal, and all her royals wore. Sharp with her, shorten sail! Too late; lost; gone with the gale.

This was that fell capsize, As half she had righted and hoped to rise Death teeming in by her portholes Raced down decks, round messes of mortals.

Then a lurch forward, frigate and men; ‘All hands for themselves’ the cry ran then; But she who had housed them thither Was around them, bound them or wound them with her.

Marcus Hare, high her captain, Kept to her--care-drowned and wrapped in Cheer’s death, would follow His charge through the champ-white water-in-a-wallow.

All under Channel to bury in a beach her Cheeks: Right, rude of feature, He thought he heard say ‘Her commander! and thou too, and thou this way.’

It is even seen, time’s something server, In mankind’s medley a duty-swerver, At downright ‘No or yes?’ Doffs all, drives full for righteousness.

Sydney Fletcher, Bristol-bred, (Low lie his mates now on watery bed) Takes to the seas and snows As sheer down the ship goes.

Now her afterdraught gullies him too down; Now he wrings for breath with the deathgush brown; Till a lifebelt and God’s will Lend him a lift from the sea-swill.

Now he shoots short up to the round air; Now he gasps, now he gazes everywhere; But his eye no cliff, no coast or Mark makes in the rivelling snowstorm.

Him, after an hour of wintry waves, A schooner sights, with another, and saves, And he boards her in Oh! such joy He has lost count what came next, poor boy.--

They say who saw one sea-corpse cold He was all of lovely manly mould, Every inch a tar, Of the best we boast our sailors are.

Look, foot to forelock, how all things suit! he Is strung by duty, is strained to beauty, And brown-as-dawning-skinned With brine and shine and whirling wind.

O his nimble finger, his gnarled grip! Leagues, leagues of seamanship Slumber in these forsaken Bones, this sinew, and will not waken.

He was but one like thousands more, Day and night I deplore My people and born own nation, Fast foundering own generation,

I might let bygones be--our curse Of ruinous shrine no hand or, worse, Robbery’s hand is busy to Dress, hoar-hallowèd shrines unvisited;

Only the breathing temple and fleet Life, this wildworth blown so sweet, These daredeaths, ay this crew, in Unchrist, all rolled in ruin--

Deeply surely I need to deplore it, Wondering why my master bore it, The riving off that race So at home, time was, to his truth and grace

That a starlight-wender of ours would say The marvellous Milk was Walsingham Way And one--but let be, let be: More, more than was will yet be.--

O well wept, mother have lost son; Wept, wife; wept, sweetheart would be one: Though grief yield them no good Yet shed what tears sad truelove should.

But to Christ lord of thunder Crouch; lay knee by earth low under: ‘Holiest, loveliest, bravest, Save my hero, O Hero savest.

And the prayer thou hearst me making Have, at the awful overtaking, Heard; have heard and granted Grace that day grace was wanted.’

Not that hell knows redeeming, But for souls sunk in seeming Fresh, till doomfire burn all, Prayer shall fetch pity eternal.

18 The May Magnificat

MAY is Mary’s month, and I Muse at that and wonder why: Her feasts follow reason, Dated due to season--

Candlemas, Lady Day; But the Lady Month, May, Why fasten that upon her, With a feasting in her honour?

Is it only its being brighter Than the most are must delight her? Is it opportunest And flowers finds soonest?

Ask of her, the mighty mother: Her reply puts this other Question: What is Spring?-- Growth in every thing--

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather, Grass and green world all together; Star-eyed strawberry-breasted Throstle above her nested

Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin Forms and warms the life within; And bird and blossom swell In sod or sheath or shell.

All things rising, all things sizing Mary sees, sympathising With that world of good, Nature’s motherhood.

Their magnifying of each its kind With delight calls to mind How she did in her stored Magnify the Lord.

Well but there was more than this: Spring’s universal bliss Much, had much to say To offering Mary May.

When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple Bloom lights the orchard-apple And thicket and thorp are merry With silver-surfèd cherry

And azuring-over greybell makes Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes And magic cuckoocall Caps, clears, and clinches all--

This ecstacy all through mothering earth Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth To remember and exultation In God who was her salvation.

_19 Binsey Poplars

felled 1879_

MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled, Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun, All felled, felled, are all felled; Of a fresh and following folded rank Not spared, not one That dandled a sandalled Shadow that swam or sank On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do When we delve or hew-- Hack and rack the growing green! Since country is so tender To touch, her being só slender, That, like this sleek and seeing ball But a prick will make no eye at all, Where we, even where we mean To mend her we end her, When we hew or delve: After-comers cannot guess the beauty been. Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve Strokes of havoc únselve The sweet especial scene, Rural scene, a rural scene, Sweet especial rural scene.

20 Duns Scotus’s Oxford

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;

Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded Rural rural keeping--folk, flocks, and flowers.

Yet ah! this air I gather and I release He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;

Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece; Who fired France for Mary without spot.

21 Henry Purcell

The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of man’s mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally.

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.

Not mood in him nor meaning, proud fire or sacred fear, Or love or pity or all that sweet notes not his might nursle: It is the forgèd feature finds me; it is the rehearsal Of own, of abrupt self there so thrusts on, so throngs the ear.

Let him Oh! with his air of angels then lift me, lay me! only I’ll Have an eye to the sakes of him, quaint moonmarks, to his pelted plumage under Wings: so some great stormfowl, whenever he has walked his while

The thunder-purple seabeach plumè purple-of-thunder, If a wuthering of his palmy snow-pinions scatter a colossal smile Off him, but meaning motion fans fresh our wits with wonder.

22 Peace

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 That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite, That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo, He comes to brood and sit.

_23 The Bugler’s First Communion

A BUGLER boy from barrack (it is over the hill There)--boy bugler, born, he tells me, of Irish Mother to an English sire (he Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will),

This very very day came down to us after a boon he on My late being there begged of me, overflowing Boon in my bestowing, Came, I say, this day to it--to a First Communion.

Here he knelt then ín regimental red. Forth Christ from cupboard fetched, how fain I of feet To his youngster take his treat! Low-latched in leaf-light housel his too huge godhead.

There! and your sweetest sendings, ah divine, By it, heavens, befall him! as a heart Christ’s darling, dauntless; Tongue true, vaunt- and tauntless; Breathing bloom of a chastity in mansex fine.

Frowning and forefending angel-warder Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him; March, kind comrade, abreast him; Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order.

How it dóes my heart good, visiting at that bleak hill, When limber liquid youth, that to all I teach Yields tender as a pushed peach, Hies headstrong to its wellbeing of a self-wise self-will!

Then though I should tread tufts of consolation Dáys áfter, só I in a sort deserve to And do serve God to serve to Just such slips of soldiery Christ’s royal ration.

Nothing élse is like it, no, not all so strains Us: fresh youth fretted in a bloomfall all portending That sweet’s sweeter ending; Realm both Christ is heir to and thére réigns.

O now well work that sealing sacred ointment! O for now charms, arms, what bans off bad And locks love ever in a lad! Let mé though see no more of him, and not disappointment

Those sweet hopes quell whose least me quickenings lift. In scarlet or somewhere of some day seeing That brow and bead of being, An our day’s God’s own Galahad. Though this child’s drift

Seems by a divíne doom chánnelled, nor do I cry Disaster there; but may he not rankle and roam In backwheels though bound home?-- That left to the Lord of the Eucharist, I here lie by;

Recorded only, I have put my lips on pleas Would brandle adamantine heaven with ride and jar, did Prayer go disregarded: Forward-like, but however, and like favourable heaven heard these.

24 Morning Midday and Evening Sacrifice

THE dappled die-away Cheek and wimpled lip, The gold-wisp, the airy-grey Eye, all in fellowship-- This, all this beauty blooming, This, all this freshness fuming, Give God while worth consuming.

Both thought and thew now bolder And told by Nature: Tower; Head, heart, hand, heel, and shoulder That beat and breathe in power-- This pride of prime’s enjoyment Take as for tool, not toy meant And hold at Christ’s employment.

The vault and scope and schooling And mastery in the mind, In silk-ash kept from cooling, And ripest under rind-- What life half lifts the latch of, What hell stalks towards the snatch of, Your offering, with despatch, of!

25 Andromeda

Now Time’s Andromeda on this rock rude, With not her either beauty’s equal or Her injury’s, looks off by both horns of shore, Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon’s food. Time past she has been attempted and pursued By many blows and banes; but now hears roar A wilder beast from West than all were, more Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd.

Her Perseus linger and leave her tó her extremes?-- Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems, All while her patience, morselled into pangs, Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams, With Gorgon’s gear and barebill, thongs and fangs.

26 The Candle Indoors

SOME candle clear burns somewhere I come by. I muse at how its being puts blissful back With yellowy moisture mild night’s blear-all black, Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye. By that window what task what fingers ply, I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.--

Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire Mend first and vital candle in close heart’s vault: You there are master, do your own desire; What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar And cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?

_27 The Handsome Heart:

at a Gracious Answer_

‘BUT tell me, child, your choice; what shall I buy You?’--‘Father, what you buy me I like best.’ With the sweetest air that said, still plied and pressed, He swung to his first poised purport of reply.

What the heart is! which, like carriers let fly-- Doff darkness, homing nature knows the rest-- To its own fine function, wild and self-instressed, Falls light as ten years long taught how to and why.

Mannerly-hearted! more than handsome face-- Beauty’s bearing or muse of mounting vein, All, in this case, bathed in high hallowing grace . . .

Of heaven what boon to buy you, boy, or gain Not granted?--Only ... O on that path you pace Run all your race, O brace sterner that strain!

_28

At the Wedding March_

GOD with honour hang your head, Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed With lissome scions, sweet scions, Out of hallowed bodies bred.

Each be other’s comfort kind: Déep, déeper than divined, Divine charity, dear charity, Fast you ever, fast bind.

Then let the March tread our ears: I to him turn with tears Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock, Déals tríumph and immortal years.

29 Felix Randal

FELIX RANDAL the farrier, O he is 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?

Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but mended Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!

This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears. My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears, Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;

How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years, When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers, Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!

30 Brothers

How lovely the elder brother’s Life all laced in the other’s, Lóve-laced! what once I well Witnessed; so fortune fell. When Shrovetide, two years gone, 5 Our boys’ plays brought on Part was picked for John, Young Jóhn: then fear, then joy Ran revel in the elder boy. Their night was come now; all 10 Our company thronged the hall; Henry, by the wall, Beckoned me beside him: I came where called, and eyed him By meanwhiles; making mý play 15 Turn most on tender byplay. For, wrung all on love’s rack, My lad, and lost in Jack, Smiled, blushed, and bit his lip; Or drove, with a diver’s dip, 20 Clutched hands down through clasped knees-- Truth’s tokens tricks like these, Old telltales, with what stress He hung on the imp’s success. Now the other was bráss-bóld: 25 Hé had no work to hold His heart up at the strain; Nay, roguish ran the vein. Two tedious acts were past; Jack’s call and cue at last; 30 When Henry, heart-forsook, Dropped eyes and dared not look. Eh, how áll rúng! Young dog, he did give tongue! But Harry--in his hands he has flung 35 His tear-tricked cheeks of flame For fond love and for shame. Ah Nature, framed in fault, There ‘s comfort then, there ‘s salt; Nature, bad, base, and blind, 40 Dearly thou canst be kind; There dearly thén, deárly, I’ll cry thou canst be kind.

_31 Spring and Fall:

to a young child_

MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leáves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Áh! ás the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you wíll weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.

32 Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves

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, Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth | her being has unbound, her dapple is at an end, as- tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; | self ín self steepèd and pashed--qúite Disremembering, dísmembering | àll now. Heart, you round me right With: Óur évening is over us; óur night | whélms, whélms, ánd will end us. Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish | damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black, Ever so black on it. Óur tale, óur oracle! | Lét life, wáned, ah lét life wind Off hér once skéined stained véined varíety | upon, áll on twó spools; párt, pen, páck Now her áll in twó flocks, twó folds--black, white; | right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mind But thése two; wáre of a wórld where bút these | twó tell, each off the óther; of a rack Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, | thóughts agaínst thoughts ín groans grínd.

33 Inversnaid

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.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáawn-fróth Turns and twindles over the broth Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning, It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

_34

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves--goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices; Kéeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is-- Chríst--for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

35 Ribblesdale

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--

Thou canst but be, but that thou well dost; strong Thy plea with him who dealt, nay does now deal, Thy lovely dale down thus and thus bids reel Thy river, and o’er gives all to rack or wrong.

And what is Earth’s eye, tongue, or heart else, where Else, but in dear and dogged man?--Ah, the heir To his own selfbent so bound, so tied to his turn, To thriftless reave both our rich round world bare And none reck of world after, this bids wear Earth brows of such care, care and dear concern.

_36 The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo

(Maidens’ song from St. Winefred’s Well)_