* A Distributed Proofreaders Canada eBook * This eBook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the eBook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the eBook. If either of these conditions applies, please contact an FP administrator before proceeding. This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE. Title: Mountains & Molehills Date of first publication: 1934 Author: Frances Cornford (1886-1960) Date first posted: May 20, 2017 Date last updated: May 20, 2017 Faded Page eBook #20170541 This eBook was produced by: Al Haines & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net LONDON Cambridge University Press FETTER LANE NEW YORK • TORONTO BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS Macmillan TOKYO Maruzen Company Ltd _All rights reserved_ MOUNTAINS & MOLEHILLS by FRANCES CORNFORD Illustrated with woodcuts by GWEN RAVERAT [Illustration] CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1934 _Printed in Great Britain_ To F. M. C. _From_ F. C. _and_ G. R. Acknowledgments Our thanks are due to the following publications, in which many of these poems and a few of these woodcuts have already appeared: _The Weekend Review_, _Time and Tide_, _The London Mercury_, Professor Abercrombie's anthology _New English Poems_, _Country Life_, _The New Statesman_, _The Woman's Magazine_, _The Listener_, _The Adelphi_, _The Spectator_, _The Nation_, _The New York Saturday Review_, etc. etc. F. C. G. R. _September 1934_ Contents Mountain Path _page_ 1 Fool's Song 8 On August thirteenth, at the Mount, Marsden, Bucks 9 Sir Philip Sidney 11 Nurse 12 A Back View 13 Grand Ballet 14 Ode on the Whole Duty of Parents 17 Mother to Child Asleep 20 Constant 21 After a Latin Epitaph in Madingley Church 23 The End 24 The Spirit of Man 25 Tapestry Song 27 Neighbours 32 The Madman and the Child 33 After the Eumenides 34 Near an old Prison 35 Yama and Yami 36 London Despair 37 After a Fever Page 38 Recitative and Air 39 Night-nursery Thoughts 43 On the Downs 44 For a Madrigal 45 The Bells of St Legier 47 Coursegoules 49 Soliloquy 50 The Lake and the Instant 51 Cambridge Autumn 52 'The Trumpet shall Sound' 57 The Single Woman 58 The Conversation 59 The Poet discouraged 60 Fairy Tale for Two Voices 61 [Illustration] Mountain Path How high the achievèd fir-cones are held up And reached into the mist. The mist droops down, Encompasses, so still. The squirrels have gone. With greater peace than is in human prayer, With more fidelity than is in praise, These dark hieratic trees their branches raise And lift their burnished cones, and testify Of their November stillness to the sky. How dark their greenness, as deservèd sleep, Which to the wearied woodman comes at last-- He who all day in the uprising woods Wrought bare-armed, whilst that old enchanted bird, King Woodpecker, alone looked down, and heard (Brightheaded in the silver beeches rare) His far-off axe. The time of work is past And I alone, no living creature sees, Admitted share, in the slow-leaving light, The meditation of the mountain trees Before the winter, and before the night. Quiet as sleep this universe of mist. Gone the fair crests, snow-pearled in flawless skies, Those giant kings, with cohorts of dark trees Climbing their unembarrassed greatness. Gone Those chasms rent by cold torrential streams And dawn-loved heights, unreachable as dreams. The mist droops down, and slow the daylight dies. Yet far beneath the unembroidered earth The certainty of summer sleeping lies Safe-stored for resurrection; and is known As to a mother, brooding and alone, Her guarded treasure, that awaits his birth. Your roots can tell the resurrection sure, O still, awaiting trees, who must endure, Before its thousand tender buds unfold, The coming of the prehistoric cold-- Resistless cold and iron ice-gray airs Such as the giants breathed, the empty-eyed, Who lived in caves, and with the fierce brown bears Danced naked through the night in staggering routs, With icicles for clubs, before Christ died. And only your high fir-cones and the moon Looked down and saw. Will you remember soon The echo of their cries? their barbarous shouts? Your very tree-trunks, like the mist, are gray. Yet through them, down the rocky winding way, Might not an old dwarf come with humpèd back, With beard like lichen, and a yellow hood, And precious jewels jolting in his sack? With trustless eyeballs searching through the wood He'll stoop and kneel beside the shelvèd crags. There where the secret rotting leaves are black, There he'll undo his little safe-tied bags Of leather older than Europa's bull, And peer within, and find them full. O full Of green-sparked emeralds, topaz leopard-eyed, Crystals like early rain and tears and pride, Blue-welling sapphires, dark carbuncles found In the old Toad King's palace underground, And dragon-blooded rubies, and red gold-- All to be hidden in the rooted mould, Most deeply hidden where the tall trees rise Safe from the search of wicked enemy eyes. [Illustration] Till, in the fairest of fair April eves His greedy fingers grub them out again Among the lily-of-the-valley leaves; And who shall hear,--shall not a child hear plain, Who wanders in the wood when sap is springing-- His old cracked voice, like Rumpelstiltskin, singing, And see the wood-smoke of his little fire Rise through the fir-green softly high and higher? This is the hour when the children come Each from the school to his especial home. Far off they call, or chatter by the way Of near-approaching wonders that they know, Or ponder those they have not words to say:-- The first hard hoarfrost of a winter's day, And dove-gray darkness that precedes the snow, A night to be of falling flakes, and then Eternity upon the roofs of men, And even the homely haystacks coifed like nuns; Then morning bright as with a thousand suns, And you, O trees, uprising in a night Out of the curvèd loveliness of white, As great pagodas myriad-roofed in snow. Or is it otherwise their quick thoughts go To still more magic dream-fulfilling trees Only one festival of winter sees? Strange trees, that draw no sap from earthly roots To feed their red and green and purple fruits, Dark, bright and lit, and dazzling to the eyes And incense-smelling, as in Paradise The trees of God are usually found, With singing angels dancing round and round. With legs that toil, but not with hearts that tire They, heavy-booted in the fall of night, Fare, like December shepherds towards the star, Up wet-leaved paths to where their homesteads are, Their cheeks though cold with mist, already bright As with the coming radiance of fire. Red-embered fire, securely kept aglow, And onion-savoured soup--how well they know Each certain thing that waits them where they go: Ranged beehives in the cabbaged garden small, The sleeping sledge, the vines upon the wall, The nosing welcome of the wolfish dog, The winter's wood, stored log on log on log Beneath the mothering roof, the cobbles hard, And the brown smell of dung about the yard (That rich dark smell through which the Magi came, White-bearded, wise, with jewelled cups aflame), The silver water in the moss-dark trough Whose liquid voice for ever, like a friend, Accompanies their nightly dreams. And then, Then with the strangeness of the mist shed off They have entered in, and found their journey's end: The brown safe shadows, and warm light of men. So soon they'll sit beneath the ceiling low, Each with his soup, in his allotted chair, Shadow-surrounded, munching calm and slow. And bright their faces in the orange glow, And bright and warm like fruits their foreheads fair; Yet behind these what is it that they know? For deep inside each secret flower-faced head There is more knowledge than of soup and bread. They know the very wood-smoke of their homes Rises to join the dark hieratic trees, The ever-mounting trees, whose roots down-grow To where dwell goblins and the earth-wise gnomes, And where are streams, whose voices never cease With the dark branches prophesying peace, And caves the giants roared in long ago. Then as with darkness all the valley fills, And as with sleep their sealèd lids are kissed, Old thoughts come near to children, and they know Those ceaseless voices say: The strength of the hills, And we who fall asleep, are his also. [Illustration] Fool's Song If you want to be warm Go into the sun; Your heart will be happy Your cares will be done. If you want to be cold There's the light of the moon, Where your heart will become What we all shall be soon-- Ashes and ashes. But shall I be wise? Yes, like a skull Who has holes for his eyes. Of your two lights, The sun for me, Where seeds can flower, And sap run free And morning birds sing Twiddledy-dee. [Illustration] On August thirteenth, At the Mount, Marsden, Bucks Out of this seemliness, this solid order, At half-past four to-day, When down below Geraniums were bright In the contented glow, And Jones was planting seedlings all about, Supremely, Geometrically right For all to see In your herbaceous border, You had to go, Who always liked to stay. Before Louisa sliced the currant roll, And re-arranged the zinnias in the bowl, All in a rhythm reachless by modernity, Correct and slow, And brought the tea And tray, At half-past four on Friday you went out: To the unseemly, seemly, Dateless, whole Light of Eternity You went away. [Illustration] Sir Philip Sidney Still through the ages' intervening gloom You are fair, you glow. Faceless you are, and yet your face I know; Your gestures even, on a gala night, And how you screwed your eyes against the light; And bent your head to listen; your young hair; Your young man's, great man's, secret, poet's air; And the heart's sudden twist that you were there, That you were in the room. And later how it spread-- The unbelievable truth that you were dead. Nurse I cannot but believe, though you were dead, Lying stone-still, and I came in, and said (Having been out perhaps in storm and rain):-- "O dear, O look, I have torn my skirt again", That you would rise with the old simple ease, And say, "Yes, child", and come to me. And there In your white crackling apron, on your knees, With your quick hands, rough with the washing-up Of every separate tended spoon and cup, And with bent head, coiled with the happy hair Your own child should have pulled for you (But no, Your child who might have been, you did not bear, Because the bottomless riches of your care Were all for us) you would mend and heal my tear-- Mend, touch and heal; and stitching all the while, Your cottons on your lap, look up and show The sudden light perpetual of your smile-- And only then, you dear one, being dead Go back and lie, like stone, upon your bed. [Illustration] [Illustration] A Back View Now when his hour shall strike For this old man, And he arrives in Heaven late, He can To Peter and the Angel Gabriel, Having completely known, Completely tell What it was like To lean upon a gate; And knowing one thing well He need not fear his fate. [Illustration] Grand Ballet I saw you dance that summer before the war. One thunderous night it was, at Covent Garden, When we, who walked, beneath the weighted trees, Hot metropolitan pavements, might have smelt Blood in the dust, and heard the traffic's cry Ceaseless and savage like a prophecy. As by a sunrise sea I saw you stand, Your sylphides round you on the timeless strand, White, pure, delicious poisèd butterflies, The early nineteenth century in their eyes, And Chopin ready for their silver toes. (O sighs unsatisfied, and one red rose!) The fountain of all movement ready to flow Seemed prisoned in your entrancèd body. So You stood, their Prince, most elegantly fair, Swan-sleeved, black-jacketed, with falling hair And hands half-raised in ravishment. O there, You Grecian arrow fitted to the bow, You beech-tree in a legendary wood, You panther in a velvet bolero, There you for one immortal moment stood-- One moment like a wave before it flows, Frozen in perfectness. Then one hand rose And tossed a silver curl, demurely light (O grace, O rose, O Chopin and all delight), And the enchantment broke. That thunderous night We saw Nijinsky dance. Thereafter fell On the awaiting world the powers of Hell, Chaos, and irremediable pain; And utter darkness on your empty brain, Not even grief to say, No more, no more. But tell me, when my mortal memories wane As death draws near, and peace is mine and pardon, Where will it like an escapèd dove repair? To what Platonic happy heaven--where?-- Untouchable by Fate and free of Time, That one immortal moment of the mime We saw Nijinsky dance at Covent Garden? [Illustration] [Illustration] Ode on the Whole Duty of Parents The spirits of children are remote and wise, They must go free Like fishes in the sea Or starlings in the skies, Whilst you remain The shore where they can lightly come again. Yes, children have integrity like flowers, But when pain comes, and fear, Why then you must be powerful and near In those bewildering hours. You who are dust must yet become a tree, In whose unending heights of flowering green The heart-distracting plumaged birds are seen, And golden fruits and silver-sounding bells And everything a fairy story tells; But more than this, O then you must possess Deep roots that drink the sustenance of earth, And strong and wrinkled and consoling bark To kiss. And yes, Each night, At dark, When on the pillow lies the upgazing head, And in the candle's comfortable light The drinking holy eyes Are fixed on you, And from the curious cupboards of the heart The memories come to birth, The questions rise Of everything that you have ever said And whether it is true (So many whys Of suns and snakes and parallelograms and flies, Of learning and of art, Like clustering stars that through the window show In winter skies), O then you must put on The robes of Solomon, Then you must grow A Presence, must be more Than any harbouring shore, Or archetypal tree In safety spread, Then you must be The Magus Zoroaster sitting on the bed. [Illustration] Mother to Child Asleep These tiny, fringèd eyes Must look on all that dies; In some strange dawn with bleeding tears perceive This house they now believe Coeval with its dome Of arching sky, this home Which an unending tabernacle seems, Dissolve like dreams-- This tree-tall clock, that sempiternal door, The table white for dinner, all no more. Ah, though I might, no magic must be willed On your vexed waters, vexed when mine are stilled. On that strange morning you must sail alone, My utterly-sleeping own. Constant When you awake at dawn in Paradise, Who sheltered all men like an apple-tree, What, after many years and pain unknown, In dew-gray fields beneath celestial skies, What would your first desired fulfilment be? That he who loved you and who died alone, Should on your warm lap lie, To faint and die; The lovely hair fallen back upon your knee; The eyes that shut alone closed by your kiss And washed by your own tears. It would be this. [Illustration] After a Latin Epitaph in Madingley Church (_The monument bears no name or date_) Bring roses, singing girls, soft pansies strew To decorate these little ashes new; Nor with one cry or longing tears invade The sleeping stillness of an infant maid, Who in one showery day was here and gone, To God's invariable peace passed on. He whispered to her soul; without a stain, She, to his goodness, gave it back again. The End This effigy that was a man, reposes; All questions cease. Yet fire, and snakes, and roses, Jungles of pain, and sudden pools of peace Were in this packed tumultuous heart, that here Unbeating lies beneath the purple of the bier. And so much more, much more, much more, So strange a medley and so infinite a store No thought can compass and no music say Upon his burial day. The Spirit of Man Not age, or creed, Or Fate, Can separate Those who, more surely than with eyes Or thought, Can recognize (As a bird can, who in the house was caught, The sudden skies) Each in the other the same need, The same Clear undescribable flame. [Illustration] Tapestry Song O here is Paradise for me With white Does bounding, And here the fair immortal Tree With various fruits abounding. Hesperidean apples gold, And apples red as wine, And gourds that show like moons below, And silver pears that shine. O sweeter, sweeter, every one Than mead the Gods have drunk, And all are for the Shepherd's Son Who leans against the trunk. And there he'll stay, the timeless day, Where no harsh wind can find him, His crook among the strawberry leaves, And dark, dark woods behind him. There roam the strange and savage beasts; No peace their fear will grant them Until he play his roundelay And music shall enchant them. See where the Tiger to destroy Doth roam with ebon stripes. O Shepherd, O Arcadian boy, Play, play your pipes!-- [Illustration] _How sweet the shepherd his pipes doth blow--_ _Sing Ut Hoy, Tirlee, Tirlow--_ _How silverly, silverly whistle and play_ _Like drops of dew at the break of the day._ _Like drops of dew where cowslips are,_ _Sing Ut Hoy and echo it far,_ _Drops of dew where periwinkles blow_ _Ut Hoy, Tirlee, Tirlow._ _Ut Hoy, and echo it high,_ _Larks are lost in the light of the sky,_ _Echo it all the valleys through,_ _Periwinkles, periwinkles, periwinkles blue._ _Sing Ut Hoy, at dawn of the day,_ _Fear, Fear is fled away,_ _The sun on the meadows, the lark in the morn,_ _Joy, Joy, Joy is born._ [Illustration] _Tirlee, Tirlow and Ut Hoy,_ _Born, born, born is Joy;_ _Sing Ut Hoy, Tirlee, Tirlow_ _So sweet the shepherd his pipes doth blow._ Now, in the dark arcaded wood Every creature still is stood; Each one pricks a happy ear, Tirlee, Tirlow, this song to hear. Out of the branchèd wood come they All for his silver roundelay, Out of the wood on dancing feet All to obey his music sweet. Here the gentled Tiger goes By the delicate, dancing Does; Here the Stag with golden horns And the prancing Unicorns. [Illustration] Spotted Pard with agate stare Frights no more the Fawn so fair; Capering Kids spring high in air Round the blunder-footed Bear. Conies gambol out of the rocks, Leveret with tawny Fox; Leaping Lambs desert their folds, Frogs dance out of the marigolds. Here appear in lumbering bounds Great King Theseus' dew-lapped Hounds; Here his white, escapèd Steed Comes curvetting over the mead. Here with jewelled tails aglow Peacocks gloriously go; Here the swinging Monkey gets Purple grapes for castanets. [Illustration] Here the Lion, King of Beasts, On the golden apples feasts; Whilst my lady's Brachet rare Rollicks with a silver pear. Caterpillars striped and green Measuring up the twigs are seen; Asp with spotted Adder weaves, Harmless, in and out the leaves. Dove and Hawk with folded wing On the fruited branches swing; Hovering, dipping, dancing rise Honey-bees and Butterflies. All Creation, safe and free, Sings around the Happy Tree. Tirlee, Tirlow, and Ut Hoy, Play for ever, Shepherd Boy. Neighbours Old Mrs Thompson down the road is dead. The maids knew first from what the milkman said (He heard on Sunday she was very bad) And as they work they are sorry, stirred, and glad. One day soon I shall die, As still as Mrs Thompson I shall lie; And in her house that April day The maids of the new family will say That Mrs Jones--who was me--has passed away. They will know first, because the fish-boy heard; And as they dust, be sorry, glad, and stirred. [Illustration] The Madman and the Child "Where have you been? you look queer, You look black." "O my dear, All alone to Hell and back, By my known, my desert track; Though once I might, like you, have gone By candlelight to Babylon." "What have you seen?" "No flames or fires, But such a stream of terrors and desires. O my child, nothing's there Like your fingers, like your hair, Nor this table, nor this chair; Nothing certain but despair." [Illustration] After the Eumenides Long ago, in stony Greece, The human heart knew no peace. In its darkness it was torn, And cursed, as now, the fate of being born; And tried to heal its agony with song. O Lord, how long? Near an old Prison When we would reach the anguish of the dead, Whose bones alone, irrelevant, are dust, Out of ourselves it seems we must, we must To some obscure but ever-bleeding thing Unreconciled, a needed solace bring, Like a resolving chord, like daylight shed. Or through thick time must we reach back in vain To inaccessible pain? [Illustration] Yama and Yami (_From the Veda_) The first created pair possessed a world Where darkness was unknown; Till Yama died, and left in endless light Yami, his twin, alone. The high Gods tried to comfort her distress, But all in vain they tried. She would not listen to their wisest words; She said: "To-day he died". Then were the Gods confounded, for her grief Troubled their equal sight; They said: "In this way she will not forget. We must create the Night". So they created Night. And after Night Came into being Morrow; And she forgot him. Thus it is they say:-- The days and nights make men forget their sorrow. London Despair This endless gray-roofed city, and each heart-- Each with its problems, urgent and apart-- And hearts unborn that wait to come again, Each to its problems, urgent, and such pain. Why cannot all of us together--why?-- Achieve the one simplicity: to die? [Illustration] After a Fever I have been out, to know again The lovely lakes of muddy rain That cart-tracks hold; The intellectual branches, high In gray oases of the sky; The uncaring cold. And what distortion can withstand The sanity of winter land? Recitative and Air I heard a shepherd in the morning light, A piping shepherd leant against a tree, Who filled with music all the mountain height, And so sang he-- So sang he in a hollow of the hills To the cold rushing of the April rills, The rushing rills which down the pastures go From the high melting snow. Cold, cold the waters plash And bare the branches of the mountain ash But strong as snakes his branches rise Bud-covered in the April, April skies. Still from the burden of the snow the grass is brown, And bare and gray the unfrozen rocks look down; But over the hollow and up the mound The new-born crocuses delight the ground, And every least and lovely one Is laden full of morning sun. O, ships they are that sail the seas Whose joy rejoices all my mind; O ships that sail and hopes that dance, And pygmy armies that advance, And but the wind, the wind, the wind Visits their golden hearts with the dark bees. [Illustration] A thousand rushing, cold, and intersecting rills Pour down the chasmed hills, Down, down descending till they reach The tall, bare woods of silver-branchèd beech. There on the grave enchanted ground No frolic shadows checker, By gathering children--all around-- The blue anemones are found, The blue, the fair, the heaven-faced, There through the sky's blue lovely waste Laughs the woodpecker. The children cry aloud to watch him go Over the woods where torrent waters flow, And the deep-sheltered villages below. There every pebble of the street Is happy in the early heat, There Mother Céline since the sun was hot Stood on the sill her cactus in a pot, And leaned her elbows on the balustrade Of sun-brown wood her father's father made, To see below her young white kid Who butted with his head and knew not why he did; Butted with his head and knew not why To hear the silvery streams go by. Her agèd eyes see further far Where the terraced vineyards are, Where the rushing torrents cease And in the opal lake their waters are at peace. O, where the waters lap below To dress the vines the women go. One has a basket, one has a hoe, One, one a kerchief red Wrapt around her patient head, And everywhere the sun is shed. And soon from every tended root From barren earth the buds will shoot, Soon in the wealth of sun be seen The tendrilled Dionysian green, Till in a far October's gold The grapes, the abounding grapes behold! So played a shepherd in the early light, A brown-faced spirit lolling by a tree, Who filled with music all the mountain height, O, so sang he-- So sang he in a hollow of the hills To the cold rushing of the April rills, The rushing rills which down the pastures go From the high, melting snow. [Illustration] Night-nursery Thoughts O sometimes when I wake at night I think the moon so round and bright That it must fall for very light. That lovely, lovely liquid fall Would make the stars cry out and call, But would not burn my hands at all. Now even raindrops off the tip Of leaves and twigs, soft, softly drip; But if the moon should suddenly slip, You'd never hear the softest sup And nobody could scrape it up; It would not stay in any cup. The moon would fall without a sound Without a stain upon the ground, And in the morning, not be found. On the Downs Only the harebells and the turf are near, The bumble booms, beseeching all around (Hark the eternal, hot, insistent sound), Even the flints, to rouse themselves and hear, But only more of peace her bumbling seems To give their desolation, give my dreams. Surely one indistinguishable day, A Roman sentinel, when times were slack, Heard the high larks, and lay upon his back; And heard the brown, unceasing bumble say How but for her the sky itself would fall. And then he slept in the sun, and dreamed of Gaul. [Illustration] For a Madrigal This hour, So lie, So lie as though your hair Were heavy weed Fallen back into the sea-- The great sea's power. So calm, so lie: So rest As though, where your warm arm is near your breast, A dove might be, Might downward fly, Might nest. So lie, So rest indeed As though your heart, As though your heart had grown an evening pool, Among the safe surrounding hills apart, Among the trees,-- Where all distracted things In peace repair To find their perfect images; And there, There heal their frantic wings In waters cool, There heal their wings in waters wide and deep. So lie, So blessed This hour, So lie and sleep. [Illustration] The Bells of St Legier "Mon berger Est L'Eternel!" The great bells say. "Mon berger,-- Ring and sway And swing us well,-- Mon berger Est L'Eternel." The heavy limes Are dark and sweet. How many times The heavy limes Have heard the chimes And passing feet. The heavy limes Are dark and sweet. In Sunday best The people pass. Though proudly dressed In Sunday best, They soon shall rest Below the grass. In Sunday best The people pass. They all must die Alone. Alone. Both low and high They all must die And come to lie Beneath a stone. They all must die Alone. Alone. "L'Eternel Est mon berger", Cries each bell, "L'Eternel!" All is well, Their stone shall say: "L'Eternel Est mon berger". [Illustration] Coursegoules Beside the road to Coursegoules Are shepherdess and sheep. The sun is hot. The shade is cool Beside the road to Coursegoules, And every man's a fool, a fool Who does not fall asleep Beside the road to Coursegoules, And shepherdess and sheep. Soliloquy Wide sands and seas, The rounded skies unstained, The waves, The language of the shores, All these Not only to exterior sense are yours, But are in you surrounded and contained And held, and given again, Like sleep to pain, Like strength to slaves, Like foliage to trees. The Lake and the Instant Have you not seen The dove-gray waters' undulating sheen Whereon a bird can rest Its rounded, slowly, slowly heaving breast, Whilst all the blue-aired delicate mountains round Attend, without a sound. So, freed from fear, man's first primeval crime, A heart might rest upon the lap of time. [Illustration] Cambridge Autumn For long, so long, this timeless afternoon My body has lain in sun-receiving fields By the wood's border, by the bounteous elms,-- An unbeliever in approaching night And the cold, winter-prophesying dew,-- Heedless of all, forgetting all but now. So, when the far creak of a country cart Reaches my wind-hushed heart, my thought divines Its red and faded wheels, its Saxon self, But gropingly,--I have forgotten carts. The seated driver towering on its side, Who jolts at leisure down the long, low road Towards the dun-thatched village, goes too far For my lulled sense to follow; though at noon I walked its very whiteness. Even the old, Old labourer sunning in a windsor chair, Patient as tree-roots and the stubbled fields, With pink and purple asters at his door, Whom but to pass this morning, stirred awake, Heart-deep, my father's fathers' loyalties-- Our joint familiar never-spoken loves-- Even his image is too hard to hold, Lapped as I lie in this Lethean gold. [Illustration] This hushing wind on every side, as though The world's invisible sails swelled softly out And bore me to Eternity, laid low, Like the dead knights and nobles of the north, When their last battle had gone well with them, Among Northumbrian boulders quite at rest; Or as they lie, pure-effigied, in sleep, In stone, in shadowed churches. Yet these rays Pour through no windows, but from Heaven's springs, Directly blessing all created things. Shall you not stir your sealèd lids at last? The whole autumnal earth is round you, vast, Serene, eventful. Watch at ease you may The dear progression of a country day, That friendliness which never had a name. Open your eyes and look. Two pheasants came To the wood's edge, among the thistles brown Footing it featly, pecking silver down. They sun their long, soft tails, they disappear Behind the elm-boles. Hips and haws are here Contented, so it seems they almost said, To have known another day of turning red. Sudden, an echoing bang, a farmer's gun. The settled rooks rise circling, one by one From the tall elm. The unperturbèd skies Fill with an old cacophony of cries:-- I spy, I can, A dog. A man. What? Where? Which one? A man. A gun. He's here. He's where? He's gone. Beware. Cry out. Cry on. He's gone. Then, suavely slow, and gradually dumb, Back in a circling saraband they come Each to his elm-bough, neither fast nor soon, Black judges of the golden afternoon. The new-born calf lies down to sleep again In the long, streaking shadows of the plain. His swing-tail mother feeds, and now and then To see his safety in a world of men Turns a slow, gazing head; whilst gazing I Amazed upon this rounded planet lie. This planet soon from the benignant sun And so sure-seeming amplitude of light To turn away, and like a great horse plunge-- Plunge in submerging lapping seas of cold And ever-darkening space. I saw last night A streak of sunset over mounded stacks, Black as the eyes of ghosts. And mist comes soon. Even this last largess of blackberries Warm on the hedge, are purple-dark as storms, Storms that awake the safely-sleeping child In midnight terror, sway the blackened elms In gulfs of dark, and the clear stars devour. And these red thorns tear like a sleeting shower. O, I must raise myself and go, for now The sun sinks down, and that old labourer, That simple vision by the cottage door Which morning brought, returns; who soon must fare Alone into the dark of death, no more, Like this unconquered planet, to emerge On crystal April light, with daffodils. His strange, eternal spring shall be elsewhere, Only the dead can tell how clear, and fair, And certain as the look their faces bear After the storm and ravage. Yet it seems Though all creation shares the departing light-- Red cows and robins, and the rooks in flight, And the great elm-trees heavy with their dreams, And the great barns--that most of all to those Old, patient eyes no temporal spring shall bless, This vast, warm, earthly autumn tenderness Is come to say Amen, before they close. [Illustration] 'The Trumpet Shall Sound' _Messiah_ (1742) We who are met to celebrate Grandly to-day our God and King and State "We shall be changed"--but shall not change too far: Twice as superb will be, and twice as big Each fair, redundant, and immortal wig; And every button on our coats, a star. Where Lords and Commons ever equal are Each regal coach will grow a wingèd car, Whose laurelled lackeys in triumphant light Sing their symmetrical delight, And link-boys with the flaming cherubim Dance in their buckled shoes and shout the morning hymn; Where coachmen crowned with asphodel and moly Echo the cries of Holy, Holy, Holy, And disembodied horses fly With golden trumpeters about the sky. O we shall change, but with no pangs of birth, To glorious heaven from this glorious earth. [Illustration] The Single Woman Now quenched each midnight window is. Now unimpeded Darkness indeed descends on roof and tree and slope; And in my heart the houses that you have not needed Put out their coloured lights of comfort and of hope. The Conversation From my mind's cliff you knocked a stone away. There in the light, a full-born Purpose lay; And half in terror, half in glad surprise I saw his unknown coils, and sleeping eyes. [Illustration] The Poet discouraged There is more power in a single bough Than all I fashion with the sweat of my brow; More freshness in its unimportant leaves Than any lyric that my heart conceives; More wonder in a wood-louse, tightly curled, Than my whole epic on the rounded world. Fairy Tale for Two Voices --O sing or tell a story. --What shall I tell? --There was a Princess woke at early dawn, A Princess in a castle, in the north, And saw the forests rising tree on tree Out of her little window, and ran forth To look for berries in the autumn woods. --O sing of what she found in the woods as well. --She must slip away before the kitchen stirs, With hooded golden hair, down garden walks, Past home-faced apples, --Over the open ground Where feed her father's herd of great cream cows, With swinging tails and delicate, peaceful feet Among the mountain crocuses, --With bells Like hope and dew, --And come to the edge of the woods. --Brave she must be, for in the woods are bears; --The noise of waters fills them like a breath --And footsteps make no sound. --At home they tell The king of the bears is an enchanted Prince Who waits release. --But who shall break the spell? [Illustration] The forests rise around her, tree on tree, To cloud-high crags; --They rise round secret lawns Where red ash-berries for no human hand Drop. --And she listens. --If she listens long She hears clear voices, --Voices of surprise, Wonder, and argument, and prophecies Hid in the streams. --For whom to understand? --She can but tell a spirit in her bones Tells her to climb, --To climb and fear no ills, --To fear no presence in the unpeopled woods Or hidden in the caverns of the hills. --She can but tell how swiftly she must start Up, up the paths where only hunters go, --Running with silver shoes that make no mark, --Quick with a purpose that she cannot know And singing unawares. --Wet bilberries and scarlet cranberries, Green brionies, --Four-leaved herb Paris with his sorcerer's heart Whose home is in the stillness under trees; --Red ash-berries as well And black strange cherries, --Strange with double stones, --O, all of these, Tell how she plucks them with her weaving hands To make a wreath of berries bright and dark, --And some that shine like blood in the early sun To make a wreath, --A wreath for whom begun? --To make a garland for the king of the bears. --And then, O tell How all at once her singing voice was dumb And her heart fell. --Fierce-eyed and hairy round a jutting rock, --Dark, dark and softly footing he was there; --The king of the woods--The black bewitchèd bear --Unpassably, unconquerably come. --But quickly, now tell this, How she was brave, how she was not afraid. --She flung the enchanted berries round his neck, The ripple of her amber-yellow hair Sweeping his claws and pouring from her hood, Her young thin arms, her oval cheek in fur, And made him captive, --Captive with a kiss. --And suddenly --Suddenly --There Slant-eyed and smiling in the leaf-strewn light, --Silent as moss, and all the streams his speech, --A Prince was standing in the bilberry wood, --Strong as the sun, and all the streams his power, --Proud and delivered in the world of men. --Right through the trees the sun ascending burned In wealth of swaying gold his glorious way, --And wrapped in light and shadow each to each No spoken word need say, --For in the arisen morning there he stands, --Free from his cavern's airless echoing space, Free from the dark compulsion of his form. --Sing how he looked at her with eyes returned From exile to the harbour of her face, --To certainty from storm; And touched her shoulders with his stranger's hands, --With hands grown more familiar in an hour Than all her home and years of yesterday, --The unilluminated years before. --O sing and tell of this. --And tell no more. But how, as on the first created day All things were new. --And through the tall-stemmed forest, far below --Before they turned in harmony to go, The clustered berries round their shoulders wound, --Before they reached the fruitful open ground, They heard the bells of feeding flocks, --The sound Like hope and dew. [Illustration] _Cambridge: Printed by Walter Lewis, M.A., at the University Press_ [The end of _Mountains & Molehills_ by Frances Cornford]