Poetry

The dim sea glints chill. The white sun is shy. And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry, Rough, long grasses keep white with frost At the hilltop by the finger-post; The smoke of the traveller’s-joy is puffed Over hawthorn berry and hazel tuft.

I read the sign. Which way shall I go? A voice says: You would not have doubted so At twenty. Another voice gentle with scorn Says: At twenty you wished you had never been born.

One hazel lost a leaf of gold From a tuft at the tip, when the first voice told The other he wished to know what ’twould be To be sixty by this same post. “You shall see,” He laughed⁠—and I had to join his laughter⁠— “You shall see; but either before or after, Whatever happens, it must befall, A mouthful of earth to remedy all Regrets and wishes shall freely be given; And if there be a flaw in that heaven ’Twill be freedom to wish, and your wish may be To be here or anywhere talking to me, No matter what the weather, on earth, At any age between death and birth⁠— To see what day or night can be, The sun and the frost, the land and the sea, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring⁠— With a poor man of any sort, down to a king, Standing upright out in the air Wondering where he shall journey, O where?”

As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm That strewed an angle of the fallow, and Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square Of charlock. Every time the horses turned Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned Upon the handles to say or ask a word, About the weather, next about the war. Scraping the share he faced towards the wood, And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed Once more.

The blizzard felled the elm whose crest I sat in, by a woodpecker’s round hole, The ploughman said. “When will they take it away?” “When the war’s over.” So the talk began⁠— One minute and an interval of ten, A minute more and the same interval. “Have you been out?” “No.” “And don’t want to, perhaps?” “If I could only come back again, I should. I could spare an arm. I shouldn’t want to lose A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so, I should want nothing more.⁠ ⁠… Have many gone From here?” “Yes.” “Many lost?” “Yes: good few. Only two teams work on the farm this year. One of my mates is dead. The second day In France they killed him. It was back in March, The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if He had stayed here we should have moved the tree.” “And I should not have sat here. Everything Would have been different. For it would have been Another world.” “Ay, and a better, though If we could see all all might seem good.”

Yes. I remember Adlestrop⁠— The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop⁠—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

They met inside the gateway that gives the view, A hollow land as vast as heaven. “It is A pleasant day, sir.” “A very pleasant day.” “And what a view here. If you like angled fields Of grass and grain bounded by oak and thorn, Here is a league. Had we with Germany To play upon this board it could not be More dear than April has made it with a smile. The fields beyond that league close in together And merge, even as our days into the past, Into one wood that has a shining pane Of water. Then the hills of the horizon⁠— That is how I should make hills had I to show One who would never see them what hills were like.” “Yes. Sixty miles of South Downs at one glance. Sometimes a man feels proud at them, as if He had just created them with one mighty thought.” “That house, though modern, could not be better planned For its position. I never liked a new House better. Could you tell me who lives in it?” “No one.” “Ah⁠—and I was peopling all Those windows on the south with happy eyes, The terrace under them with happy feet; Girls⁠—” “Sir, I know. I know. I have seen that house Through mist look lovely as a castle in Spain, And airier. I have thought: ‘ ’Twere happy there To live.’ And I have laughed at that Because I lived there then.” “Extraordinary.” “Yes, with my furniture and family Still in it, I, knowing every nook of it And loving none, and in fact hating it.” “Dear me! How could that be? But pardon me.” “No offence.