by Edna Longley
Had one like me entered those doors,
Save once. That time I dared: ‘You may
Recall’ – but never-foamless shores
30
Make better friends than those dull boors.
Many and many a day like this
Aimed at the unseen moving goal
And nothing found but remedies
For all desire. These made not whole;
35
They sowed a new desire, to kiss
Desire’s self beyond control,
Desire of desire. And yet
Life stayed on within my soul.
One night in sheltering from the wet
40
I quite forgot I could forget.
A customer, then the landlady
Stared at me. With a kind of smile
They hesitated awkwardly:
Their silence gave me time for guile.
45
Had anyone called there like me,
I asked. It was quite plain the wile
Succeeded. For they poured out all.
And that was naught. Less than a mile
Beyond the inn, I could recall
50
He was like me in general.
He had pleased them, but I less.
I was more eager than before
To find him out and to confess,
To bore him and to let him bore.
55
I could not wait: children might guess
I had a purpose, something more
That made an answer indiscreet.
One girl’s caution made me sore,
Too indignant even to greet
60
That other had we chanced to meet.
I sought then in solitude.
The wind had fallen with the night; as still
The roads lay as the ploughland rude,
Dark and naked, on the hill.
65
Had there been ever any feud
’Twixt earth and sky, a mighty will
Closed it: the crocketed dark trees,
A dark house, dark impossible
Cloud-towers, one star, one lamp, one peace
70
Held on an everlasting lease:
And all was earth’s, or all was sky’s;
No difference endured between
The two. A dog barked on a hidden rise;
A marshbird whistled high unseen;
75
The latest waking blackbird’s cries
Perished upon the silence keen.
The last light filled a narrow firth
Among the clouds. I stood serene,
And with a solemn quiet mirth,
80
An old inhabitant of earth.
Once the name I gave to hours
Like this was melancholy, when
It was not happiness and powers
Coming like exiles home again,
85
And weaknesses quitting their bowers,
Smiled and enjoyed, far off from men,
Moments of everlastingness.
And fortunate my search was then
While what I sought, nevertheless,
90
That I was seeking, I did not guess.
That time was brief: once more at inn
And upon road I sought my man
Till once amid a tap-room’s din
Loudly he asked for me, began
95
To speak, as if it had been a sin,
Of how I thought and dreamed and ran
After him thus, day after day:
He lived as one under a ban
For this: what had I got to say?
100
I said nothing. I slipped away.
And now I dare not follow after
Too close. I try to keep in sight,
Dreading his frown and worse his laughter.
I steal out of the wood to light;
105
I see the swift shoot from the rafter
By the inn door: ere I alight
I wait and hear the starlings wheeze
And nibble like ducks: I wait his flight.
He goes: I follow: no release
110
Until he ceases. Then I also shall cease.
Birds’ Nests
The summer nests uncovered by autumn wind,
Some torn, others dislodged, all dark,
Everyone sees them: low or high in tree,
Or hedge, or single bush, they hang like a mark.
5
Since there’s no need of eyes to see them with
I cannot help a little shame
That I missed most, even at eye’s level, till
The leaves blew off and made the seeing no game.
’Tis a light pang. I like to see the nests
10
Still in their places, now first known,
At home and by far roads. Boys knew them not,
Whatever jays and squirrels may have done.
And most I like the winter nest deep-hid
That leaves and berries fell into:
15
Once a dormouse dined there on hazel-nuts,
And grass and goose-grass seeds found soil and grew.
The Mountain Chapel
Chapel and gravestones, old and few,
Are shrouded by a mountain fold
From sound and view
Of life. The loss of the brook’s voice
5
Falls like a shadow. All they hear is
The eternal noise
Of wind whistling in grass more shrill
Than aught as human as a sword,
And saying still:
10
‘’Tis but a moment since man’s birth
And in another moment more
Man lies in earth
For ever; but I am the same
Now, and shall be, even as I was
15
Before he came;
Till there is nothing I shall be.’
Yet there the sun shines after noon
So cheerfully
The place almost seems peopled, nor
20
Lacks cottage chimney, cottage hearth:
It is not more
In size than is a cottage, less
Than any other empty home
In homeliness.
25
It has a garden of wild flowers
And finest grass and gravestones warm
In sunshine hours
The year through. Men behind the glass
Stand once a week, singing, and drown
30
The whistling grass
Their ponies munch. And yet somewhere,
Near or far off, there’s a man could
Be happy here,
Or one of the gods perhaps, were they
35
Not of inhuman stature dire,
As poets say
Who have not seen them clearly; if
At sound of any wind of the world
In grass-blades stiff
40
They would not startle and shudder cold
Under the sun. When gods were young
This wind was old.
The Manor Farm
The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills
Ran and sparkled down each side of the road
Under the catkins wagging in the hedge.
But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun;
5
Nor did I value that thin gilding beam
More than a pretty February thing
Till I came down to the old Manor Farm,
And church and yew-tree opposite, in age
Its equals and in size. The church and yew
10
And farmhouse slept in a Sunday silentness.
The air raised not a straw. The steep farm roof,
With tiles duskily glowing, entertained
The midd
ay sun; and up and down the roof
White pigeons nestled. There was no sound but one.
15
Three cart-horses were looking over a gate
Drowsily through their forelocks, swishing their tails
Against a fly, a solitary fly.
The Winter’s cheek flushed as if he had drained
Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught
20
And smiled quietly. But ’twas not Winter –
Rather a season of bliss unchangeable
Awakened from farm and church where it had lain
Safe under tile and thatch for ages since
This England, Old already, was called Merry.
An Old Song I
I was not apprenticed nor ever dwelt in famous Lincolnshire;
I’ve served one master ill and well much more than seven year;
And never took up to poaching as you shall quickly find;
But ’tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year.
5
I roamed where nobody had a right but keepers and squires, and there
I sought for nests, wild flowers, oak sticks, and moles, both far and near,
And had to run from farmers, and learnt the Lincolnshire song:
‘Oh, ’tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year.’
I took those walks years after, talking with friend or dear,
10
Or solitary musing; but when the moon shone clear
I had no joy or sorrow that could not be expressed
By ‘’Tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year.’
Since then I’ve thrown away a chance to fight a gamekeeper;
And I less often trespass, and what I see or hear
15
Is mostly from the road or path by day: yet still I sing:
‘Oh, ’tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year.’
For if I am contented, at home or anywhere,
Or if I sigh for I know not what, or my heart beats with some fear,
It is a strange kind of delight to sing or whistle just:
20
‘Oh, ’tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year.’
And with this melody on my lips and no one by to care,
Indoors, or out on shiny nights or dark in open air,
I am for a moment made a man that sings out of his heart:
‘Oh, ’tis my delight of a shiny night in the season of the year.’
An Old Song II
The sun set, the wind fell, the sea
Was like a mirror shaking:
The one small wave that clapped the land
A mile-long snake of foam was making
5
Where tide had smoothed and wind had dried
The vacant sand.
A light divided the swollen clouds
And lay most perfectly
Like a straight narrow footbridge bright
10
That crossed over the sea to me;
And no one else in the whole world
Saw that same sight.
I walked elate, my bridge always
Just one step from my feet:
15
A robin sang, a shade in shade:
And all I did was to repeat:
‘I’ll go no more a-roving
With you, fair maid.’
The sailors’ song of merry loving
20
With dusk and sea-gull’s mewing
Mixed sweet, the lewdness far outweighed
By the wild charm the chorus played:
‘I’ll go no more a-roving
With you, fair maid:
25
A-roving, a-roving, since roving’s been my ruin,
I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid.’
In Amsterdam there dwelt a maid –
Mark well what I do say –
In Amsterdam there dwelt a maid
30
And she was a mistress of her trade:
I’ll go no more a-roving
With you, fair maid:
A-roving, a-roving, since roving’s been my ruin,
I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid.
The Combe
The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark.
Its mouth is stopped with bramble, thorn, and briar;
And no one scrambles over the sliding chalk
By beech and yew and perishing juniper
5
Down the half precipices of its sides, with roots
And rabbit holes for steps. The sun of Winter,
The moon of Summer, and all the singing birds
Except the missel-thrush that loves juniper,
Are quite shut out. But far more ancient and dark
10
The Combe looks since they killed the badger there,
Dug him out and gave him to the hounds,
That most ancient Briton of English beasts.
The Hollow Wood
Out in the sun the goldfinch flits
Along the thistle-tops, flits and twits
Above the hollow wood
Where birds swim like fish –
5
Fish that laugh and shriek –
To and fro, far below
In the pale hollow wood.
Lichen, ivy, and moss
Keep evergreen the trees
10
That stand half-flayed and dying,
And the dead trees on their knees
In dog’s-mercury and moss:
And the bright twit of the goldfinch drops
Down there as he flits on thistle-tops.
The New Year
He was the one man I met up in the woods
That stormy New Year’s morning; and at first sight,
Fifty yards off, I could not tell how much
Of the strange tripod was a man. His body,
5
Bowed horizontal, was supported equally
By legs at one end, by a rake at the other:
Thus he rested, far less like a man than
His wheel-barrow in profile was like a pig.
But when I saw it was an old man bent,
10
At the same moment came into my mind
The games at which boys bend thus, High-cockolorum,
Or Fly-the-garter, and Leap-frog. At the sound
Of footsteps he began to straighten himself;
His head rolled under his cape like a tortoise’s;
15
He took an unlit pipe out of his mouth
Politely ere I wished him ‘A Happy New Year’,
And with his head cast upward sideways muttered –
So far as I could hear through the trees’ roar –
‘Happy New Year, and may it come fastish, too,’
20
While I strode by and he turned to raking leaves.
The Source
All day the air triumphs with its two voices
Of wind and rain:
As loud as if in anger it rejoices,
Drowning the sound of earth
5
That gulps and gulps in choked endeavour vain
To swallow the rain.
Half the night, too, only the wild air speaks
With wind and rain,
Till forth the dumb source of the river breaks
10
And drowns the rain and wind,
Bellows like a giant bathing in mighty mirth
The triumph of earth.
The Penny Whistle
The new moon hangs like an ivory bugle
In the naked frosty blue;
And the ghylls of the forest, already blackened
By Winter, are blackened anew.
5
The brooks that cut up and increase the forest,
As if they had never known
The sun, are roaring with black hollow voices<
br />
Betwixt rage and a moan.
But still the caravan-hut by the hollies
10
Like a kingfisher gleams between:
Round the mossed old hearths of the charcoal-burners
First primroses ask to be seen.
The charcoal-burners are black, but their linen
Blows white on the line;
15
And white the letter the girl is reading
Under that crescent fine;
And her brother who hides apart in a thicket,
Slowly and surely playing
On a whistle an olden nursery melody,
20
Says far more than I am saying.
A Private
This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors
Many a frosty night, and merrily
Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:
‘At Mrs Greenland’s Hawthorn Bush,’ said he,
5
‘I slept.’ None knew which bush. Above the town,
Beyond ‘The Drover’, a hundred spot the down
In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps
More sound in France – that, too, he secret keeps.
Snow
In the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
5
And bitterly saying: ‘Oh,
They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast.’
And still it fell through that dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.
Adlestrop
Yes. I remember Adlestrop –
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
5
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,
