by Edna Longley
Content themselves with the road and what they see
Over the bank, and what the children tell.
The path, winding like silver, trickles on,
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Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss
That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk
With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain.
The children wear it. They have flattened the bank
On top, and silvered it between the moss
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With the current of their feet, year after year.
But the road is houseless, and leads not to school.
To see a child is rare there, and the eye
Has but the road, the wood that overhangs
And underyawns it, and the path that looks
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As if it led on to some legendary
Or fancied place where men have wished to go
And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.
The Wasp Trap
This moonlight makes
The lovely lovelier
Than ever before lakes
And meadows were.
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And yet they are not,
Though this their hour is, more
Lovely than things that were not
Lovely before.
Nothing on earth,
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And in the heavens no star,
For pure brightness is worth
More than that jar,
For wasps meant, now
A star – long may it swing
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From the dead apple-bough,
So glistening.
A Tale
There once the walls
Of the ruined cottage stood.
The periwinkle crawls
With flowers in its hair into the wood.
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In flowerless hours
Never will the bank fail,
With everlasting flowers
On fragments of blue plates, to tell the tale.
Wind and Mist
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
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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
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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.’
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‘Yes. Sixty miles of South Downs at one glance.
Sometimes a man feels proud of 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
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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
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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
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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. Doubtless the house was not to blame,
But the eye watching from those windows saw,
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Many a day, day after day, mist – mist
Like chaos surging back – and felt itself
Alone in all the world, marooned alone.
We lived in clouds, on a cliff’s edge almost
(You see), and if clouds went, the visible earth
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Lay too far off beneath and like a cloud.
I did not know it was the earth I loved
Until I tried to live there in the clouds
And the earth turned to cloud.’ ‘You had a garden
Of flint and clay, too.’ ‘True; that was real enough.
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The flint was the one crop that never failed.
The clay first broke my heart, and then my back;
And the back heals not. There were other things
Real, too. In that room at the gable a child
Was born while the wind chilled a summer dawn:
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Never looked grey mind on a greyer one
Than when the child’s cry broke above the groans.’
‘I hope they were both spared.’ ‘They were. Oh yes.
But flint and clay and childbirth were too real
For this cloud castle. I had forgot the wind.
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Pray do not let me get on to the wind.
You would not understand about the wind.
It is my subject, and compared with me
Those who have always lived on the firm ground
Are quite unreal in this matter of the wind.
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There were whole days and nights when the wind and I
Between us shared the world, and the wind ruled
And I obeyed it and forgot the mist.
My past and the past of the world were in the wind.
Now you will say that though you understand
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And feel for me, and so on, you yourself
Would find it different. You are all like that
If once you stand here free from wind and mist:
I might as well be talking to wind and mist.
You would believe the house-agent’s young man
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Who gives no heed to anything I say.
Good morning. But one word. I want to admit
That I would try the house once more, if I could;
As I should like to try being young again.’
A Gentleman
‘He has robbed two clubs. The judge at Salisbury
Can’t give him more than he undoubtedly
Deserves. The scoundrel! Look at his photograph!
A lady-killer! Hanging’s too good by half
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For such as he.’ So said the stranger, one
With crimes yet undiscovered or undone.
But at the inn the Gypsy dame began:
‘Now he was what I call a gentleman.
He went along with Carrie, and when she
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Had a baby he paid up so readily
His half a crown. Just like him. A crown’d have been
More like him. For I never knew him mean.
Oh! but he was such a nice gentleman. Oh!
Last time we met he said if me and Joe
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Was anywhere near we must be sure and call.
He put his arms around our Amos all
As if he were his own son. I pray God
Save him from justice! Nicer man never trod.’
Lob
At hawthorn-time in Wiltshire travelling
In search of something chance would never bring,
An old man’s face, by life and weather cut
And coloured, – rough, brown, sweet as any nut, –
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A land face, sea-blue-eyed, – hung in my mind
When I had
left him many a mile behind.
All he said was: ‘Nobody can’t stop ’ee. It’s
A footpath, right enough. You see those bits
Of mounds – that’s where they opened up the barrows
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Sixty years since, while I was scaring sparrows.
They thought as there was something to find there,
But couldn’t find it, by digging, anywhere.’
To turn back then and seek him, where was the use?
There were three Manningfords, – Abbots, Bohun, and Bruce:
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And whether Alton, not Manningford, it was,
My memory could not decide, because
There was both Alton Barnes and Alton Priors.
All had their churches, graveyards, farms, and byres,
Lurking to one side up the paths and lanes,
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Seldom well seen except by aeroplanes;
And when bells rang, or pigs squealed, or cocks crowed,
Then only heard. Ages ago the road
Approached. The people stood and looked and turned,
Nor asked it to come nearer, nor yet learned
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To move out there and dwell in all men’s dust.
And yet withal they shot the weathercock, just
Because ’twas he crowed out of tune, they said:
So now the copper weathercock is dead.
If they had reaped their dandelions and sold
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Them fairly, they could have afforded gold.
Many years passed, and I went back again
Among those villages, and looked for men
Who might have known my ancient. He himself
Had long been dead or laid upon the shelf,
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I thought. One man I asked about him roared
At my description: ‘’Tis old Bottlesford
He means, Bill.’ But another said: ‘Of course,
It was Jack Button up at the White Horse.
He’s dead, sir, these three years.’ This lasted till
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A girl proposed Walker of Walker’s Hill,
‘Old Adam Walker. Adam’s Point you’ll see
Marked on the maps.’
‘That was her roguery,’
The next man said. He was a squire’s son
Who loved wild bird and beast, and dog and gun
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For killing them. He had loved them from his birth,
One with another, as he loved the earth.
‘The man may be like Button, or Walker, or
Like Bottlesford, that you want, but far more
He sounds like one I saw when I was a child.
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I could almost swear to him. The man was wild
And wandered. His home was where he was free.
Everybody has met one such man as he.
Does he keep clear old paths that no one uses
But once a life-time when he loves or muses?
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He is English as this gate, these flowers, this mire.
And when at eight years old Lob-lie-by-the-fire
Came in my books, this was the man I saw.
He has been in England as long as dove and daw,
Calling the wild cherry tree the merry tree,
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The rose campion Bridget-in-her-bravery;
And in a tender mood he, as I guess,
Christened one flower Love-in-idleness,
And while he walked from Exeter to Leeds
One April called all cuckoo-flowers Milkmaids.
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From him old herbal Gerard learnt, as a boy,
To name wild clematis the Traveller’s-joy.
Our blackbirds sang no English till his ear
Told him they called his Jan Toy “Pretty dear”.
(She was Jan Toy the Lucky, who, having lost
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A shilling, and found a penny loaf, rejoiced.)
For reasons of his own to him the wren
Is Jenny Pooter. Before all other men
’Twas he first called the Hog’s Back the Hog’s Back.
That Mother Dunch’s Buttocks should not lack
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Their name was his care. He too could explain
Totteridge and Totterdown and Juggler’s Lane:
He knows, if anyone. Why Tumbling Bay,
Inland in Kent, is called so, he might say.
‘But little he says compared with what he does.
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If ever a sage troubles him he will buzz
Like a beehive to conclude the tedious fray:
And the sage, who knows all languages, runs away.
Yet Lob has thirteen hundred names for a fool,
And though he never could spare time for school
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To unteach what the fox so well expressed,
On biting the cock’s head off, – Quietness is best, –
He can talk quite as well as anyone
After his thinking is forgot and done.
He first of all told someone else’s wife,
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For a farthing she’d skin a flint and spoil a knife
Worth sixpence skinning it. She heard him speak:
“She had a face as long as a wet week”
Said he, telling the tale in after years.
With blue smock and with gold rings in his ears,
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Sometimes he is a pedlar, not too poor
To keep his wit. This is tall Tom that bore
The logs in, and with Shakespeare in the hall
Once talked, when icicles hung by the wall.
As Herne the Hunter he has known hard times.
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On sleepless nights he made up weather rhymes
Which others spoilt. And, Hob being then his name,
He kept the hog that thought the butcher came
To bring his breakfast. “You thought wrong,” said Hob.
When there were kings in Kent this very Lob,
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Whose sheep grew fat and he himself grew merry,
Wedded the king’s daughter of Canterbury;
For he alone, unlike squire, lord, and king,
Watched a night by her without slumbering;
He kept both waking. When he was but a lad
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He won a rich man’s heiress, deaf, dumb, and sad,
By rousing her to laugh at him. He carried
His donkey on his back. So they were married.
And while he was a little cobbler’s boy
He tricked the giant coming to destroy
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Shrewsbury by flood. “And how far is it yet?”
The giant asked in passing. “I forget;
But see these shoes I’ve worn out on the road
And we’re not there yet.” He emptied out his load
Of shoes for mending. The giant let fall from his spade
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The earth for damming Severn, and thus made
The Wrekin hill; and little Ercall hill
Rose where the giant scraped his boots. While still
So young, our Jack was chief of Gotham’s sages.
But long before he could have been wise, ages
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Earlier than this, while he grew thick and strong
And ate his bacon, or, at times, sang a song
And merely smelt it, as Jack the giant-killer
He made a name. He too ground up the miller,
The Yorkshireman who ground men’s bones for flour.
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‘Do you believe Jack dead before his hour?
Or that his name is Walker, or Bottlesford,
Or Button, a mere clown, or squire, or lord?
The man you saw, – Lob-lie-by-the-fire, Jack Cade,
Jack Smith, Jack Moon, poor Jack of every trade,
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You
ng Jack, or old Jack, or Jack What-d’ye-call,
Jack-in-the-hedge, or Robin-run-by-the-wall,
Robin Hood, Ragged Robin, lazy Bob,
One of the lords of No Man’s Land, good Lob, –
Although he was seen dying at Waterloo,
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Hastings, Agincourt, and Sedgemoor too, –
Lives yet. He never will admit he is dead
Till millers cease to grind men’s bones for bread,
Not till our weathercock crows once again
And I remove my house out of the lane
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On to the road.’ With this he disappeared
In hazel and thorn tangled with old-man’s-beard.
But one glimpse of his back, as there he stood,
Choosing his way, proved him of old Jack’s blood,
Young Jack perhaps, and now a Wiltshireman
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As he has oft been since his days began.
Digging
Today I think
Only with scents, – scents dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot’s seed,
And the square mustard field;
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Odours that rise
When the spade wounds the root of tree,
Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,
Rhubarb or celery;
The smoke’s smell, too,
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Flowing from where a bonfire burns
The dead, the waste, the dangerous,
And all to sweetness turns.
It is enough
To smell, to crumble the dark earth,
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While the robin sings over again
Sad songs of Autumn mirth.
Lovers
The two men in the road were taken aback.
The lovers came out shading their eyes from the sun,
And never was white so white, or black so black,
As her cheeks and hair. ‘There are more things than one
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A man might turn into a wood for, Jack,’
Said George; Jack whispered: ‘He has not got a gun.
It’s a bit too much of a good thing, I say.
They are going the other road, look. And see her run.’ –
She ran – ‘What a thing it is, this picking may.’
In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)
The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
