IV

The hill ... The trees ... From underneath I feel You pull me with your hand: Through my firm feet up to my heart You hold me,--You are in the land, Reposing underneath the hill.

You keep my balance and my growth.

I lift a foot, but where I go You follow: you, the ever-strong, Control the smallest thing I do.

I have some little human power To turn your purpose to my end, For which I thank you every hour.

I stand at worship, while you send Thrills up my body to my heart, And I am all in love to know How by your strength you keep me part Of earth, which cannot let me go; How everything I see around, Whether it can or cannot move, Is granted liberty of ground, And freedom to enjoy your love;

Though you are silent always, and, alone To You yourself, your power remains unknown.

GOLDFISH

Harold Monro

They are the angels of that watery world, With so much knowledge that they just aspire To move themselves on golden fins, Or fill their paradise with fire By darting suddenly from end to end.

Glowing a thousand centuries behind In pools half-recollected of the mind, Their large eyes stare and stare, but do not see Beyond those curtains of Eternity.

When twilight flows into the room And air becomes like water, you can feel Their movements growing larger in the gloom, And you are led Backward to where they live beyond the dead.

But in the morning, when the seven rays Of London sunlight one by one incline, They glide to meet them, and their gulping lips Suck the light in, so they are caught and played Like salmon on a heavenly fishing line.

Ghosts on a twilight floor, Moving about behind their watery door, Breathing and yet not breathing day and night, They give the house some gleam of faint delight.

DOG

You little friend, your nose is ready; you sniff, Asking for that expected walk, (Your nostrils full of the happy rabbit-whiff) And almost talk.

And so the moment becomes a moving force; Coats glide down from their pegs in the humble dark; The sticks grow live to the stride of their vagrant course.

You scamper the stairs, Your body informed with the scent and the track and the mark Of stoats and weasels, moles and badgers and hares.

We are going OUT. You know the pitch of the word, Probing the tone of thought as it comes through fog And reaches by devious means (half-smelt, half-heard) The four-legged brain of a walk-ecstatic dog.

Out in the garden your head is already low.

(Can you smell the rose? Ah, no.) But your limbs can draw Life from the earth through the touch of your padded paw.

Now, sending a little look to us behind, Who follow slowly the track of your lovely play, You carry our bodies forward away from mind Into the light and fun of your useless day.

Thus, for your walk, we took ourselves, and went Out by the hedge and the tree to the open ground.

You ran, in delightful strata of wafted scent, Over the hill without seeing the view; Beauty is smell upon primitive smell to you: To you, as to us, it is distant and rarely found.

Home ... and further joy will be surely there: Supper waiting full of the taste of bone.

You throw up your nose again, and sniff, and stare For the rapture known Of the quick wild gorge of food and the still lie-down While your people talk above you in the light Of candles, and your dreams will merge and drown Into the bed-delicious hours of night.

THE NIGHTINGALE NEAR THE HOUSE

Here is the soundless cypress on the lawn: It listens, listens. Taller trees beyond Listen. The moon at the unruffled pond Stares. And you sing, you sing.

That star-enchanted song falls through the air From lawn to lawn down terraces of sound, Darts in white arrows on the shadowed ground; And all the night you sing.

My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee As all night long I listen, and my brain Receives your song, then loses it again In moonlight on the lawn.

Now is your voice a marble high and white, Then like a mist on fields of paradise, Now is a raging fire, then is like ice, Then breaks, and it is dawn.

MAN CARRYING BALE

The tough hand closes gently on the load; Out of the mind, a voice Calls 'Lift!' and the arms, remembering well their work, Lengthen and pause for help.

Then a slow ripple flows from head to foot While all the muscles call to one another: 'Lift! 'and the bulging bale Floats like a b.u.t.terfly in June.

So moved the earliest carrier of bales, And the same watchful sun Glowed through his body feeding it with light.

So will the last one move, And halt, and dip his head, and lay his load Down, and the muscles will relax and tremble.

Earth, you designed your man Beautiful both in labour and repose.

THOMAS MOULT

FOR BESSIE, SEATED BY ME IN THE GARDEN

To the heart, to the heart the white petals Quietly fall.

Memory is a little wind, and magical The dreaming hours.

As a breath they fall, as a sigh; Green garden hours too langorous to waken, White leaves of blossomy tree wind-shaken: As a breath, a sigh, As the slow white drift Of a b.u.t.terfly.

Flower-wings falling, wings of branches One after one at wind's droop dipping; Then with the lift Of the air's soft breath, in sudden avalanches Slipping.

Quietly, quietly the June wind flings White wings, White petals, past the footpath flowers Adown my dreaming hours.

At the heart, at the heart the b.u.t.terfly settles.

As a breath, a sigh Fall the petals of hours, of the white-leafed flowers, Fall the petalled wings of the b.u.t.terfly.

To my heart, to my heart the white petals Quietly fall.

To the years, other years, old and wistful Drifts my dream.

Petal-patined the dream, white-mistful As the dew-sweet haunt of the dim whitebeam Because of memory, a little wind ...

It is the gossamer-float of the b.u.t.terfly This drift of dream From the sweet of to-day to the sweet Of days long drifted by.

It is the drift of the b.u.t.terfly, it is the fleet Drift of petals which my noon has thinned, It is the ebbing out of my life, of the petals of days.

To the years, other years, drifts my dream....