There were still shards of an ancient pastoral in those shires of the island where the cattle drank their pools of shadow from an older sky, surviving from when the landscape copied such subjects as “Herefords at Sunset in the Valley of the Wye.” The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel sprinkling like petals from the star-apple trees, and all of the windmills and sugar mills moved by mules
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,— 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 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:
‘Be not among wine-bibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh; for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty; and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.’ Proverbs, 23: 20, 21 I’ll tell you two fortunes, my fine little lad, For you to accept or refuse. The one of them good, and the other one bad; Now hear them, and say which you choose!
Cook was a captain of the Admiralty When sea-captains had the evil eye, Or should have, what with beating krakens off And casting nativities of ships; Cook was a captain of the powder-days When captains, you might have said, if you had been Fixed by their glittering stare, half-down the side,
And thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth; And form so soft, and charms so rare, Too soon return'd to Earth! Though Earth receiv'd them in her bed, And o'er the spot the crowd may tread In carelessness or mirth, There is an eye which could not brook
Bird of the bitter bright grey golden morn Scarce risen upon the dusk of dolorous years, First of us all and sweetest singer born Whose far shrill note the world of new men hears Cleave the cold shuddering shade as twilight clears; When song new-born put off the old world's attire And felt its tune on her changed lips expire, Writ foremost on the roll of them that came Fresh girt for service of the latter lyre, Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name!
Alas the joy, the sorrow, and the scorn, That clothed thy life with hopes and sins and fears, And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn And plume-plucked gaol-birds for thy starveling peers
On a road through the mountains with a friend many years ago I came to a curve on a slope where a clear stream flowed down flashing across dark rocks through its own echoes that could neither be caught nor forgotten it was the turning of autumn and already the mornings were cold with ragged clouds in the hollows long after sunrise but the pasture sagging like a roof the glassy water and flickering yellow leaves
Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
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