IN the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
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.
THINKING of her had saddened me at first,
Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie
Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame,
A living thing, not what before I nursed,
The shadow I was growing to love almost,
The phantom, not the creature with bright eye
That I had thought never to see, once lost.
She found the celandines of February
Always before us all. Her nature and name
Were like those flowers, and now immediately
For a short swift eternity back she came,
Beautiful, happy, simply as when she wore
Her brightest bloom among the winter hues
Of all the world; and I was happy too,
Seeing the blossoms and the maiden who
Had seen them with me Februarys before,
SHE dotes on what the wild birds say
Or hint or mock at, night and day,--
Thrush, blackbird, all that sing in May,
And songless plover,
Hawk, heron, owl, and woodpecker.
They never say a word to her
About her lover.
She laughs at them for childishness,
She cries at them for carelessness
Who see her going loverless
Yet sing and chatter
Just as when he was not a ghost,
Nor ever ask her what she has lost
Or what is the matter.
Yet she has fancied blackbirds hide
A secret, and that thrushes chide
LIKE the touch of rain she was
On a man's flesh and hair and eyes
When the joy of walking thus
Has taken him by surprise:
With the love of the storm he burns,
He sings, he laughs, well I know how,
But forgets when he returns
As I shall not forget her "Go now."
Those two words shut a door
Between me and the blessed rain
That was never shut before
And will not open again.
THAT'S the cuckoo, you say. I cannot hear it.
When last I heard it I cannot recall; but I know
Too well the year when first I failed to hear it--
It was drowned by my man groaning out to his
sheep "Ho! Ho!"
Ten times with an angry voice he shouted
"Ho! Ho!" but not in anger, for that was his
way.
He died that Summer, and that is how I remember
The cuckoo calling, the children listening, and me
saying, "Nay."
And now, as you said, "There it is," I was hearing
Not the cuckoo at all, but my man's "Ho! Ho!"
instead.
And I think that even if I could lose my deafness
The cuckoo's note would be drowned by the voice
"No one cares less than I,
Nobody knows but God,
Whether I am destined to lie
Under a foreign clod,"
Were the words I made to the bugle call in the
morning.
But laughing, storming, scorning,
Only the bugles know
What the bugles say in the morning,
And they do not care, when they blow
The call that I heard and made words to early this
morning.
THREE lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be
heard
If others sang; but others never sang
In the great beech-wood all that May and June.
No one saw him: I alone could hear him
Though many listened. Was it but four years
Ago? or five? He never came again.
Oftenest when I heard him I was alone,
Nor could I ever make another hear.
La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off--
As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world,
As if the bird or I were in a dream.
Yet that he travelled through the trees and some-
times
Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant
still
THE rain and wind, the rain and wind, raved endlessly.
On me the Summer storm, and fever, and melancholy
Wrought magic, so that if I feared the solitude
Far more I feared all company: too sharp, too rude,
Had been the wisest or the dearest human voice.
What I desired I knew not, but whate'er my choice
Vain it must be, I knew. Yet naught did my despair
But sweeten the strange sweetness, while through the
wild air
All day long I heard a distant cuckoo calling
And, soft as dulcimers, sounds of near water falling,
And, softer, and remote as if in history,
Rumours of what had touched my friends, my foes,
or me.
THE flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.
THE cherry trees bend over and are shedding
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed.
for my father, 1922-1944
Your face did not rot
like the others--the co-pilot,
for example, I saw him
yesterday. His face is corn-
mush: his wife and daughter,
the poor ignorant people, stare
as if he will compose soon.
He was more wronged than Job.
But your face did not rot
like the others--it grew dark,
and hard like ebony;
the features progressed in their
distinction. If I could cajole
you to come back for an evening,
down from your compulsive
I saw thee on thy bridal day--
When a burning blush came o'er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee:
And in thine eye a kindling light
(Whatever it might be)
Was all on Earth my aching sight
Of Loveliness could see.
That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame--
As such it well may pass--
Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame
In the breast of him, alas!
Who saw thee on that bridal day,
When that deep blush would come o'er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee.