The hills are wroth; the stones have scored you bitterly
Because you looked upon the naked sun
Oblivious of them, because you did not see
The trees you touched or mountains that you walked upon.
But there will come a day of darkness in the land,
A day wherein remembered sun alone comes through
To mark the hills; then perhaps you’ll understand
Just how it was you drew from them and they from you.
For there will be a bent old woman in that day
Who, feeling something of this country in her bones,
Will leave her house tapping with a stick, who will (they say)
Come back to seek the girl she was in these familiar stones.
I WEEP for happy-sweet days
When your love was near me
Strong in its magical ways,
To hold and cheer me!
To my sad broken life,
Your love had given,
For endless, hopeless strife,
Peace of high Heaven.
I thought your charmed cure
Could have no ending.
And shall no spell endure
Of your dear befriending?
As a dead miser yearns
For earth-stored treasure,
So fiercely my soul burns
For old sweet pleasure
When first I saw the old man dead,
I laid a curious hand upon his head,
To steal that little left in the soul's mould,
The knowledge of the rigour and the cold.
I asked no pardon of the Clay,
For the dead eyes had wandered in their day.
And kneeling ceremonious at his side,
I found a book he'd dropt the day he died.
Verses — which I repeated to dead ears in lieu of prayers.
I stole the book, regardless of his heirs.
Asking no pardon of the Clay,
For the dead man had loved me in his day.
Time was, when I recalled your words, your looks, your deeds.
As a rapt nun counts over her blest beads;
Then was my mind so filled with memory
Love had no room to work his change in me,
And I was faithless from my faith's continuance,
Since being changeless I gave no obedience.
I have forgotten you, for these long days,
All unsustained by you I went my ways,
Now at the end I take you back to thought
To find my action was the thing you taught.
And so in faithlessness is faith's continuance.
Since in a change I do you all obedience.
When I come to the end of the land,
I find the sea,
With edges of cliff and breadths of sand
To pleasure me.
When I raise my town-tired eyes
There is blue and white,
Or kings and castles of stormy skies.
Or joy of night.
When I weary of all I see
And tire even of space,
I hold your love in memory.
And your dear face.
When I saw you, you went to my head,
You were like wine to my brain,
I walked in London through the rain,
To see a man who had been ten years dead.
For pleasure I forgot the years,
Old time, old death, old tears.
The sky was blue, so blue that day
And each daisy white, so white,
O, I knew that no more could rains fall grey
And night again be night.
I knew, I knew. Well, if night is night,
And the grey skies greyly cry,
I have in a book for the candle light,
A daisy dead and dry.
Dearest, forgive that with my clumsy touch
I broke and bruised your rose.
I hardly could suppose
It were a thing so fragile that my clutch
Could kill it, thus.
It stood so proudly up upon its stem,
I knew no thought of fear,
And coming very near
Fell, overbalanced, to your garment's hem,
Tearing it down.
Now, stooping, I upgather, one by one,
The crimson petals, all
Outspread about my fall.
They hold their fragrance still, a blood-red cone
Of memory.
And with my words I carve a little jar
I LAY them before you,
One, two, three silver pieces.
And a copper piece
Dulled with handling.
The first will buy you a cake.
The second a flower.
The third a coloured bead.
The fourth will buy you nothing at all.
Since it has a hole in it.
I beg you, therefore.
String it about your neck.
At least it will remind you of my poverty.
Red foxgloves against a yellow wall streaked with plum-coloured shadows ;
A lady with a blue and red sunshade ;
The slow dash of waves upon a parapet.
That is all.
Non-existent — immortal —
As solid as the centre of a ring of fine gold.
In the cloud-grey mornings
I heard the herons flying ;
And when I came into my garden.
My silken outer-garment
Trailed over withered leaves.
A dried leaf crumbles at a touch.
But I have seen many Autumns
With herons blowing like smoke
Across the sky.
Because there was no wind.
The smoke of your letters hung in the air
For a long time ;
And its shape
Was the shape of your face.
My Beloved.