_12 The Windhover:
To Christ our Lord_
I CAUGHT this morning morning"s minion, king- dom of daylight"s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Fal- con, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstacy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate"s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
_13 Pied Beauty_
GLORY be to G.o.d for dappled things-- For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim: Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches" wings; Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.
_14 Hurrahing in Harvest_
SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes, Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour; And, eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a Rapturous love"s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder Majestic--as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!-- These things, these things were here and but the beholder Wanting; which two when they once meet, The heart rears wings bold and bolder And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.
_15 Caged Skylark_
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage Man"s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells-- That bird beyond the remembering his free fells; This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life"s age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage, Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells, Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest-- Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest, But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
Man"s spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best, But unc.u.mbered: meadow-down is not distressed For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bones risen.
_16 In the Valley of the Elwy_
I REMEMBER a house where all were good To me, G.o.d knows, deserving no such thing: Comforting smell breathed at very entering, Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.
That cordial air made those kind people a hood All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing Will, or mild nights the new morsels of spring: Why, it seemed of course; seemed of right it should.
Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales, All the air things wear that build this world of Wales; Only the inmate does not correspond: G.o.d, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales, Complete thy creature dear O where it fails, Being mighty a master, being a father and fond.
_17 The Loss of the Eurydice
Foundered March 24. 1878_
1 THE Eurydice--it concerned thee, O Lord: Three hundred souls, O alas! on board, Some asleep unawakened, all un- warned, eleven fathoms fallen
2 Where she foundered! One stroke Felled and furled them, the hearts of oak!
And flockbells off the aerial Downs" forefalls beat to the burial.
3 For did she pride her, freighted fully, on Bounden bales or a h.o.a.rd of bullion?-- Precious pa.s.sing measure, Lads and men her lade and treasure.
4 She had come from a cruise, training seamen-- Men, boldboys soon to be men: Must it, worst weather, Blast bole and bloom together?
5 No Atlantic squall overwrought her Or rearing billow of the Biscay water: Home was hard at hand And the blow bore from land.
6 And you were a liar, O blue March day.
Bright sun lanced fire in the heavenly bay; But what black Boreas wrecked her? he Came equipped, deadly-electric,
7 A beetling baldbright cloud thorough England Riding: there did storms not mingle? and Hailropes hustle and grind their Heavengravel? wolfsnow, worlds of it, wind there?
8 Now Carisbrook keep goes under in gloom; Now it overvaults Appledurcombe; Now near by Ventnor town It hurls, hurls off Boniface Down.
9 Too proud, too proud, what a press she bore!
Royal, and all her royals wore.
Sharp with her, shorten sail!
Too late; lost; gone with the gale.
10 This was that fell capsize, As half she had righted and hoped to rise Death teeming in by her portholes Raced down decks, round messes of mortals.
11 Then a lurch forward, frigate and men; "All hands for themselves" the cry ran then; But she who had housed them thither Was around them, bound them or wound them with her.
12 Marcus Hare, high her captain, Kept to her--care-drowned and wrapped in Cheer"s death, would follow His charge through the champ-white water-in-a-wallow.
13 All under Channel to bury in a beach her Cheeks: Right, rude of feature, He thought he heard say "Her commander! and thou too, and thou this way."
14 It is even seen, time"s something server, In mankind"s medley a duty-swerver, At downright "No or yes?"
Doffs all, drives full for righteousness.
15 Sydney Fletcher, Bristol-bred, (Low lie his mates now on watery bed) Takes to the seas and snows As sheer down the ship goes.
16 Now her afterdraught gullies him too down; Now he wrings for breath with the deathgush brown; Till a lifebelt and G.o.d"s will Lend him a lift from the sea-swill.
17 Now he shoots short up to the round air; Now he gasps, now he gazes everywhere; But his eye no cliff, no coast or Mark makes in the rivelling snowstorm.
18 Him, after an hour of wintry waves, A schooner sights, with another, and saves, And he boards her in Oh! such joy He has lost count what came next, poor boy.--
19 They say who saw one sea-corpse cold He was all of lovely manly mould, Every inch a tar, Of the best we boast our sailors are.
20 Look, foot to forelock, how all things suit! he Is strung by duty, is strained to beauty, And brown-as-dawning-skinned With brine and shine and whirling wind.
21 O his nimble finger, his gnarled grip!
Leagues, leagues of seamanship Slumber in these forsaken Bones, this sinew, and will not waken.