POETRY
THAMES VALLEY IN WINTER
THE sleeping earth around her breathes This winter-veil of mist that wreathes Her lowland Thames ; in sleep profound She lets her leaves fall and her fruits; Ikr sap sinks down, her I hrusting roots Rest from their labour underground.
Look to the clouds ; I hey rise and shape Along the hills, yet soon escape To earth. then back to heaven again. They run through all things, they are dew, Vapour and hail and ocean. too, Sap and the blood within thy vein.
Behold the fallen leaf ; as vet It keeps its form, but lying wet And trodden down, it soon will be Part of the next-year mould to feed The bramble-rose, time thrifty weed: Phantoms are all the forms you see.
A barn of stone, a roof of thatch : The walls were once a rocky patch Upon the hillside, and the roof Was scooped up in a sower's hand, Scattered as corn on fallow land, Then clambered from the earth aloof, Till mower, thresher, miller, sped The dazed corn into flour, that fed Men who went out and died abroad ; Straw stayed for thatching, straw mai stone
Will tumble down and soon lie strown
In dust that writhes along the road.
A whispering army of skeletons Stand the dry reeds and rushes, olive Green knights who drew their swords in June g So feeble now as though the ghost Of Cadmus raised a shadow-host ;- I, like the wind, am out of time.
Earth sleeps 2-- Nay, earth eau never wake, Nor thought of spring in winter take ; No memory lives from change to change. A drama where no plot is tracked, And actors know not what they net : Whither, 0 Truth, beyond their range ?
Spake Philalethes on this wise : Let not thy heart dwell in thine eyes, But plant thine eyes deep in thy heart. My eyes look on this hedgerow where Illusion spins her web of air And buds begin while !eaves depart.
There comes along the river-marge A plodding horse that draws a barge ; I see the load of sand and lime, The painted cabin and the stack Where tea-time smoke keeps falling back An old man steering asks the time.
He hears and then sings out I.:, ate, "It soon grows dark now after three," Thinking of long bright evenings gone.
Earth stirs, awakes, eludes the maze.
And looks on spring through winter haw, While down the stream he journeys on.
Wt14.1A3t Foam STE.v9.
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