New every year, New-born and newly dear, He comes with tidings and a song, The ages long, the ages long.

Even as the cold Keen winter grows not old; As childhood is so fresh, foreseen, And spring in the familiar green;

p. 30Sudden as sweet Come the expected feet. All joy is young, and new all art, And He, too, Whom we have by heart.

p. 30

p. 31A DEAD HARVEST [IN KENSINGTON GARDENS]

p. 31

Along the graceless grass of town They rake the rows of red and brown, Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay, Delicate, neither gold nor grey, Raked long ago and far away.

A narrow silence in the park; Between the lights a narrow dark. One street rolls on the north, and one, Muffled, upon the south doth run. Amid the mist the work is done.

p. 32A futile crop; for it the fire Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre. So go the town’s lives on the breeze, Even as the sheddings of the trees; Bosom nor barn is filled with these.

p. 32

p. 33THE TWO POETS

p. 33

Whose is the speech That moves the voices of this lonely beech? Out of the long West did this wild wind come— Oh strong and silent! And the tree was dumb, Ready and dumb, until The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill.

Two memories, Two powers, two promises, two silences Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves p. 34Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves The purpose of the past, Separate, apart—embraced, embraced at last.

p. 34

“Whose is the word? Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?” “Thine earth was solitary; yet I found thee!” “Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee, Thou visitant divine.” “O thou my Voice, the word was thine.”  “Was thine.”

p. 35A POET’S WIFE

p. 35

I saw a tract of ocean locked in-land Within a field’s embrace— The very sea! Afar it fled the strand And gave the seasons chase, And met the night alone, the tempest spanned, Saw sunrise face to face.

 Prev. P 6/7 next