Edith Nesbit: Verses about Wind

NIGHT wind sighing through the poplar leaves,
Trembling of the aspen, shivering of the willow,
Every leafy voice of all the night-time grieves,
Mourning, weeping over Chloe's pillow.

Chloe, fresher than the breeze of dawn,
Fairer than the larches in their young spring glory,
Brighter than the glow-worms on the dewy lawn,
Hear the dirge the green trees sing to end your story:--

'Chloe lived and Chloe loved: she brought new gladness,
Hope and life and all things good to all who met her;
Only, dying, wept to know the lifelong sadness
Willed, against her will, to those who can't forget her.'

THERE'S a grey old church on a wind-swept hill
Where three bent yew trees cower,
The gipsy roses grow there still,
And the thyme and Saint John's gold flower,
The pale blue violets that love the chalk
Cling light round the lichened stone,
And starlings chatter and grey owls talk
In the belfry o' nights alone.


It's a thousand leagues and a thousand years
From the brick-built, gas-lit town
To the little church where the wild thyme hears
The bees and the breeze of the down.
The town is crowded and hard and rough;
Let those fight in its press who will--
But the little churchyard is quiet enough,
And there's room in the churchyard still.

THESE three grey walls are still stout and strong,
Though the fourth wide wall has crumbled away
Where the sea swept by when the land was young,
And the great waves thundered along the bay,
Under the sailing seagull's feather,
Wildly white in the stormy weather,
And, murmuring ever a restless song,
Shone, crumpled green, on a sunny day.


Through eighteen hundred years of our time,
With their storms and sieges, these walls have stood,
Till the cliff that the waves once strove to climb
Is left in a meadow solitude;
And now no sea-gulls' nests are there,
But ash-trees and thorns make the cliff-side fair,
And the green of the leaves, and the white of the lime,
And the red of the berries is sweet and good.


Over the walls, whence eagle-eyed
The Romans looked for the coming foes,
Swift keen-tongued snakes now curl and glide
Where the heavy weight of the ivy grows.
Oh, hand that builded, oh, scheming brain,
So long made one with the dust again,
Your old cement and your walls abide,
But stronger than they are the ivy and rose!


How the whole dear world is golden and green
With the marshy meadows, the dimpled wheat,
The hot strong sunshine, the ivy's sheen,
And the high white lights on the shiny beet.
See the far blue line--the retreating sea!
It is good to be here, it is good to be;
Whatever life is, or whatever has been,
To be now--to be here, is nothing but sweet!


There's an underground passage here, they say,
Here is the entrance with green set round;
You must stoop your head in this low-roofed way,
Leave day, light candles--pass underground.
Here, under the fields, it is damp and cold,
And whatever secret the place may hold
It has held it closely for many a day,
And will hold it for more in its hush profound.


Down here, last year, so the gossips tell,
Some archæological learned bore
Went chipping with hammer and chisel as well
To chip his way to the secret's core--
Shut away from the sun and the browning wheat,
The whitening barley, the purple beet--
In the dark with the damp, the earthy smell,
While the days burned through that return no more.


Oh, fool! not to see that the green of the trees,
The blue of the sky and the blue of the sea,
The placid pasture, the baby breeze,
And the outspread meadows' tranquillity,
With eyes to see them, are more than worth
The whole of the secrets of musty earth.
What secret outweighs such delights as these,
Or pays one lost moment's felicity?


Are we wise, we two, when we try to pierce
To the heart of things, to our own hearts' heart,
To learn the secret springs of the years,
And what that is of which we are part?
Free will--the Absolute--matter--mind--
Ah, we came like the wind and we go like the wind!
Would solving life's mysteries dry our tears,
Or absolute knowledge heal souls that smart?


And meantime one might lose what I'd die to keep--
The power to delight in a day like this,
In the brown wings' whir, and the faint-bell'd sheep,
In the million things that the millions miss.
And, think, had it happened one's in-turned eyes
Had missed the gateway of Paradise,
Had one questioned of dreams till one fell asleep,
Having never dreamed, oh, my Dream, of your kiss!