Robert Laurence Binyon: Verses about Nature

Under a flowering Tree
I sat with my dearest Love.
Night flowered in stars above
And the heart was a--flower in me.

O summer sun, O moving trees!
O cheerful human noise, O busy glittering street!
What hour shall Fate in all the future find,
Or what delights, ever to equal these:
Only to taste the warmth, the light, the wind,
Only to be alive, and feel that life is sweet?

I am here, and you;
The sun blesses us through
Leaves made of light.
The air is in your hair;
You hold a flower.

O worlds, that roll through night,
O Time, O terrible year,
Where surges of fury and fear
Rave, to us you gave
This island--hour.

A flower, or the ghost of a flower!
Mist, or the soul of it, felt
In the secret night's mid hour,
Lost on the morning air!
Who shall recover it,--beauty born to melt
As the apparition of blossom brief and shy,
As the cloud in the sky that vanishes, who knows where?

COME then, as ever, like the wind at morning!
Joyous, O Youth, in the aged world renew
Freshness to feel the eternities around it,
Rain, stars and clouds, light and the sacred dew.
The strong sun shines above thee:
That strength, that radiance bring!
If Winter come to Winter,
When shall men hope for Spring?

What is lovelier than rain that lingers
Falling through the western light?
The light that's red between my fingers
Bathes infinite heaven's remotest height.

Whither will the cloud its darkness carry
Whose trembling drops about me spill?
Two worlds, of shadow and splendour, marry:
I stand between them rapt and still.

We have planted a tree,
And behold, it has flowers.
How lovely their joy!
Yet they know not of ours,

Who have shared in dull cares
And the sharpness of pain
Yet feel in our kisses
The first kiss again,

And with hand clasped in hand
We turn and we see
The sweet laughing flowers
On our own fair tree.

As over English earth I gaze,
Bare down, deep lane, and coppice--crowned
Green hill, and distance lost in blue
Horizon of this homely ground,

A light that glows as from within
Seems glorifying leaf and grass
And every simple wayside flower
That knows not how to say Alas!

O Light, by which we live and move,
Shine through us now, one living whole
With dear earth! Arm us from within
For this last Battle of the Soul!

Not yet a bough to bud may dare
On the naked tree.
Yet happy leaves in the bough prepare,
And could I see
Far as a soaring bird, I know
Where young in sheen
The willow, swaying soft and slow,
Laughs gold and green.

O in the winter's waste to build
A tower of song!
My Love should enter when she willed
That tower strong
And climb, and see beyond the bare
Dark branches' dearth
Spring, shaking out her golden hair,
Smile up the earth.

Beautifully dies the year.
Silence sleeps upon the mere:
Yellow leaves float on it, stilly
As, in June, the opened lily.
Brushing o'er the frosty grass
I watch a moment, ere I pass,
From beeches that will soon be bare
Down the still November air
The lovely ways of gliding leaves.
Perhaps they budded on Spring eves
When we two walked and talked together!
Autumn thoughts for Autumn weather!
I wish some days that I remember
Could glide from me, this fair November.

Beautifully dies the year.
Silence sleeps upon the mere:
Yellow leaves float on it, stilly
As, in June, the opened lily.
Brushing o'er the frosty grass
I watch a moment, ere I pass,
From beeches that will soon be bare
Down the still November air
The lovely ways of gliding leaves.
Perhaps they budded on Spring eves
When we two walked and talked together!
Autumn thoughts for Autumn weather!
I wish some days that I remember
Could glide from me, this fair November.

Through Ebblesborne and Broad--Chalke
The narrow river runs,
Dimples with dark November rains,
Flashes in April suns.

But give me days of rosy June
And on warm grass to lie
And watch, bright over long green weed,
Quick water wimple by.

Blue swallows, arrowing up and down,
Cool trout that glide and dart,
Lend me their happy bodies
For the fancies of my heart.

But you, clear stream, that murmur
One music all day long,
I wish my idle fancy
Sang half so sweet a song.

The sun goes down, on other lands to shine.
I long to keep him, but he will not stay.
Only in fancy can I wing my way
To overtake him, to recatch each ray,
Warmer and warmer, till at last is mine,
In fancy, that loved gaze, that light divine.

Now close the dewy flowers, that morn's first peep
To sunshine opened: and I too must close
My leaves up, and in silence and repose
Baptize my spirit. See, the last gleam goes:
Now is it time neither to joy nor weep;
Only to lay the head down, and to sleep.

The sun goes down, on other lands to shine.
I long to keep him, but he will not stay.
Only in fancy can I wing my way
To overtake him, to recatch each ray,
Warmer and warmer, till at last is mine,
In fancy, that loved gaze, that light divine.

Now close the dewy flowers, that morn's first peep
To sunshine opened: and I too must close
My leaves up, and in silence and repose
Baptize my spirit. See, the last gleam goes:
Now is it time neither to joy nor weep;
Only to lay the head down, and to sleep.

In the high leaves of a walnut,
On the very topmost boughs,
A boy that climbed the branching bole
His cradled limbs would house.

On the airy bed that rocked him
Long, idle hours he'd lie
Alone with white clouds sailing
The warm blue of the sky.

I remember not what his dreams were;
But the scent of a leaf's enough
To house me higher than those high boughs
In a youth he knew not of,

In a light that no day brings now
But none can spoil or smutch,
A magic that I felt not then
And only now I touch.

What boat is this that bears
My soul on an ocean, fanned
By new arriving airs
From an undiscovered land?
Is this Love's magic boat, and these
The waves of his unsounded seas?

Pangs of the soul's desire
My voyage swiftly urge;
Day--long I flee, afire
To overtake the verge;
But still into infinity
Escape before me sky and sea.

Anchor, my heart; abide,
And search the seas no more.
Out of this water wide
Never shall dawn a shore,
Till wave and sun have ceased to gleam,
And wondrous truth dies out in dream.

In a patch of baked earth
At the crumbled cliff's brink,
Where the parching of August
Has cracked a long chink,

Against the blue void
Of still sea and sky
Stands single a thistle,
Tall, tarnished, and dry.

Frayed leaves, spotted brown,
Head hoary and torn,
Was ever a weed
Upon earth so forlorn,

So solemnly gazed on
By the sun in his sheen
That prints in long shadow
Its raggedness lean?

From the sky comes no laughter,
From earth not a moan.
Erect stands the thistle,
Its seeds abroad blown.

A day that is boundless as youth
And gay with delight to be born,
Where the waves flash and glide over sands
In their pure image rippled and worn;
Where laughter is young on the air
As the race of young feet patters light!
Linked shadows run dancing before
In the midst of the infinite light!
On a violet horizon asleep
One milky sail glimmers afar;
And our spirits are free of the world
With nothing to bind or to bar;
With no thought but the thoughts of a child;
O golden the day and the hour!
The strong sea is charmed from his rage,
And the waste is more fair than a flower.

There came an evening when the storm had died
After long rain, miraculously clear:
And lo, across the burning waters wide
Rose up that coast, to thee and me how dear.

I knew the very houses by the bay.
And as I gazed, the time that clouded thick
On those old hours, fell suddenly away,
And memory was bared, even to the quick.

There was no peace then in the evening light;
For all my joy was left on that far shore.
Betwixt that apparition and the night
Alone I was; and I was brave no more.

Could I not keep thee, even in my heart?
O, my dear love, we perish, when we part.

The beeches towering high
Greenly cloud the sky.
The shadows all are green
With living sun unseen.
O wonderful the sound
Of green leaves all around,
When nothing yet is heard
Of windy branches stirred
But wavering lights alone
Innumerably blown
Come trembling, and then cease
Upon a trembling peace.
What breathed in it? A sigh?
Or something yet more shy
Of speech? A spirit--kiss?
A waft of fairy bliss
That seeks for voice on our
Lips, there to find its flower
In some sweet syllable?
O Love, I cannot tell;
But light brims in your eyes
And makes divine replies.

Down through the heart of the dim woods
The laden, jolting waggons come.
Tall pines, chained together,
They carry; stems straight and bare,
Now no more in their own solitudes
With proud heads to rock and hum;
Now at the will of men to fare
Away from their brethren, their forest friends
In the still woods; through wild weather
Alone to endure to the world's ends:
Soon to feel the power of the North
Careering over dark waves' foam;
Soon to exchange the steady earth
For heaving decks; the scents of their home,
Honeyed wild--thyme, gorse and heather,
For the sting of the spray, the bitter air.

A child in nature, as a child in years,
If on past hours she turn remembering eyes,
She but beholds sweet joys or gentle tears,
Flower hiding flower in her pure memories.

So flower--like, so lovely do they seem:
Too fair to be let die, they fade too fast;
Not like that hopeless beauty, which in dream
Is ever present, but to say 'tis past.

Then should I come with sorrow at my breast,
Profitless sorrow, vainly wished away,
Will she give comfort to my heart's unrest,
She, whose bright years are as a morn of May?

Though I should sigh, I could not choose but cheer,
Knowing Joy is not far, when she is near.

As in the dusty lane to fern or flower,
Whose freshness in hot noon is dried and dead,
Sweet comes the dark with a full--falling shower,
And again breathes the new--washed, happy head:

So when the thronged world round my spirit hums,
And soils my purer sense, and dims my eyes,
So grateful to my heart the evening comes,
Unburdening its still rain of memories.

Then in the deep and solitary night
I feel the freshness of your absent grace,
Sweetening the air, and know again the light
Of your loved presence, musing on your face,

Until I see its image, clear and whole,
Shining above me, and sleep takes my soul.

As in the dusty lane to fern or flower,
Whose freshness in hot noon is dried and dead,
Sweet comes the dark with a full--falling shower,
And again breathes the new--washed, happy head:

So when the thronged world round my spirit hums,
And soils my purer sense, and dims my eyes,
So grateful to my heart the evening comes,
Unburdening its still rain of memories.

Then in the deep and solitary night
I feel the freshness of your absent grace,
Sweetening the air, and know again the light
Of your loved presence, musing on your face,

Until I see its image, clear and whole,
Shining above me, and sleep takes my soul.

At her window gazes over the elms
A girl; she looks on the branching green;
But her eyes possess unfathomed realms,
Her young hand holds her dreaming chin.

Drifted, the dazzling clouds ascend
In indolent order, vast and slow,
The great blue; softly their shadows send
A clearness up from the wall below.

An old man houseless, leaning alone
By the tree--girt fountain, only heeds
The fall of the spray in the shine of the sun,
And nothing possessing, nothing needs.

The square is heavy with silent bloom;
The tardy wheels uncertain creep.
Above in a narrow sunlit room,
The widower watches his child asleep.

Because out of corruption burns the rose,
And to corruption lovely cheeks descend;
Because with her right hand she heals the woes
Her left hand wrought, loth nor to wound nor mend;

I praise indifferent Nature, affable
To all philosophies, of each unknown;
Though in my listening ear she leans to tell
Some private word, as if for me alone.

Still, like an artist, she her meaning hides,
Silent, while thousand tongues proclaim it clear;
Ungrudging, her large feast for all provides;
Tender, exultant, savage, blithe, austere,

In each man's hand she sets its proper tool,
For the wise, wisdom, folly for the fool.

On greenest grass the lace of lights
Beneath the shadowing tree
Trembles, as when eyes more than lips
Are smiling silently.

Its motion all but motionless
Is like a dancer's feet
Half--stirred, half--stilled, ere music throb
To float them on its beat.

Is it a music ears can hear?
Or in a world so jarred
With inward wrong, is it a sound
Too happy to be heard?

O tell me, tell me! Could I slip
The time's perversity,
There would be music in the air
And I that trembling tree.

A spirit smiling to itself
Seems in those leaves to live;
And for a moment, lost in it,
I can this world forgive.

O you that still have rain and sun,
Kisses of children and of wife
And the good earth to tread upon,
And the mere sweetness that is life,
Forget not us, who gave all these
For something dearer, and for you.
Think in what cause we crossed the seas!
Remember, he who fails the Challenge
Fails us too.

Now in the hour that shows the strong--
The soul no evil powers affray--
Drive straight against embattled Wrong:
Faith knows but one, the hardest, way.
Endure; the end is worth the throe.
Give, give, and dare; and again dare!
On, to that Wrong's great overthrow.
We are with you, of you; we the pain
And victory share.

Beautiful, cold, freshness of light reveals
The black masts, mirrored with their shadowy spars,
The hill--gloom and the sleeping wharf, and steals
Up magical faint heights of fading stars.

I hear the waves, on the long shingle thrown,
Slowly draw backward, plunge, and never cease.
Against that sea--sound the earth--stillness lone
Builds vaster in the early light's increase.

O falling blind waves, in my heart you break;
Outcast and far from my own self I seem,
With alien sense in a strange air awake,
The body and projection of a dream.

Turn back, pale Dawn, or bring that light to me
Which yesterday was lost beyond the sea.

Low is laid Arthur's head,
Unknown earth above him mounded;
By him sleep his splendid knights,
With whose names the world resounded.
Ruined glories! flown delights,
Sunk 'mid rumours of old wars!
Where they revelled, deep they sleep
By the wild Atlantic shores.

On Tintagel's fortressed walls,
Proudly built, the loud sea scorning,
Pale the moving moonlight falls;
Through their rents the wind goes mourning.
See ye, Knights, your ancient home,
Chafed and spoiled and fallen asunder?
Hear ye now, as then of old,
Waters rolled, and wrath of foam,
Where the waves beneath your graves
Snow themselves abroad in thunder?

In drooping leaves of the plane
Hangs blue the early heat;
Stirless, a delicate shade
Sleeps on the parching street.

I wander this listless morning
By the banks of the dazzling river;
On the hot stones lean, where toward me
Lights from the water quiver.

And clasping hands upon eyes,
I plunge my thought in a dream
Of days when the sharp air stung
And the ice crushed cold in the stream;

Vainly! on body and mind
Has the tyrant sun his will:
And to me, on the hot stone leaning,
The city is faint and still,

Is faint as listening sands,
Where, awed by the heavy calm
Of the desert heaven, listens,
For ever alone, the palm.

Between the mountains and the plain
We leaned upon a rampart old;
Beneath, branch--blossoms trembled white;
Far--off a dusky fringe of rain
Brushed low along a sky of gold,
Where earth spread lost in endless light.

The mountains in their glory rose,
Peak thronging peak; cloud--shadows mapped
The purpling brown with milky blue;
Removed, austere, shone rarer snows
Above dark ridges vapour--wrapped--
Afar shone, Love, for me and you.

Sky--seeking mountains, boundless plain!
Old walls, and April--blossomed trees!
Of ever--young, world--ancient power,
The height, the space, was your refrain.
In us, us too, eternities
Made of that moment a white flower.

Green banks and gliding river!
What air from what far place
Comes down your waters' face
And makes your willows shiver?

Over me stole a spell,
A breath upon my brow;
Light on my spirit fell,
I knew not whence nor how.

Faded into a dream
Are Oxford's spires and towers;
Far down the winding stream,
Beyond the fields and flowers.

Is it that Nature here,
Finding me thus alone,
Would whisper in my ear
Some secret of her own?

Would win her child again
To these beloved retreats,
Shunned now too long for men,
For throngs and busy streets?

I know not. Round the bend
The sound of oars comes fast:
My moment's spell is past;
I hear the voice of a friend.

Of the old house, only a few, crumbled
Courses of brick, smothered in nettle and dock,
Or a shaped stone lying mossy where it tumbled!
Sprawling bramble and saucy thistle mock
What once was fire-lit floor and private charm,
Whence, seen in a windowed picture, were hills fading
At night, and all was memory-coloured and warm,
And voices talked, secure of the wind's invading.
Of the old garden, only a stray shining
Of daffodil flames among April's Cuckoo-flowers
Or clustered aconite, mixt with weeds entwining!
But, dark and lofty, a royal cedar towers
By homelier thorns; and whether the rain drifts
Or sun scortches, he holds the downs in ken,
The western vales; his branchy tiers he lifts,
Older than many a generation of men.

Breezes strongly rushing, when the North--West stirs,
Prophesying Summer to the shaken firs;
Blowing brows of forest, where soft airs are free,
Crowned with heavenly glimpses of the shining sea;
Buds and breaking blossoms, that sunny April yields;
Ferns and fairy grasses, the children of the fields;
In the fragrant hedges' hollow brambled gloom
Pure primroses paling into perfect bloom;
Round the elms rough stature, climbing dark and high,
Ivy--fringes trembling against a golden sky;
Woods and windy ridges darkening in the glow;
The rosy sunset bathing all the vale below;
Violet banks forsaken in the fading light;
Starry sadness filling the quiet eyes of night;
Dew on all things drooping for the summer rains;
Dewy daisies folding in the lonely lanes.

Trees are for lovers.
A spirit has led them
Where the young boughs meet
And the green light hovers,
And shadowy winds blow sweet.
Trees spring to heaven!
So their hearts would spring,
So would they outpour
All the heart discovers
Of its own wild treasure
Into speech, and sing
Like the tree from its core
Sweet words beyond measure
Like leaves in the sun
Dancing every one
And weaving a fairy
Cave of quivering rays
And of shadows starry
Where those lovers, drowned
Each in the other's gaze,
Lose all time, abound
In their perfect giving;
Give and never tire
Of their fulness, still
In the fresh leaves living
One full song unsated
Of the flower Desire
And Delight the fruit;
Love, that's mated.

I saw the Goddess of the Evening pause
Between two mountain pillars. Tall as they
Appeared her stature, and her outstretched hands
Laid on those luminous cold summits, hung
Touching, and lingered. Earth was at her feet.
Her head inclined: then the slow weight of hair,
In distant hue like a waved pine--forest
Upon a mountain, down one shoulder fell.
She gazed, and there were stars within her eyes;
Not like those lights in heaven which know not what
They shine upon; but like far human hopes,
That rise beyond the end of thwarting day
In deep hearts, wronged with waste and toil, they rose;
And while beneath her from the darkening world
A vapour and a murmur silently
Floated, there came into those gazing eyes,
What should have been, were she a mortal, tears.

Time buys no wisdom like the eyes of youth,
Though youth itself be blinded with delight,
As a buoyant swimmer by the bursting spray
Of the resplendent surge, and know not yet
The marvel of its own heart's vision, blurred
By lovely follies dancing in the sun.
I heard a skylark scaling the spring air
As slow I climbed the misty, rough hill--side.
He poured the wordless wonder of his joy
Into the empty sky: was never word
Of human language held a joy so pure;
But it was I who knew it! Though my feet
Stayed on the plodded earth and in the mist,
Yet I could breathe, float, mount and sing with him,
The unweariable singer; I could bathe
In the beyond of blue, and know the round
Of sea beneath me, and the sun above.
He gave of what he knew not, soaring throat!

Over sea the sun in a mystery of light
Burns across the waters, on the blown spray glancing:
Luminously crested, wave behind wave advancing
Pours its rushing foam with low continual roar.
The wide sands around us, flashing wet and bright,
Mirror cliffs suffused with clearest warmth serene,
Rosy earth, gray rocks, and grass of greenest green;
We two pace together the solitary shore.

A sadness and a joy are mingled in the air;
From the dying day a voice, I go and come back never,
From the waves an answering shout, We rush, we break for ever,
Wake in my heart echoes that conflicting swell.
Now on the last evening, now we are aware
Of something in our souls that will not say, 'Tis ended.
In our parting looks are thoughts eternal blended:
See, our hands are joined; we cannot say farewell!

O paradise of waters and of isles that gleam,
Dark pines on scarps that flame white in a mirrored sky,
A hundred isles that change like a dissolving dream
From shape to shape for them that with the wind glide by!
Many celestial palaces, gardens of scented song,
Have hearts of men imagined for lost happiness;
But merely around these isles, the live sea streams among
Salt with a pulsing tide, no languid lake's caress,
To sail and ever sail, with not a sound to feel
In the clean blue, but silence vivid with delight,
A silence winged with rush of the dividing keel,
As if the world's sorrow and folly had taken flight,
Suspended pale as that faint circle far--away
Of mountain, and remote as ocean's murmuring miles,
This, only this, for me were paradise to--day,
O paradise of waters, paradise of isles.