First Day Of Winter

Like the bloom on a grape is the evening air
And a first faint frost the wind has bound.
Yet the fear of his breath avails to scare
The withered leaves on the cold ground.

For they huddle and whisper in phantom throngs,
I hear them beneath the branches bare:
We danced with the Wind, we sang his songs;
Now he pursues us, we know not where.

Now December darkens
Over Autumn dead.
The frozen earth now hearkens
For the last leaf to be shed.
Above gray grass the branches bare
Melt, faint ghosts, in misty air,
Like despair.

O the nearer, deeper
In my heart, remembering
My Love's kiss and how her eyes
Blessed me like enchanted skies,
Is the joy that with the spring
Shall waken Earth the sleeper.

February Morning

Peacefully fresh, O February morn,
Thy winds come to me: quiet the light slants
Through silver--bosomed clouds, that slowly borne
Across the wide heath, endlessly advance.

Now 'tis that pause before the leaping Spring,
When over all things waiting comes a hush;
And shyly, listen! the one vocal thing,
Over his dewy notes lingers the thrush.

Now life, with all her hindering riddles, seems
Simple as its green budding to the tree.
Awhile the Fates forbear, and to my dreams,
Sheltered awhile from truth, relinquish me.

In haven and at anchor rides my heart,
And broods upon its swelling joys apart.

O Weariness, that writest histories
On all these human faces, and O Sighs
That somewhere silence hears! You have no part,
It seems, in the old earth's deep--flowering heart;
Your way of solace is a different way.

A colour comes upon the end of day.
At this street--corner, budded branches bare
Trace springing lines upon the tender air;
But over the far misty flush one's eye
Lights at an apparition: lo, on high
The little moon! as if she came all fresh
Into this world, where our brief blood and flesh
Is weary of burdens. She has seen all earth's
Most mighty races in their ends and births,
And all the glory and sorrow wrought and sung
Since lips found language; and to--night is young.

It is early morning within this room; without,
Dark and damp; without and within, stillness
Waiting for day: not a sound but a listening air.

Yellow jasmine, delicate on stiff branches
Stands in a Tuscan pot to delight the eye
In spare December's patient nakedness.

Suddenly, softly, as if at a breath breathed
On the pale wall, a magical apparition,
The shadow of the jasmine, branch and blossom!

It was not there, it is there, in a perfect image;
And all is changed. It is like a memory lost
Returning without a reason into the mind;

And it seems to me that the beauty of the shadow
Is more beautiful than the flower; a strange beauty,
Pencilled and silently deepening to distinctness.

As a memory stealing out of the mind's slumber,
A memory floating up from a dark water,
Can be more beautiful than the thing remembered.

I turn to the window, and out of a low cloud
Is a brimming--over of brightness; dazzling the eye
With levelled brilliance, fiery--fresh, the Sun.

As in absent thought with dreaming eyes I gaze
On sudden shadows gliding across the rime
A vision comes before me in utter silence

The earth is moving, the earth is rolling over
All that is usual all that goes unquestioned
is taken from me
wider, wider the doors of vision are opening

Horizon opening into unguessed horizons
And I with the earth am moving into the light
The earth is moving, the earth is rolling over
into the light long, long
shadows of trees run out
are running across the grass.

With frosty plains, mountains and curving coasts
Cities and rivers, forests, burning deserts,
Seas and the sprinkled islands, passing, passing,
But all transparent! Under the generous earth
The careless waters, I see the original fires
Leaping in spasms, seeking to burst their prison
And I remember that human eyes have seen
Solid earth yawn and cities shaken to fragments
Ocean torn to the bottom and great ships swallowed,

Now more terrible than those blind convulsions
Are men at war; on land, on the seas, in the air,
War, war in the brain, in the obstinate will
war in the brain, war in the will, war
No refuge or hiding place anywhere for the mind
And now I hear everywhere sound of battle
The seekers after destruction, there is no refuge
Death, death, death on the earth, in the sea, in the air
Yet oh, it is a single soul always in the midst
Each is a single soul.
O it cannot be, yet it is

Let me not be so stunned that I cannot feel . . .
Imagination is but a little cup
It can hold but a minim part
Can a little cup contain an ocean?

My dreaming eyes return
The flower of winter remembers its own season
And the beautiful shadow upon the pale wall
Is imperceptibly moving with ancient earth
Around the sun that timeless measures sure and silent.

What ails John Winter, that so oft
Silent he sits apart?
The neighbours cast their looks on him;
But deep he hides his heart.

In Deptford streets the houses small
Huddle forlorn together.
Whether the wind blow or be still,
'Tis soiled and sorry weather.

But over these dim roofs arise
Tall masts of ocean ships,
Whenever John Winter looked on them
The salt blew on his lips.

He cannot pace the street about,
But they stand before his eyes!
The more he shuns them, the more proud
And beautiful they rise.

He turns his head, but in his ear
The steady Trade--winds run,
And in his eye the endless waves
Ride on into the sun.

His little boy at evening said,
Now tell us, Dad, a tale
Of naked men that shoot with bows,
Tell of the spouting whale!

He told old tales, his eyes were bright,
His wife looked up to see
And smiled on him: but in the midst
He ended suddenly.

He bade them each good--night, and kissed
And held them to his breast.
They wondered and were still, to feel
Their lips so fondly pressed.

He sat absorbed in silent gloom.
His wife lifted her head
From sewing, and stole up to him.
What ails you, John? she said.

He spoke no word. A silent tear
Fell softly down her cheek.
She knelt beside him, and his hand
Was on her forehead meek.

But even as his tender touch
Her dumb distress consoled,
The mighty waves danced in his eyes
And through the silence rolled.

There fell a soft November night,
Restless with gusts that shook
The chimneys, and beat wildly down
The flames in the chimney nook.

John Winter lay beside his wife.
'Twas past the mid of night.
Softly he rose, and in dead hush
Stood stealthily upright.

Softly he came where slept his boys,
And kissed them in their bed.
One stretched his arms out in his sleep:
At that he turned his head.

And now he bent above his wife.
She slept a sleep serene.
Her patient soul was in the peace
Of breathing slumber seen.

At last he kissed one aching kiss,
Then shrank again in dread,
And from his own home guiltily
And like a thief he fled.

But now with darkness and the wind
He breathes a breath more free,
And walks with calmer step like one
Who goes with destiny.

And see, before him the great masts
Tower with all their spars
Black on the dimness, soaring bold
Among the mazy stars.

In stormy rushings through the air
Wild scents the darkness filled,
And with a fierce forgetfulness
His drinking nostril thrilled.

He hasted with quick feet, he hugged
The wildness to his breast,
As one who goes the only way
To set his heart at rest.

When morning glimmered, a great ship
Dropt gliding down the shore.
John Winter coiled the anchor ropes
Among his mates once more.

The Wharf On Thames—side; Winter Dawn

Day begins cold and misty on soiled snow
That frost has ridged and crusted. Sound of steps
Comes, then a shape emerges from the mist
Without haste, trudging tracks the feet know well,
With his breath white upon the air before him,
To old work. Over the river hangs a crane
At the wharf's edge. Scarved, wheezing, buttoned up,
The stubble--bearded crane--man eyes the tide
Ruckling against moored barges under the bridge,
Considers the blank moon, the obstinate frost,
Swings arms and beats them on his breast for warmth,
And to his engine--cabin disappears.
Full, fast, impetuous the tide floods up Thames,
And the solitary morning steals abroad
Over a million roofs, intensely still
And distant in a dark sleep. For whose joy
Was it, the February moon all night
Beamed silence, like the healing of all noise,
And beauty, like compassion, upon mean
Litter of energy and trading toil,--
Cinder--heaps, sacks, tarpaulins, and stale straw;
Empty and full trucks; rails; and rows of carts,
Shafts tilted backwards; musty railway--arch,
Dingy brick wall, huddled slate roofs? It shone
On the clean snow and the fouled; touches of light
Mysterious as a dreamer's smile! For whom
Rose before dawn the spiritual pale mist,
When imperceptibly the hue of the air
Was altered, and the dwindled beamless moon
Looked like an exiled ghost; till opposite
The vapour flushed to airy rose, and dawn
Made the first long faint shadows? Now the smoke
Begins to go up from those chimnied roofs
Across the water. Trains with hissing speed
And frosty flashes cross the shaken bridge,
Filled each with faces, eager and uneager,
Tired and fresh, young and old; bound for the desk,
The stool, the counter--threads in the roaring loom
Of London. What thoughts have they in their eyes
That idly fall on the familiar river
This passive moment before toil usurps
Hand and brain? Each a separate--memoried world
Of scheme and fancy, of dreads and urgent hopes,
Hungers and solaces! But which keeps not
A private corner deep in heart or mind
Where dwells what no one else knows? And they pass
Nameless, in thousands, with their mysteries, by us.

Slowly the city is waking in all its streets,
But dark, impetuous, silent, full, up Thames
The tide comes, like a lover to his own;
Comes like a lover, as if it sought to pour
Secrets to its listener, of vast night, and the old
Bright moon--lit oceans; of wild breaths of brine;
Of tall ships that it swung to an anchorage
In the misty dawn, and wanderers far away
On the outer seas among adventurous isles
Whose names are homely here. As if the blood
Of this our race poured back upon its heart,
Drawn by that moon of pale farewell, it comes
Brimming and buoyant, with an eager ripple
Against the black--stemmed barges, and swift swirl
Of sucking eddies by stone piers, and sound
Like laughter along the grimed wall of the wharf.

A great horse, tugging at a truck, stamps hoofs
Upon the frozen ground. A man beside him
Shouts or is silent. Labourers here and there
Deliberately, in habit's motion, take
Each his work: from the barges lighter--men
Call, and the crane moves, rattling in its iron.
It is plain day. Still the up--streaming tide
Pours its swift secret, and the fading moon
Lingers aloft. But now the wakened wharf,
Stirred from its numbness, the bright rails, the trucks
With snow upon them, and the hoisting crane,
Are touched with all the difference of mankind;
And the river whispering out of the travelled seas
Of foreign ships and countries, comes to them
With a familiar usage; each appears
As a faculty of the morning, that begins
Once more the inter--threaded toil of men.