John Freeman

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O Muse Divine

O thou, my Muse,

Beside the Kentish River running

Through water-meads where dews

Tossed flashing at thy feet

And tossing flashed again

When the timid herd

By thy swift passing stirred

Up-leapt and run;

Thou that didst fleet

Thy shadow over dark October hills

By Aston, Weston, Saintbury, Willersey,

Wincombe, and all the combes and hills

Of the green homely land;

Thou that in May

Once when I saw thee sunning

Thyself so lovely there

Than the flushed flower more fair

Fallen from the wild apple spray,

Didst rise and sprinkling sunlight with thy hand

Shadow-like disappear in the deep-shadowy hedges

Between forsaken Buckle Street and the sparse sedges

Of young twin-breasted Honeybourne; --

O thou, my Muse,

Scarce longer seen than the brief hues

Of winter cloud that flames

Over the tarnished silver Thames;

So ofen nearing,

As ofen disappearing

With thy body's shadow brushing

My brain at midnight, lightly touching;

O yield thee, Muse, to me,

No more in dream delights and morn forgettings,

But in a ferny hollow I know well

And thou know'st well, warm-proof'd 'gainst the wind's frettings.

. . . Bring thou thyself, and there

In that warm ferny hollow where the sun

Slants one gold beam and no light else but thine

And my eyes' happy shine --

There, O lovely Muse,

Shall on thy shining body be begot,

Fruit of delights a many mingling in one,

Thy child and mine, a lovely shape and thought;

My child and thine,

O Muse divine!

The Wakers

The joyous morning ran and kissed the grass

And drew his fingers through her sleeping hair,

   And cried, "Before thy flowers are well awake

   Rise, and the lingering darkness from thee shake.

"Before the daisy and the sorrel buy

Their brightness back from that close-folding night,

   Come, and the shadows from thy bosom shake,

   Awake from thy thick sleep, awake, awake!"

Then the grass of that mounded meadow stirred

Above the Roman bones that may not stir

   Though joyous morning whispered, shouted, sang:

   The grass stirred as that happy music rang.

O, what a wondrous rustling everywhere!

The steady shadows shook and thinned and died,

   The shining grass flashed brightness back for brightness,

   And sleep was gone, and there was heavenly lightness.

As if she had found wings, light as the wind,

The grass flew, bent with the wind, from east to west,

   Chased by one wild grey cloud, and flashing all

   Her dews for happiness to hear morning call . . . .

But even as I stepped out the brightness dimmed,

I saw the fading edge of all delight.

   The sober morning waked the drowsy herds,

   And there was the old scolding of the birds.

The Body

When I had dreamed and dreamed what woman's beauty was,

   And how that beauty seen from unseen surely flowed,

I turned and dreamed again, but sleeping saw no more:

   My eyes shut and my mind with inward vision glowed.

"I did not think!" I cried, seeing that wavering shape

   That steadied and then wavered, as a cherry bough in June

Lifts and falls in the wind -- each fruit a fruit of light;

   And then she stood as clear as an unclouded moon.

As clear and still she stood, moonlike remotely near;

   I saw and heard her breathe, I years and years away.

Her light streaming through the years, I saw her clear and still,

   Shape and spirit together mingling night with day.

Water falling, falling with the curve of time

   Over green-hued rock, then plunging to its pool

Far, far below, a falling spear of light;

   Water falling golden from the sun but moonlike cool:

Water has the curve of her shoulder and breast,

   Water falls as straight as her body rose,

Water her brightness has from neck to still feet,

   Water crystal-cold as her cold body flows.

But not water has the colour I saw when I dreamed,

   Nor water such strength has. I joyed to behold

How the blood lit her body with lamps of fire

   And made the flesh glow that like water seemed cold.

A flame in her arms and in each finger flame,

   And flame in her bosom, flame above, below,

The curve of climbing flame in her waist and her thighs;

   From foot to head did flame into red flame flow.

I knew how beauty seen from unseen must rise,

   How the body's joy for more than body's use was made.

I knew then how the body is the body of the mind,

   And how the mind's own fire beneath the cool skin played.

O shape that once to have seen is to see evermore,

   Falling stream that falls to the deeps of the mind,

Fire that once lit burns while aught burns in the world,

   Foot to head a flame moving in the spirit's wind!

If these eyes could see what these eyes have not seen --

   The inward vision clear -- how should I look, for joy,

Knowing that beauty's self rose visible in the world

   Over age that darkens, and griefs that destroy?

Ten O'Clock No More

(Ten o'clock is the name of a tall tree that crowned the eastern Cotswalds.)

The wind has thrown

The boldest of trees down.

Now disgraced it lies,

Naked in spring beneath the drifting skies,

Naked and still.

It was the wind

So furious and blind

That scourged half England through,

Ruining the fairest where most fair it grew

By dell and hill,

And springing here,

The black clouds dragging near,

Against this lonely elm

Thrust all his strength to maim and overwhelm

In one wild shock.

As in the deep

Satisfaction of dark sleep

The tree her dream dreamed on,

And woke to feel the wind's arms around her thrown

And her head rock.

And the wind raught

Her ageing boughs and caught

Her body fast again.

Then in one agony of age, grief, pain,

She fell and died.

Her noble height,

Branches that loved the light

Her music and cool shade,

Her memories and all of her is dead

On the hill side.

But the wind stooped,

With madness tired, and drooped

In the soft valley and slept,

While morning strangely round the hush'd tree crept

And called in vain.

The birds fed where

The roots uptorn and bare

Thrust shameful at the sky;

And pewits round the tree would dip and cry

With the old pain.

"Ten o'clock's gone!"

Said sadly every one.

And mothers looking thought

Of sons and husbands far away that fought: --

And looked again.

The Fugitive

In the hush of early even

The clouds came flocking over,

Till the last wind fell from heaven

   And no bird cried.

Darkly the clouds were flocking,

Shadows moved and deepened,

Then paused; the poplar's rocking

   Ceased; the light hung still

Like a painted thing, and deadly.

Then from the cloud's side flickered

Sharp lightning, thrusting madly

   At the cowering fields.

Thrice the fierce cloud lighten'd,

Down the hill slow thunder trembled;

Day in her cave grew frightened,

   Creept away, and died.

The Alde

How near I walked to Love,

How long, I cannot tell.

I was like the Alde that flows

Quietly through green level lands,

So quietly, it knows

Their shape, their greenness and their shadows well;

And then undreamingly for miles it goes

And silently, beside the sea.

Seamews circle over,

The winter wildfowl wings,

Long and green the grasses wave

Between the river and the sea.

The sea's cry, wild or grave,

From bank to low bank of the river rings;

But the uncertain river though it crave

The sea, knows not the sea.

Was that indeed salt wind?

Came that noise from falling

Wild waters on a stony shore?

Oh, what is this new troubling tide

Of eager waves, that pour

Around and over, leaping, parting, recalling?

How near I moved (as day to same day wore)

And silently, beside the sea!

Nearness

Thy hand my hand,

Thine eyes my eyes,

All of thee

Caught and confused with me:

My hand thy hand,

My eyes thine eyes,

All of me

Sunken and discovered anew in thee. . . .

No: still

A foreign mind,

A thought

By other yet uncaught;

A secret will

Strange as the wind:

The heart of thee

Bewildering with strange fire the heart in me.

Hand touches hand,

Eye to eye beckons,

But who shall guess

Another's loneliness?

Though hand grasp hand,

Though the eye quickens,

Still lone as night

Remain thy spirit and mine, past touch and sight.

Night and Night

The earth is purple in the evening light,

The grass is graver green.

The gold among the meadows darker glows,

In the quieted air the blackbird sings more loud.

The sky has lost its rose --

Nothing more than this candle now shines bright.

Were there but natural night, how easy were

The putting-by of sense

At the day's end, and if no heavier air

Came o'er the mind in a thick-falling cloud.

But now there is no light

Within; and to this innocent night how dark my night!

The Herd

The roaming sheep, forbidden to roam far,

Were stayed within the shadow of his eye.

The sheep-dog on that unseen shadow's edge

Moved, halted, barked, while the tall shepherd stood

Unmoving, leaned upon a sarsen stone,

Looking at the rain that curtained the bare hills

And drew the smoking curtain near and near! --

Tawny, bush-faced, with cloak and staff, and flask

And bright brass-ribb'd umbrella, standing stone

Against the veinless, senseless sarsen stone.

The Roman Road hard by, the green Ridge Way,

Not older seemed, nor calmer the long barrows

Of bones and memories of ancient days

Than the tall shepherd with his craft of days

Older than Roman or the oldest caveman,

When, in the generation of all liviing,

Sheep and kine flocked in the Aryan valley and

The first herd with his voice and skill of water

Fleetest of foot, led them into green pastures,

From perished pastures to new green. I saw

The herdsmen everywhere about the world,

And herdsmen of all time, fierce, lonely, wise,

Herds of Arabia and Syria

And Thesssaly, and longer-winter'd climes;

And this lone herd, ages before England was,

Pelt-clad, and armed with flint-tipped ashen sap,

Watching his flocks, and those far flocks of stars

Slow moving as the heavenly shepherd willed

And at dawn shut into the sunny fold.

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