Spring and Fall
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o a young child_ MARGARET, are you grievingOver Goldengrove unleaving?Leaves, like the things of man, youWith your fresh thoughts care for, can you?Ah! as the heart grows olderIt will come to such sights colderBy and by, nor spare a sighThough worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;And yet you will weep and know why.Now no matter, child, the name:Sorrow's springs are the same.Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressedWhat heart heard of, ghost guessed:It is the blight man was born for,It is Margaret you mourn for. _32Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves_ EARNEST, earthless, equal, attuneable, | vaulty, voluminous, . . stupendousEvening strains to be time's vast, | womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, | her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the heightWaste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, | stars principal, overbend us,Fire-featuring heaven. For earth | her being has unbound, her dapple is at an end, as-tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; | self in self steeped and pashed--quiteDisremembering, dismembering | all now. Heart, you round me rightWith: Our evening is over us; our night | whelms, whelms, and will end us.Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish | damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black,Ever so black on it. Our tale, our oracle! | Let life, waned, ah let life windOff her once skeined stained veined variety | upon, all on two spools; part, pen, packNow her all in two flocks, two folds--black, white; | right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mindBut these two; ware of a world where but these | two tell, each off the other; of a rackWhere, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, | thoughts against thoughts in groans grind. _33Inversnaid_ THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,His rollrock highroad roaring down,In coop and in comb the fleece of his foamFlutes and low to the lake falls home. A windpuff-bonnet of faawn-frothTurns and twindles over the brothOf a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. Degged with dew, dappled with dewAre the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn. What would the world be, once bereftOf wet and of wildness? Let them be left,O let them be left, wildness and wet;Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. _34 As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;As tumbled over rim in roundy wellsStones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell'sBow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;Selves--goes itself; _myself_ it speaks and spells,Crying _What I do is me: for that I came._ I say more: the just man justices;Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is--Christ--for Christ plays in ten thousand places,Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not hisTo the Father through the features of men's faces. _35Ribblesdale_ EARTH, sweet Earth, sweet landscape, with leaves throngAnd louched low grass, heaven that dost appealTo, with no tongue to plead, no heart to feel;That canst but only be, but dost that long-- Thou canst but be, but that thou well dost; strongThy plea with him who dealt, nay does now deal,Thy lovely dale down thus and thus bids reelThy river, and o'er gives all to rack or wrong. And what is Earth's eye, tongue, or heart else, whereElse, but in dear and dogged man?--Ah, the heirTo his own selfbent so bound, so tied to his turn,To thriftless reave both our rich round world bareAnd none reck of world after, this bids wearEarth brows of such care, care and dear concern. _36The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo (Maidens' song from St. Winefred's Well)_
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