Chapter V: Prologue: In Darkness

With my sleeping beloved huddled tranquil beside me, why
do I lie awake,
Listening to the loud clock's hurry in the darkness, and feeling
my heart's fierce ache
That beats one response to the brain's many questionings,
and in solitude bears the weight
Of all the world's evil and misery and frustration, and the
senseless pressure of fate?

Is it season of ploughing and sowing, this long vigil, that so
certainly it recurs?
In this unsought return of a pain that was ended, is it here
that a song first stirs?
Can it be that from this, when to-night's gone from memory,
there will spring of a sudden, some time,
Like a silver lily breaking from black deadly waters, the
thin-blown shape of a rhyme?

THE LILY OF MALUD

The lily of Malud is born in secret mud.
It is breathed like a word in a little dark ravine
Where no bird was ever heard and no beast was ever seen,
And the leaves are never stirred by the panther's velvet sheen.

It blooms once a year in summer moonlight,
In a valley of dark fear full of pale moonlight:
It blooms once a year, and dies in a night,
And its petals disappear with the dawn's first light;
And when that night has come, black small-breasted maids,
With ecstatic terror dumb, steal fawn-like through the shades
To watch, hour by hour, the unfolding of the flower.

When the world is full of night, and the moon reigns alone
And drowns in silver light the known and the unknown,
When each hut is a mound, half blue silver and half black,
And casts upon the ground the hard shadow of its back,
When the winds are out of hearing and the tree-tops never shake,
When the grass in the clearing is silent but awake
'Neath a moon-paven sky: all the village is asleep
And the babes that nightly cry dream deep:
From the doors the maidens creep,
Tiptoe over dreaming curs, soft, so soft, that not one stirs,
And stand curved and a-quiver, like bathers by a river,
Looking at the forest wall, groups of slender naked girls,
Whose black bodies shine like pearls where the moonbeams fall.
They have waked, they knew not why, at a summons from the night,
They have stolen fearfully from the dark to the light,
Stepping over sleeping men, who have moved and slept again:
And they know not why they go to the forest, but they know,
As their moth-feet pass to the shore of the grass
And the forest's dreadful brink, that their tender spirits shrink:
They would flee, but cannot turn, for their eyelids burn
With frenzy, and each maid, ere she leaves the moonlit space,
If she sees another's face is thrilled and afraid.

Now like little phantom fawns they thread the outer lawns
Where the boles of giant trees stand about in twos and threes,
Till the forest grows more dense and the darkness more intense,
And they only sometimes see in a lone moon-ray
A dead and spongy trunk in the earth half-sunk,
Or the roots of a tree with fungus grey,
Or a drift of muddy leaves, or a banded snake that heaves.

And the towering unseen roof grows more intricate, and soon
It is featureless and proof to the lost forgotten moon.
But they could not look above as with blind-drawn feet they move
Onwards on the scarce-felt path, with quick and desperate breath,
For their circling fingers dread to caress some slimy head,
Or to touch the icy shape of a hunched and hairy ape,
And at every step they fear in their very midst to hear
A lion's rending roar or a tiger's snore....
And when things swish or fall, they shiver but dare not call.

O what is it leads the way that they do not stray?
What unimagined arm keeps their bodies from harm?
What presence concealed lifts their little feet that yield
Over dry ground and wet till their straining eyes are met
With a thinning of the darkness?
And the foremost faintly cries in awed surprise:
And they one by one emerge from the gloom to the verge
Of a small sunken vale full of moonlight pale.
And they hang along the bank, clinging to the branches dank,
A shadowy festoon out of sight of the moon;
And they see in front of them, rising from the mud
A single straight stem and a single pallid bud
In that little lake of light from the moon's calm height.

A stem, a ghostly bud, on the moon-swept mud
That shimmers like a pond; and over there beyond
The guardian forest high, menacing and strange,
Invades the empty sky with its wild black range.

And they watch hour by hour that small lonely flower
In that deep forest place that hunter never found.

It shines without sound, as a star in space.

And the silence all around that solitary place
Is like silence in a dream; till a sudden flashing gleam
Down their dark faces flies; and their lips fall apart
And their glimmering great eyes with excitement dart
And their fingers, clutching the branches they were touching,
Shake and arouse hissing leaves on the boughs.

And they whisper aswoon: Did it move in the moon?
O it moved as it grew!
It is moving, opening, with calm and gradual will,
And their bodies where they cling are shadowed and still
And with marvel they mark that the mud now is dark
For the unfolding flower, like a goddess in her power,
Challenges the moon with a light of her own,
That lovelily grows as the petals unclose,
Wider, more wide with an awful inward pride,
Till the heart of it breaks, and stilled is their breath,
For the radiance it makes is as wonderful as death.

The morning's crimson stain tinges their ashen brows
As they part the last boughs and slowly step again
On to the village grass, and chill and languid pass
Into the huts to sleep.
Brief slumber, yet so deep
That, when they wake to day, darkness and splendour seem
Broken and far away, a faint miraculous dream;
And when those maidens rise they are as they ever were
Save only for a rare shade of trouble in their eyes.
And the surly thick-lipped men, as they sit about their huts
Making drums out of guts, grunting gruffly now and then,
Carving sticks of ivory, stretching shields of wrinkled skin,
Smoothing sinister and thin squatting gods of ebony,
Chip and grunt and do not see.
But each mother, silently,
Longer than her wont stays shut in the dimness of her hut,
For she feels a brooding cloud of memory in the air,
A lingering thing there that makes her sit bowed
With hollow shining eyes, as the night-fire dies,
And stare softly at the ember, and try to remember
Something sorrowful and far, something sweet and vaguely seen
Like an early evening star when the sky is pale green:
A quiet silver tower that climbed in an hour,
Or a ghost like a flower, or a flower like a queen:
Something holy in the past that came and did not last.

But she knows not what it was.

A HOUSE

Now very quietly, and rather mournfully,
In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires,
And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him
Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.

And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied,
From that faint exquisite celestial strand,
And turn and see again the only dwelling-place
In this wide wilderness of darkening land.

The house, that house, O now what change has come to it,
Its crude red-brick facade, its roof of slate;
What imperceptible swift hand has given it
A new, a wonderful, a queenly state?

No hand has altered it, that parallelogram,
So inharmonious, so ill arranged;
That hard blue roof in shape and colour's what it was;
No, it is not that any line has changed.

Only that loneliness is now accentuate
And, as the dusk unveils the heaven's deep cave,
This small world's feebleness fills me with awe again,
And all man's energies seem very brave.

And this mean edifice, which some dull architect
Built for an ignorant earth-turning hind,
Takes on the quality of that magnificent
Unshakable dauntlessness of human kind.

Darkness and stars will come, and long the night will be,
Yet imperturbable that house will rest,
Avoiding gallantly the stars' chill scrutiny,
Ignoring secrets in the midnight's breast.

Thunders may shudder it, and winds demoniac
May howl their menaces, and hail descend;
Yet it will bear with them, serenely, steadfastly,
Not even scornfully, and wait the end.

And all a universe of nameless messengers
From unknown distances may whisper fear,
And it will imitate immortal permanence,
And stare and stare ahead and scarcely hear.

It stood there yesterday; it will to-morrow, too,
When there is none to watch, no alien eyes
To watch its ugliness assume a majesty
From this great solitude of evening skies.

So lone, so very small, with worlds and worlds around,
While life remains to it prepared to outface
Whatever awful unconjectured mysteries
May hide and wait for it in time and space.

BEHIND THE LINES

The wind of evening cried along the darkening trees,
Along the darkening trees, heavy with ancient pain,
Heavy with ancient pain from faded centuries,
From faded centuries.... O foolish thought and vain!

O foolish thought and vain to think the wind could know,
To think the wind could know the griefs of men who died,
The griefs of men who died and mouldered long ago:
"And mouldered long ago," the wind of evening cried.

ARAB SONG

When her eyes' sudden challenge first halted my feet on the path,
I stood like a shivering caught fugitive, and strained at my breath,
And the Truth in her eyes was the portent of Love and of Death,
For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love.

O you who have faded because girls were contemptuous and cold,
I pitied you; but mine I have won, and her breast I enfold
Despairing, and in agony long for the thing that I hold:
For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love.

She is fair; and her eyes in her hair are like stars in a stream.
She is kind: never vaporous sleep-eddying maid in a dream
Leaning over my darkness-drowned pillow more tender did seem.
But her beauty and sweetness are as blasts from the sands of the South.
Drink me, palsy me, flay me, bleed my veins, chain my limbs,
choke my mouth,
And make salt to my lips the wine that should temper my drouth:
For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love.

Death must come: it were best by a knife in her hand or my own.
She'd not strike and I dare not, but here, as I wander alone,
Should the wood topple over at a beast flying out like a stone
I shall smile in its face at her image bending down from the sky,
And its teeth in my neck will be hers, and its snarls as I die
Will be gentle and sweet to my ears as the voice of the dove:
For I am of the tribe of Ben Asra, who die when they love.

THE STRONGHOLD

Quieter than any twilight
Shed over earth's last deserts,
Quiet and vast and shadowless
Is that unfounded keep,
Higher than the roof of the night's high chamber
Deep as the shaft of sleep.

And solitude will not cry there,
Melancholy will not brood there,
Hatred, with its sharp corroding pain,
And fear will not come there at all:
Never will a tear or a heart-ache enter
Over that enchanted wall.

But, O, if you find that castle,
Draw back your foot from the gateway,
Let not its peace invite you,
Let not its offerings tempt you.
For faded and decayed like a garment,
Love to a dust will have fallen,
And song and laughter will have gone with sorrow,
And hope will have gone with pain;
And of all the throbbing heart's high courage
Nothing will remain.

TO A BULL-DOG

(_W. H. S., Capt. [Acting Major] R.F.A.; killed April_ 12, 1917)

We sha'n't see Willy any more, Mamie,
He won't be coming any more:
He came back once and again and again,
But he won't get leave any more.

We looked from the window and there was his cab,
And we ran downstairs like a streak,
And he said "Hullo, you bad dog," and you crouched to the floor,
Paralysed to hear him speak,

And then let fly at his face and his chest
Till I had to hold you down,
While he took off his cap and his gloves and his coat.
And his bag and his thonged Sam Browne.

We went upstairs to the studio,
The three of us, just as of old,
And you lay down and I sat and talked to him
As round the room he strolled.

Here in the room where, years ago
Before the old life stopped,
He worked all day with his slippers and his pipe,
He would pick up the threads he'd dropped,

Fondling all the drawings he had left behind,
Glad to find them all still the same,
And opening the cupboards to look at his belongings
... Every time he came.

But now I know what a dog doesn't know,
Though you'll thrust your head on my knee,
And try to draw me from the absent-mindedness
That you find so dull in me.

And all your life you will never know
What I wouldn't tell you even if I could,
That the last time we waved him away
Willy went for good.

But sometimes as you lie on the hearthrug
Sleeping in the warmth of the stove,
Even through your muddled old canine brain
Shapes from the past may rove.

You'll scarcely remember, even in a dream,
How we brought home a silly little pup.
With a big square head and little crooked legs
That could scarcely bear him up,

But your tail will tap at the memory
Of a man whose friend you were,
Who was always kind though he called you a naughty dog
When he found you on his chair;

Who'd make you face a reproving finger
And solemnly lecture you
Till your head hung downwards and you looked very sheepish!
And you'll dream of your triumphs too.

Of summer evening chases in the garden
When you dodged us all about with a bone:
We were three boys, and you were the cleverest,
But now we're two alone.

When summer comes again,
And the long sunsets fade,
We shall have to go on playing the feeble game for two
That since the war we've played.

And though you run expectant as you always do
To the uniforms we meet,
You'll never find Willy among all the soldiers
In even the longest street,

Nor in any crowd; yet, strange and bitter thought,
Even now were the old words said,
If I tried the old trick and said "Where's Willy?"
You would quiver and lift your head,

And your brown eyes would look to ask if I were serious,
And wait for the word to spring.
Sleep undisturbed: I sha'n't say that again,
You innocent old thing.

I must sit, not speaking, on the sofa,
While you lie asleep on the floor;
For he's suffered a thing that dogs couldn't dream of,
And he won't be coming here any more.

THE LAKE

I am a lake, altered by every wind.
The mild South breathes upon me, and I spread
A dance of merry ripples in the sun.
The West comes stormily and I am troubled,
My waves conflict and black depths show between them.
Under the East wind bitter I grow and chill,
Slate-coloured, desolate, hopeless. But when blows
A steady wind from the North my motion ceases,
I am frozen smooth and hard; my conquered surface
Returns the skies' cold light without a comment.
I make no sound, nor can I; nor can I show
What depth I have, if any depth, below.

PARADISE LOST

What hues the sunlight had, how rich the shadows were,
The blue and tangled shadows dropped from the crusted branches
Of the warped apple-trees upon the orchard grass.

How heavenly pure the blue of two smooth eggs that lay
Light on the rounded mud that lined the thrush's nest:
And what a deep delight the spots that speckled them.

And that small tinkling stream that ran from hedge to hedge,
Shadowed over by the trees and glinting in the sunbeams,
How clear the water was, how flat the beds of sand
With travelling bubbles mirrored, each one a golden world
To my enchanted eyes. Then earth was new to me.

But now I walk this earth as it were a lumber room,
And sometimes live a week, seeing nothing but mere herbs,
Mere stones, mere passing birds: nor look at anything
Long enough to feel its conscious calm assault:
The strength of it, the word, the royal heart of it.

Childhood will not return; but have I not the will
To strain my turbid mind that soils all outer things,
And, open again to all the miracles of light,
To see the world with the eyes of a blind man gaining sight?

ACACIA TREE

All the trees and bushes of the garden
Display their bright new green.

But above them all, still bare,
The great old acacia stands,
His solitary bent black branches stark
Against the garden and the sky.

It is as though those other thoughtless shrubs,
The winter over, hastened to rejoice
And clothe themselves in spring's new finery,
Heedless of all the iron time behind them.

But he, older and wiser, stronger and sadder of heart,
Remembers still the cruel winter, and knows
That in some months that death will come again;
And, for a season, lonelily meditates
Above his lighter companions' frivolity.

Till some late sunny day when, breaking thought,
He'll suddenly yield to the fickle persuasive sun,
And over all his rough and writhing boughs
And tiniest twigs
Will spread a pale green mist of feathery leaf,
More delicate, more touching than all the verdure
Of the younger, slenderer, gracefuller plants around.

And then, when the leaves have grown
Till the boughs can scarcely be seen through their crowded plumes,
There will softly glimmer, scattered upon him, blooms,
Ivory-white in the green, weightlessly hanging.

AUGUST MOON

(_To F. S._)

In the smooth grey heaven is poised the pale half moon
And sheds on the wide grey river a broken reflection.
Out from the low church-tower the boats are moored
After the heat of the day, and await the dark.

And here, where the side of the road shelves into the river
At the gap where barges load and horses drink,
There are no horses. And the river is full
And the water stands by the shore and does not lap.

And a barge lies up for the night this side of the island,
The bargeman sits in the bows and smokes his pipe
And his wife by the cabin stirs. Behind me voices pass.

Calm sky, calm river: and a few calm things reflected.
And all as yet keep their colours; the island osiers,
The ash-white spots of umbelliferous flowers,
And the yellow clay of its bank, the barge's brown sails
That are furled up the mast and then make a lean triangle
To the end of the hoisted boom, and the high dark slips
Where they used to build vessels, and now build them no more.

All in the river reflected in quiet colours.
Beyond the river sweeps round in a bend, and is vast,
A wide grey level under the motionless sky
And the waxing moon, clean cut in the mole-grey sky.
Silence. Time is suspended; that the light fails
One would not know were it not for the moon in the sky,
And the broken moon in the water, whose fractures tell
Of slow broad ripples that otherwise do not show,
Maturing imperceptibly from a pale to a deeper gold,
A golden half moon in the sky, and broken gold in the water.

In the water, tranquilly severing, joining, gold:
Three or four little plates of gold on the river:
A little motion of gold between the dark images
Of two tall posts that stand in the grey water.

There are voices passing, a murmur of quiet voices,
A woman's laugh, and children going home.
A whispering couple, leaning over the railings,
And, somewhere, a little splash as a dog goes in.

I have always known all this, it has always been,
There is no change anywhere, nothing will ever change.

I heard a story, a crazy and tiresome myth.

Listen! behind the twilight a deep low sound
Like the constant shutting of very distant doors,

Doors that are letting people over there
Out to some other place beyond the end of the sky.

SONNET

There was an Indian, who had known no change,
Who strayed content along a sunlit beach
Gathering shells. He heard a sudden strange
Commingled noise; looked up; and gasped for speech.
For in the bay, where nothing was before,
Moved on the sea, by magic, huge canoes,
With bellying cloths on poles, and not one oar,
And fluttering coloured signs and clambering crews.

And he, in fear, this naked man alone,
His fallen hands forgetting all their shells,
His lips gone pale, knelt low behind a stone,
And stared, and saw, and did not understand,
Columbus's doom-burdened caravels
Slant to the shore, and all their seamen land.

SONG

Eyes like flowers and falling hair
Seldom seen, nor ever long,
Then I did not know you were
Destined subject for a song:
Sharing your unconsciousness
Of your double loveliness,
Unaware how fair you were,
Peaceful eyes and shadowy hair.

Only, now your beauty falls
Sweetly on some other place,
Lonely reverie recalls
More than anything your face;
Any idle hour may find
Stealing on my captured mind,
Faintly merging from the air,
Eyes like flowers and falling hair.

A GENERATION (1917)

There was a time that's gone
And will not come again,
We knew it was a pleasant time,
How good we never dreamed.

When, for a whimsy's sake,
We'd even play with pain,
For everything awaited us
And life immortal seemed.

It seemed unending then
To forward-looking eyes,
No thought of what postponement meant
Hung dark across our mirth;

We had years and strength enough
For any enterprise,
Our numerous companionship
Were heirs to all the earth.

But now all memory
Is one ironic truth,
We look like strangers at the boys
We were so long ago;

For half of us are dead,
And half have lost their youth,
And our hearts are scarred by many griefs,
That only age should know.

UNDER

In this house, she said, in this high second storey,
In this room where we sit, above the midnight street,
There runs a rivulet, narrow but very rapid,
Under the still floor and your unconscious feet.

The lamp on the table made a cone of light
That spread to the base of the walls: above was in gloom.
I heard her words with surprise; had I worked here so long,
And never divined that secret of the room?

"But how," I asked, "does the water climb so high?"
"I do not know," she said, "but the thing is there;
Pull up the boards while I go and fetch you a rod."
She passed, and I heard her creaking descend the stair.

And I rose and rolled the Turkey carpet back
From the two broad boards by the north wall she had named,
And, hearing already the crumple of water, I knelt
And lifted the first of them up; and the water gleamed,

Bordered with little frosted heaps of ice,
And, as she came back with a rod and line that swung,
I moved the other board; in the yellow light
The water trickled frostily, slackly along.

I took the tackle, a stiff black rubber worm,
That stuck out its pointed tail from a cumbrous hook,
"But there can't be fishing in water like this," I said.
And she, with weariness, "There is no ice there. Look."

And I stood there, gazing down at a stream in spate,
Holding the rod in my undecided hand...
Till it all in a moment grew smooth and still and clear,
And along its deep bottom of slaty grey sand

Three scattered little trout, as black as tadpoles,
Came waggling slowly along the glass-dark lake,
And I swung my arm to drop my pointing worm in,
And then I stopped again with a little shake.

For I heard the thin gnat-like voices of the trout
--My body felt woolly and sick and astray and cold--
Crying with mockery in them: "You are not allowed
To take us, you know, under ten years old."

And the room swam, the calm woman and the yellow lamp,
The table, and the dim-glistering walls, and the floor,
And the stream sank away, and all whirled dizzily,
And I moaned, and the pain at my heart grew more and more.

And I fainted away, utterly miserable.
Falling in a place where there was nothing to pass,
Knowing all sorrows and the mothers and sisters of sorrows,
And the pain of the darkness before anything ever was.

RIVERS

Rivers I have seen which were beautiful,
Slow rivers winding in the flat fens,
With bands of reeds like thronged green swords
Guarding the mirrored sky;
And streams down-tumbling from the chalk hills
To valleys of meadows and watercress-beds,
And bridges whereunder, dark weed-coloured shadows,
Trout flit or lie.

I know those rivers that peacefully glide
Past old towers and shaven gardens,
Where mottled walls rise from the water
And mills all streaked with flour;
And rivers with wharves and rusty shipping,
That flow with a stately tidal motion
Towards their destined estuaries
Full of the pride of power;

Noble great rivers, Thames and Severn,
Tweed with his gateway of many grey arches,
Clyde, dying at sunset westward
In a sea as red as blood;
Rhine and his hills in close procession,
Placid Elbe, Seine slaty and swirling,
And Isar, son of the Alpine snows,
A furious turquoise flood.

All these I have known, and with slow eyes
I have walked on their shores and watched them,
And softened to their beauty and loved them
Wherever my feet have been;
And a hundred others also
Whose names long since grew into me,
That, dreaming in light or darkness,
I have seen, though I have not seen.

Those rivers of thought: cold Ebro,
And blue racing Guadiana,
Passing white houses, high-balconied,
That ache in a sun-baked land,
Congo, and Nile and Colorado,
Niger, Indus, Zambesi,
And the Yellow River, and the Oxus,
And the river that dies in sand.

What splendours are theirs, what continents,
What tribes of men, what basking plains,
Forests and lion-hided deserts,
Marshes, ravines and falls:
All hues and shapes and tempers
Wandering they take as they wander
From those far springs that endlessly
The far sea calls.

O in reverie I know the Volga
That turns his back upon Europe,
And the two great cities on his banks,
Novgorod and Astrakhan;
Where the world is a few soft colours,
And under the dove-like evening
The boatmen chant ancient songs,
The tenderest known to man.

And the holy river Ganges,
His fretted cities veiled in moonlight,
Arches and buttresses silver-shadowy
In the high moon,
And palms grouped in the moonlight
And fanes girdled with cypresses,
Their domes of marble softly shining
To the high silver moon.

And that aged Brahmapootra
Who beyond the white Himalayas
Passes many a lamassery
On rocks forlorn and frore,
A block of gaunt grey stone walls
With rows of little barred windows,
Where shrivelled young monks in yellow silk
Are hidden for evermore....

But O that great river, the Amazon,
I have sailed up its gulf with eyelids closed,
And the yellow waters tumbled round,
And all was rimmed with sky,
Till the banks drew in, and the trees' heads,
And the lines of green grew higher
And I breathed deep, and there above me
The forest wall stood high.

Those forest walls of the Amazon
Are level under the blazing blue
And yield no sound save the whistles and shrieks
Of the swarming bright macaws;
And under their lowest drooping boughs
Mud-banks torpidly bubble,
And the water drifts, and logs in the water
Drift and twist and pause.

And everywhere, tacitly joining,
Float noiseless tributaries,
Tall avenues paved with water:
And as I silent fly
The vegetation like a painted scene,
Spars and spikes and monstrous fans
And ferns from hairy sheaths up-springing,
Evenly passes by.

And stealthier stagnant channels
Under low niches of drooping leaves
Coil into deep recesses:
And there have I entered, there
To heavy, hot, dense, dim places
Where creepers climb and sweat and climb,
And the drip and splash of oozing water
Loads the stifling air.

Rotting scrofulous steaming trunks,
Great horned emerald beetles crawling,
Ants and huge slow butterflies
That had strayed and lost the sun;
Ah, sick I have swooned as the air thickened
To a pallid brown ecliptic glow,
And on the forest, fallen with languor,
Thunder has begun.

Thunder in the dun dusk, thunder
Rolling and battering and cracking,
The caverns shudder with a terrible glare
Again and again and again,
Till the land bows in the darkness,
Utterly lost and defenceless,
Smitten and blinded and overwhelmed
By the crashing rods of rain.

And then in the forests of the Amazon,
When the rain has ended, and silence come,
What dark luxuriance unfolds
From behind the night's drawn bars:
The wreathing odours of a thousand trees
And the flowers' faint gleaming presences,
And over the clearings and the still waters
Soft indigo and hanging stars.

* * * * *

O many and many are rivers,
And beautiful are all rivers,
And lovely is water everywhere
That leaps or glides or stays;
Yet by starlight, moonlight, or sunlight,
Long, long though they look, these wandering eyes,
Even on the fairest waters of dream,
Never untroubled gaze.

For whatever stream I stand by,
And whatever river I dream of,
There is something still in the back of my mind
From very far away;
There is something I saw and see not,
A country full of rivers
That stirs in my heart and speaks to me
More sure, more dear than they.

And always I ask and wonder
(Though often I do not know it):
Why does this water not smell like water?
Where is the moss that grew
Wet and dry on the slabs of granite
And the round stones in clear brown water?
--And a pale film rises before them
Of the rivers that first I knew.

Though famous are the rivers of the great world,
Though my heart from those alien waters drinks
Delight however pure from their loveliness,
And awe however deep,
Would I wish for a moment the miracle
That those waters should come to Chagford,
Or gather and swell in Tavy Cleave
Where the stones cling to the steep?

No, even were they Ganges and Amazon
In all their great might and majesty,
League upon league of wonders,
I would lose them all, and more,
For a light chiming of small bells,
A twisting flash in the granite,
The tiny thread of a pixie waterfall
That lives by Vixen Tor.

Those rivers in that lost country,
They were brown as a clear brown bead is,
Or red with the earth that rain washed down,
Or white with china-clay;
And some tossed foaming over boulders,
And some curved mild and tranquil,
In wooded vales securely set
Under the fond warm day.

Okement and Erme and Avon,
Exe and his ruffled shallows,
I could cry as I think of those rivers
That knew my morning dreams;
The weir by Tavistock at evening
When the circling woods were purple,
And the Lowman in spring with the lent-lilies,
And the little moorland streams.

For many a hillside streamlet
There falls with a broken tinkle,
Falling and dying, falling and dying.
In little cascades and pools,
Where the world is furze and heather
And flashing plovers and fixed larks,
And an empty sky, whitish blue,
That small world rules.

There, there, where the high waste bog-lands
And the drooping slopes and the spreading valleys,
The orchards and the cattle-sprinkled pastures
Those travelling musics fill,
There is my lost Abana,
And there is my nameless Pharphar
That mixed with my heart when I was a boy,
And time stood still.

And I say I will go there and die there:
But I do not go there, and sometimes
I think that the train could not carry me there,
And it's possible, maybe,
That it's farther than Asia or Africa,
Or any voyager's harbour,
Farther, farther, beyond recall....
O even in memory!