Which way shall I go?
A voice says: You would not have doubted so
At twenty. Another voice gentle with scorn
10 Says: At twenty you wished you had never been born.
One hazel lost a leaf of gold
From a tuft at the tip, when the first voice told
The other he wished to know what ’twould be
To be sixty by this same post. ‘You shall see,’
15 He laughed – and I had to join his laughter –
‘You shall see; but either before or after,
Whatever happens, it must befall,
A mouthful of earth to remedy all
Regrets and wishes shall freely be given;
20 And if there be a flaw in that heaven
’Twill be freedom to wish, and your wish may be
To be here or anywhere talking to me,
No matter what the weather, on earth,
At any age between death and birth, –
25 To see what day or night can be,
The sun and the frost, the land and the sea,
Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring, –
With a poor man of any sort, down to a king,
Standing upright out in the air
30 Wondering where he shall journey, O where?’
The rain of a night and a day and a night
Stops at the light
Of this pale choked day. The peering sun
Sees what has been done.
5 The road under the trees has a border new
Of purple hue
Inside the border of bright thin grass:
For all that has
Been left by November of leaves is torn
10 From hazel and thorn
And the greater trees. Throughout the copse
No dead leaf drops
On grey grass, green moss, burnt-orange fern,
At the wind’s return:
15 The leaflets out of the ash-tree shed
Are thinly spread
In the road, like little black fish, inlaid,
As if they played.
What hangs from the myriad branches down there
20 So hard and bare
Is twelve yellow apples lovely to see
On one crab-tree,
And on each twig of every tree in the dell
Uncountable
25 Crystals both dark and bright of the rain
That begins again.
Gone the wild day:
A wilder night
Coming makes way
For brief twilight.
5 Where the firm soaked road
Mounts and is lost
In the high beech-wood
It shines almost.
The beeches keep
10 A stormy rest,
Breathing deep
Of wind from the west.
The wood is black,
With a misty steam.
15 Above, the cloud pack
Breaks for one gleam.
But the woodman’s cot
By the ivied trees
Awakens not
20 To light or breeze.
It smokes aloft
Unwavering:
It hunches soft
Under storm’s wing.
25 It has no care
For gleam or gloom:
It stays there
While I shall roam,
Die, and forget
30 The hill of trees,
The gleam, the wet,
This roaring peace.
The forest ended. Glad I was
To feel the light, and hear the hum
Of bees, and smell the drying grass
And the sweet mint, because I had come
5 To an end of forest, and because
Here was both road and inn, the sum
Of what’s not forest. But ’twas here
They asked me if I did not pass
Yesterday this way? ‘Not you? Queer.’
10 ‘Who then? and slept here?’ I felt fear.
I learnt his road and, ere they were
Sure I was I, left the dark wood
Behind, kestrel and woodpecker,
The inn in the sun, the happy mood
15 When first I tasted sunlight there.
I travelled fast, in hopes I should
Outrun that other. What to do
When caught, I planned not. I pursued
To prove the likeness, and, if true,
20 To watch until myself I knew.
I tried the inns that evening
Of a long gabled high-street grey,
Of courts and outskirts, travelling
An eager but a weary way,
25 In vain. He was not there. Nothing
Told me that ever till that day
Had one like me entered those doors,
Save once. That time I dared: ‘You may
Recall’ – but never-foamless shores
30 Make better friends than those dull boors.
Many and many a day like this
Aimed at the unseen moving goal
And nothing found but remedies
For all desire. These made not whole;
35 They sowed a new desire, to kiss
Desire’s self beyond control,
Desire of desire. And yet
Life stayed on within my soul.
One night in sheltering from the wet
40 I quite forgot I could forget.
A customer, then the landlady
Stared at me. With a kind of smile
They hesitated awkwardly:
Their silence gave me time for guile.
45 Had anyone called there like me,
I asked. It was quite plain the wile
Succeeded. For they poured out all.
And that was naught. Less than a mile
Beyond the inn, I could recall
50 He was like me in general.
He had pleased them, but I less.
I was more eager than before
To find him out and to confess,
To bore him and to let him bore.
55 I could not wait: children might guess
I had a purpose, something more
That made an answer indiscreet.
One girl’s caution made me sore,
Too indignant even to greet
60 That other had we chanced to meet.
I sought then in solitude.
The wind had fallen with the night; as still
The roads lay as the ploughland rude,
Dark and naked, on the hill.
65 Had there been ever any feud
’Twixt earth and sky, a mighty will
Closed it: the crocketed dark trees,
A dark house, dark impossible
Cloud-towers, one star, one lamp, one peace
70 Held on an everlasting lease:
And all was earth’s, or all was sky’s;
No difference endured between
The two. A dog barked on a hidden rise;
A marshbird whistled high unseen;
75 The latest waking blackbird’s cries
Perished upon the silence keen.
The last light filled a narrow firth
Among the clouds. I stood serene,
And with a solemn quiet mirth,
80 An old inhabitant of earth.
Once the name I gave to hours
Like this was melancholy, when
It was not happiness and powers
Coming like exiles home again,
85 And weaknesses quitting their bowers,
Smiled and enjoyed, far off from men,
Moments of everlastingness.
And fortunate my search was then
While what I sought, nevertheless,
90 That I was seeking, I did not guess.
That time was brief: once more at inn
And upon road I sought my man
Till once amid a tap-room’s din
Loudly he asked for me, began
95 To speak, as if it had been a sin,
Of how I thought and dreamed and ran
After him thus, day after day:
He lived as one under a ban
For this: what had I got to say?
100 I said nothing. I slipped away.
And now I dare not follow after
Too close. I try to keep in sight,
Dreading his frown and worse his laughter.
I steal out of the wood to light;
105 I see the swift shoot from the rafter
By the inn door: ere I alight
I wait and hear the starlings wheeze
And nibble like ducks: I wait his flight.
He goes: I follow: no release
110 Until he ceases. Then I also shall cease.
The summer nests uncovered by autumn wind,
Some torn, others dislodged, all dark,
Everyone sees them: low or high in tree,
Or hedge, or single bush, they hang like a mark.
5 Since there’s no need of eyes to see them with
I cannot help a little shame
That I missed most, even at eye’s level, till
The leaves blew off and made the seeing no game.
’Tis a light pang. I like to see the nests
10 Still in their places, now first known,
At home and by far roads. Boys knew them not,
Whatever jays and squirrels may have done.
And most I like the winter nest deep-hid
That leaves and berries fell into:
15 Once a dormouse dined there on hazel-nuts,
And grass and goose-grass seeds found soil and grew.
Chapel and gravestones, old and few,
Are shrouded by a mountain fold
From sound and view
Of life. The loss of the brook’s voice
5 Falls like a shadow. All they hear is
The eternal noise
Of wind whistling in grass more shrill
Than aught as human as a sword,
And saying still:
10 ‘’Tis but a moment since man’s birth
And in another moment more
Man lies in earth
For ever; but I am the same
Now, and shall be, even as I was
15 Before he came;
Till there is nothing I shall be.’
Yet there the sun shines after noon
So cheerfully
The place almost seems peopled, nor
20 Lacks cottage chimney, cottage hearth:
It is not more
In size than is a cottage, less
Than any other empty home
In homeliness.
25 It has a garden of wild flowers
And finest grass and gravestones warm
In sunshine hours
The year through. Men behind the glass
Stand once a week, singing, and drown
30 The whistling grass
Their ponies munch. And yet somewhere,
Near or far off, there’s a man could
Be happy here,
Or one of the gods perhaps, were they
35 Not of inhuman stature dire,
As poets say
Who have not seen them clearly; if
At sound of any wind of the world
In grass-blades stiff
40 They would not startle and shudder cold
Under the sun. When gods were young
This wind was old.
The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills
Ran and sparkled down each side of the road
Under the catkins wagging in the hedge.
But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun;
5 Nor did I value that thin gilding beam
More than a pretty February thing
Till I came down to the old Manor Farm,
And church and yew-tree opposite, in age
Its equals and in size.
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