Tides
John Drinkwater




John Drinkwater

Tides / A Book of Poems





DEDICATION


TO GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON

		Because the darling chivalries,
		That light your battle-line, belong
		To music’s heart no less than these,
		I bring you my campaigns of song.







A MAN’S DAUGHTER


		There is an old woman who looks each night
		Out of the wood.
		She has one tooth, that isn’t too white.
		She isn’t too good.

		She came from the north looking for me,
		About my jewel.
		Her son, she says, is tall as can be;
		But, men say, cruel.

		My girl went northward, holiday making,
		And a queer man spoke
		At the woodside once when night was breaking,
		And her heart broke.

		For ever since she has pined and pined,
		A sorry maid;
		Her fingers are slack as the wool they wind,
		Or her girdle-braid.

		So now shall I send her north to wed,
		Who here may know
		Only the little house of the dead
		To ease her woe?

		Or keep her for fear of that old woman,
		As a bird quick-eyed,
		And her tall son who is hardly human,
		At the woodside?

		She is my babe and my daughter dear,
		How well, how well.
		Her grief to me is a fourfold fear,
		Tongue cannot tell.

		And yet I know that far in that wood
		Are crumbling bones,
		And a mumble mumble of nothing that’s good,
		In heathen tones.

		And I know that frail ghosts flutter and sigh
		In brambles there,
		And never a bird or beast to cry —
		Beware, beware, —

		While threading the silent thickets go
		Mother and son,
		Where scrupulous berries never grow,
		And airs are none.

		And her deep eyes peer at eventide
		Out of the wood,
		And her tall son waits by the dark woodside,
		For maidenhood.

		And the little eyes peer, and peer, and peer;
		And a word is said.
		And some house knows, for many a year,
		But years of dread.




VENUS IN ARDEN


		Now love, her mantle thrown,
		Goes naked by,
		Threading the woods alone,
		Her royal eye
		Happy because the primroses again
		Break on the winter continence of men.

		I saw her pass to-day
		In Warwickshire,
		With the old imperial way,
		The old desire,
		Fresh as among those other flowers they went,
		More beautiful for Adon’s discontent.

		Those other years she made
		Her festival
		When the blue eggs were laid
		And lambs were tall,
		By the Athenian rivers while the reeds
		Made love melodious for the Ganymedes.

		And now through Cantlow brakes,
		By Wilmcote hill,
		To Avon-side, she makes
		Her garlands still,
		And I who watch her flashing limbs am one
		With youth whose days three thousand years are done.




COTSWOLD LOVE


		Blue skies are over Cotswold
		And April snows go by,
		The lasses turn their ribbons
		For April’s in the sky,
		And April is the season
		When Sabbath girls are dressed,
		From Rodboro’ to Campden,
		In all their silken best.

		An ankle is a marvel
		When first the buds are brown,
		And not a lass but knows it
		From Stow to Gloucester town.
		And not a girl goes walking
		Along the Cotswold lanes
		But knows men’s eyes in April
		Are quicker than their brains.

		It’s little that it matters,
		So long as you’re alive,
		If you’re eighteen in April,
		Or rising sixty-five,
		When April comes to Amberley
		With skies of April blue,
		And Cotswold girls are briding
		With slyly tilted shoe.




THE MIDLANDS


		Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill
		Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky
		Deep as the bedded violets that fill
		March woods with dusky passion. As I lie
		Abed between cool walls I watch the host
		Of the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain,
		And drowsily the habit of these most
		Beloved of English lands moves in my brain,
		While silence holds dominion of the dark,
		Save when the foxes from the spinneys bark.

		I see the valleys in their morning mist
		Wreathed under limpid hills in moving light,
		Happy with many a yeoman melodist:
		I see the little roads of twinkling white
		Busy with fieldward teams and market gear
		Of rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tell
		The many-minded changes of the year,
		Who know why crops and kine fare ill or well;
		I see the sun persuade the mist away,
		Till town and stead are shining to the day.

		I see the wagons move along the rows
		Of ripe and summer-breathing clover-flower,
		I see the lissom husbandman who knows
		Deep in his heart the beauty of his power,
		As, lithely pitched, the full-heaped fork bids on
		The harvest home. I hear the rickyard fill
		With gossip as in generations gone,
		While wagon follows wagon from the hill.
		I think how, when our seasons all are sealed,
		Shall come the unchanging harvest from the field.

		I see the barns and comely manors planned
		By men who somehow moved in comely thought,
		Who, with a simple shippon to their hand,
		As men upon some godlike business wrought;
		I see the little cottages that keep
		Their beauty still where since Plantaganet
		Have come the shepherds happily to sleep,
		Finding the loaves and cups of cider set;
		I see the twisted shepherds, brown and old,
		Driving at dusk their glimmering sheep to fold.

		And now the valleys that upon the sun
		Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again,
		And the last light upon the wolds is done,
		And silence falls on flocks and fields and men;
		And black upon the night I watch my hill,
		And the stars shine, and there an owly wing
		Brushes the night, and all again is still,




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