MIDSUMMER EVE

IN the lost Valley all is still To-day: upon the stony hill The heat of the late afternoon Settles in coppery haze: and soon A voice not known to me will call Silent obedient cows to stall, In the same immemorial cry From century to century Changing but by the uttering voice. And in a while a little noise (Hou! Hou!) far off near Newton Head Will tell that at another stead The browsing cattle pause and turn Unwilling heads to seem to learn That which they know, and move in train Now milking-time has come again. In Well Knowe garden now, I know, Where the pale larkspur used to grow In the far nook, a sound is heard (If any is there to hear save bird And field-mouse in the strawberries Stirring like a local breeze— Here, there—the low leaves soundlessly); A glistening slender wasp-like fly Is using will and wing to stand Upon the air as though it spanned A chasm with trembling outstretched arms, And in the silence of heat-stilled farms And heat-veiled wood that seems to shake Dim clotted leaves yet does not break By sigh or rustle the hush so dear Its tiny sting of sound sings clear. Oft have I heard that elfin horn Sound suddenly, as cobweb torn Must sound in startled elfin ears Pricked and on edge with elfin fears; And as I upward watched those spare Twin shreds of silver like slit air, Beating and shining, straight and tense, Simulating impotence Of motion, enviously I thought "Had my half useless flesh been caught, Upborn, and for all limit bound Between such gossamers of sound, Not thus, not thus would I deny My spirit's reach and endlessly Use all conception and all force To limit my short vital course. Had I such wings of urgent light Insistent not alone on height But stretched for sweep and latitude I would not evade flight, I would Employ my heat and power and sense In realising difference, And see my world's variety, Restricted but by energy." But Well Knowe garden only shines In memory now, and its dear signs Only persist and gleam again In a shut chamber of my brain: While in a distant place I brood Upon lost things, and in a mood Of longing and remembrance feel The wisdom of that immobile And senseless mote, and think "Were I Carnate in a slim glistening fly, I would flash back upon that fair Laurel-walled rood, then drop in air Till no translucent nerve should stir From strained precision, nor wing should whir But to maintain one changeless height, Nor move nor waver from that sight; And think the years have not gone by When James and Clinton harboured nigh And, working in another art Than mine, yet peopled for my heart The Valley with the very core Of vital beauty for evermore— So that when the air is still I hear below the meadow-rill Clinton singing softlier still Entranced by his own moving brush Among the stream-side bracken and rush— Or James repeats with his long hand The distant line of hills that stand Between the Valley and the lake And yet seem lovelier for his sake." How many generations past Should I be dead had I been cast In that small rapid shape of light? Though wings may stand, years move in flight; And, while I dream, I know, I know That it is useless I should go To Well Knowe garden again to see Things that cannot return to me— James dead and Clinton gone away, And one whose name I cannot say Who built in Cyclopean sound Other magic heights around That little place, then turned apart, Untrue to friendship and to art, A man of nothing—vanished things, Dead friends, dead hopes, that must remain In a shut chamber of my brain; While only Clinton far away Will in these verses and this play See that country of our youth And our dead friend and our old troth Of friendship fixed in amber light, A timeless hour that holds no night.