Harold Monro

Here is the soundless cypress on the lawn: It listens, listens. Taller trees beyond Listen. The moon at the unruffled pond Stares. And you sing, you sing. That star-enchanted song falls through the air From lawn to lawn down terraces of sound, Darts in white arrows on the shadowed ground; And all the night you sing. My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee As all night long I listen, and my brain Receives your song; then loses it again In moonlight on the lawn. Now is your voice a marble high and white, Then like a mist on fields of paradise, Now is a raging fire, then is like ice, Then breaks, and it is dawn.

Since man has been articulate, Mechanical, improvidently wise, (Servant of Fate), He has not understood the little cries And foreign conversations of the small Delightful creatures that have followed him Not far behind; Has failed to hear the sympathetic call Of Crockery and Cutlery, those kind Reposeful Teraphim Of his domestic happiness; the Stool He sat on, or the Door he entered through: He has not thanked them, overbearing fool! What is he coming to? But you should listen to the talk of these. Honest they are, and patient they have kept; Served him without his Thank you or his Please ... I often heard The gentle Bed, a sigh between each word, Murmuring, before I slept. The Candle, as I blew it, cried aloud, Then bowed, And in a smoky argument Into the darkness went. The Kettle puffed a tentacle of breath:— "Pooh! I have boiled his water, I don't know Why; and he always says I boil too slow. He never calls me 'Sukie, dear,' and oh, I wonder why I squander my desire Sitting submissive on his kitchen fire." Now the old Copper Basin suddenly Rattled and tumbled from the shelf, Bumping and crying: "I can fall by myself; Without a woman's hand To patronize and coax and flatter me, I understand The lean and poise of gravitable land." It gave a raucous and tumultuous shout, Twisted itself convulsively about, Rested upon the floor, and, while I stare, It stares and grins at me. The old impetuous Gas above my head Begins irascibly to flare and fret, Wheezing into its epileptic jet, Reminding me I ought to go to bed. The Rafters creak; an Empty-Cupboard door Swings open; now a wild Plank of the floor Breaks from its joist, and leaps behind my foot. Down from the chimney, half a pound of Soot Tumbles and lies, and shakes itself again. The Putty cracks against the window-pane. A piece of Paper in the basket shoves Another piece, and toward the bottom moves. My independent Pencil, while I write, Breaks at the point: the ruminating Clock Stirs all its body and begins to rock, Warning the waiting presence of the Night, Strikes the dead hour, and tumbles to the plain Ticking of ordinary work again. You do well to remind me, and I praise Your strangely individual foreign ways. You call me from myself to recognize Companionship in your unselfish eyes. I want your dear acquaintances, although I pass you arrogantly over, throw Your lovely sounds, and squander them along My busy days. I'll do you no more wrong. Purr for me, Sukie, like a faithful cat. You, my well trampled Boots, and you, my Hat, Remain my friends: I feel, though I don't speak, Your touch grow kindlier from week to week. It well becomes our mutual happiness To go toward the same end more or less. There is not much dissimilarity, Not much to choose, I know it well, in fine, Between the purposes of you and me, And your eventual Rubbish Heap, and mine.

If suddenly a clod of earth should rise, And walk about, and breathe, and speak, and love, How one would tremble, and in what surprise Gasp: "Can you move?" I see men walking, and I always feel: "Earth! How have you done this? What can you be?" I can't learn how to know men, or conceal How strange they are to me.