| |
| SUMMERS and summers have come, and gone with the flight of the swallow; | |
| Sunshine and thunder have been, storm and winter and frost; | |
| Many and many a sorrow has all but died from remembrance, | |
| Many a dream of joy fall’n in the shadow of pain. | |
| Hands of chance and change have marred, or moulded, or broken, | 5 |
| Busy with spirit or flesh, all I most have adored; | |
| Even the bosom of earth is strewn with heavier shadows,— | |
| Only in these green hills, aslant to the sea, no change. | |
| Here, where the road that has climbed from the inland valleys and woodlands | |
| Dips from the hilltops down, straight to the base of the hills,— | 10 |
| Here, from my vantage ground, I can see the scattering houses, | |
| Stained with time, set warm in orchards and meadows and wheat | |
| Dotting the broad, bright slopes outspread to southward and eastward, | |
| Windswept all day long, blown by the south-east wind. | |
| Skirting the sun-bright uplands stretches a riband of meadow, | 15 |
| Shorn of the labouring grass, bulwarked well from the sea, | |
| Fenced on its seaward border with long clay dikes from the turbid | |
| Surge and flow of the tides vexing the Westmoreland shores. | |
| Yonder, towards the left, lie broad the Westmoreland marshes,— | |
| Miles on miles they extend, level and grassy, and dim, | 20 |
| Clear from the long red sweep of flats to the sky in the distance, | |
| Save for the outlying heights, green-rampired Cumberland Point; | |
| Miles on miles outrolled, and the river-channels divide them,— | |
| Miles on miles of green, barred by the hurtling gusts. | |
| |
| Miles on miles beyond the tawny bay is Minudie. | 25 |
| There are the low blue hills; villages gleam at their feet. | |
| Nearer a white sail shines across the water, and nearer | |
| Still are the slim grey masts of fishing-boats dry on the flats. | |
| Ah! how well I remember those wide red flats, above tide-mark, | |
| Pale with scurf of the salt, seamed and baked in the sun! | 30 |
| Well I remember the piles of blocks and ropes, and the net-reels | |
| Wound with the beaded nets, dripping and dark from the sea! | |
| Now at this season the nets are unwound; they hang from the rafters | |
| Over the fresh-stowed hay in upland barns, and the wind | |
| Blows all day through the chinks, with the streaks of sunlight, and sways them | 35 |
| Softly at will; or they lie heaped in the gloom of a loft. | |
| Now at this season the reels are empty and idle; I see them | |
| Over the lines of the dikes, over the gossiping grass. | |
| Now at this season they swing in the long strong wind, through the lonesome | |
| Golden afternoon, shunned by the foraging gulls. | 40 |
| Near about sunset the crane will journey homeward above them; | |
| Round them, under the moon, all the calm night long, | |
| Winnowing soft grey wings of marsh-owls wander and wander, | |
| Now to the broad lit marsh, now to the dusk of the dike. | |
| Soon, through their dew-wet frames, in the live keen freshness of morning, | 45 |
| Out of the teeth of the dawn blows back the awakening wind. | |
| Then, as the blue day mounts, and the low-shot shafts of the sunlight | |
| Glance from the tide to the shore, gossamers jewelled with dew | |
| Sparkle and wave, where late sea-spoiling fathoms of drift-net, | |
| Myriad-meshed, uploomed sombrely over the land. | 50 |
| |
| Well I remember it all. The salt raw scent of the margin; | |
| While, with men at the windlass, groaned each reel, and the net, | |
| Surging in ponderous lengths, uprose and coiled in its station; | |
| Then each man to his home,—well I remember it all! | |
| |
| Yet, as I sit and watch, this present peace of the landscape,— | 55 |
| Stranded boats, these reels empty and idle, the hush, | |
| One grey hawk slow-wheeling above yon cluster of haystacks, | |
| More than the old-time stir this stillness welcomes me home. | |
| |
| Ah, the old-time stir, how once it stung me with rapture! | |
| Old-time sweetness, the winds freighted with honey and salt! | 60 |
| Yet will I stay my steps and not go down to the marshland,— | |
| Muse and recall far off, rather remember than see,— | |
| Lest, on too close sight, I miss the darling illusion, | |
| Spy at their task even here the hands of chance and change. | |
| |
