Preludes 1921-1922 Part 2

LAKE WINTER

Full summer dusk was round him as he stood On the hill-top, over the calling sheep Drifting along the pastured downs. The moon Far off was rising from the Suss.e.x sea.

Above him, building up into the sky, Black, and with pointing sails now skeletoned, A windmill gathered strays of evening wind Whispering through the splitting timbers. Still The setting sun washed with a fuller gold The golden sheaves patterned upon a cone Of downland by him farther from the sea.

So still, he seemed a thing woven of earth, A life rooted and fixed as were the oaks Locked in the soil, their bases webbed with fleece Of sheltering ewes, he watched across the valley, And the hour pa.s.sed, and the black mill grew and grew, And then a light came in a far window Of a grey farm cresting the hill beyond, And sudden tides beat on him as he saw A white dress moving in the distant pines.

Lake Winter, a five hundred acre man, Was English, bred far back, a part of England, With South and North and Midland in his blood.

And somewhere Devon, somewhere Suffolk too.

He had been born of love. They had been lovers, Who made him, and no more, but they were lovers.

She of a proud house, proud to make it prouder With wit and beauty, and a young brain glowing, And a swift body fearless and pitiful; And he a Cotswold yeoman, thrift and power, And mastery of earth and herds and flocks, And knowledge of all seasons and their fruits, And a heart of meditation, all his birthright; Ten generations deep from Gloucester stone.

And those two met, and loved, and of their love Came a new purity of blood and limb, As of a purpose slowly moulding them.

And long they waited, and then one summer noon, He, coming northward from his Cotswold home, Found her by Rydal as she had bidden him, And proudly stride to stride they took the road, Sure youth by youth, and to Helvellyn's foot They came, and climbed up to the brighter air, And into the wind's ardour still went on, Until upon the mountain top they stood, And lake by lake was fading in the dusk.

Out of the plains they saw the moon move up And over them the deeper blue came on, The faint stars glowing into mastery.

And in that splendour of a summer hill, Amid the mellow-breathing night, where yet The poppies of the valley could not come, There was conceived a boy....

And sorrow came Upon their love. Before the moon again Was full upon Helvellyn, the Cotswold lover With a great elm was blasted in a storm, And lay, a burnt thing, in a Cotswold grave.

And she went out, took her inheritance, And lived apart, and the man-child was born.

She called him Lake, for those fading lakes of dusk, And gave him her own name. And twenty years She tended him, and died; and from her substance Lake Winter now for fifteen years had kept His Suss.e.x acres in fertility.

Such was the man, so born, so pa.s.sionately made, So knit of English earth and generations, Who now upon the summer evening watched-- His manhood full upon his middle years-- A white dress moving in the distant pines.

Down to the valley from their hills they came, Lake Winter and the woman that he loved.

He waited by a long brown garden wall, Mottled with moss and lichen, where in the dusk Like a great moth a late flycatcher wove, And watched her coming down a rutted path, Towards him. And the flowing of her body, Sure step through fugitive cadences of limb, Up to the little golden arch of hair, Was lovely as a known yet wanted tale.

Zell Dane, the wife of Martin Dane, who held Tollington Manor farm, was ten years wed.

Dane was an honest man by groom and horse, Paid pew-rent and his losing wagers, thought The British Empire lived at Westminster, Stood by the State and rights of property, Drank well, and knew the barmaids of a county.

He married Zell, and neither could have said Why it was done. Ten years had gone since then, And he was now a half forgotten habit, She, some queer porcelain stuff beyond his knowing.

Lake Winter came and went at Tollington, As other neighbours, a little in Dane's mind Suspect for certain rumours of his birth, But known for a straight rider and plain speaker, Who meant his words and had words for his meaning.

And Lake and Zell, between the jests at table, Where they could match the best wits of the room, Would talk of things that Dane and the rest counted As pointing ways not good for level minds.

Why pose about Beethoven, and Debussy, Or these French fellows Degas and Pica.s.so, When there were Marcus Stone, and A Long, Long Trail, And "A Little Grey Home in the West," that common folk Could understand? And, however the truth might be, It wasn't decent openly to say That William Wordsworth was a better poet-- Though more or less in a poet was no matter-- Because it seemed that once in his flaming youth He had loved gloriously in France....

Dane heard and saw, And was a little troubled that clear heads Should cloud and squander thus, a little scornful.

Still if it gave them pleasure, and it but meant Mind with mind idling together so, Winter could come and go for all he cared, He wouldn't grudge ... and then the doubt began, A thought that somewhere under all this play And nimbleness was crouching the true thing, l.u.s.t, plain l.u.s.t. There was between man and woman, So Dane had learnt, two several conditions, A compact to keep smooth the day's affairs, That, and plain l.u.s.t. This mind play was a sham....

Winter and Zell were l.u.s.ting, that was all...

Then let them... d.a.m.n it, let the matter be...

Time would show all, and there were crops and hounds.

They stood together by the dusky wall.

And long their lips met, in a hushed world fading, A night of beauty fading in their own.

And then "I made a rhyme for you to-day, When the last sheaves were binding I made it, thus--"

I have no strange or subtle thought, And the old things are best, In curious tongues I am untaught, Yet I know rest.

I know the sifting oakleaves still Upon a twilit sky, I hear the fernowl on the hill Go wheeling by.

I know my flocks and how they keep Their tunes of field and fold, My scholars.h.i.+p can sow and reap, From green to gold.

The circled stars from down to sea I reckon as my gains, The swallows are as dear to me As loaded wains.

Yet these were ghosts and fugitive, Until upon your step they came By revelation's lips to live In your dear name.

I saw you walking as dusk fell, And leaves and wains and heaven and birds Were miracles my blood may tell, And not my words.

"And yet I would not lose the tidings come On so dear words, though the blood knows it all, As the song says." She spoke; and from the valley Slowly towards the mill, by ghostly flocks That stole about the meadows of the moonrise, They walked, and made this argument of love.

LAKE. How shall they stand for wisdom, who forbid The body's love, which is so small a thing, Yet let the souls, or minds, or what you will Be mated, as though spirit were the drudge, For no-one's heed, and limbs alone to be, As though clay were the gold, inviolate?

If I could grudge love coming anywhere, Falling even on whom I loved in all, I think the body at least should have no share Of jealousy from me, which should be spent Rather on minds meeting above my own, Myself an exile from their understanding.

Beloved, in the mating of our minds I am all peace to walk thus in your presence, And in that peace your body of my desire, And all my earth, as pa.s.sionate as any, Seem snares to tempt us to the loss of all, Since by them the world threatens this our peace, Which else we may so gather, undenied.

Then is not flesh merely the trouble of love, When love goes thus, as love between us now?

Zell took his hand, and her life was in his veins, And his words beat back upon him as she spoke.

ZELL. Dear, you are wise of all your books, and speech Of windy downs, and polities of men, And the old pa.s.sions weaving history, And strong and gentle things of sea and earth, And the poor pa.s.sing of the life of man, But not in this. You have your great-heart courage For all such ardours as might make you seem Some fabled hero standing against fate, But not in this. In sifting vanity From the right honour, and building from ambition, You have a vision constant as the tides, But not in this. They may look Suss.e.x over For any man who found a crooked word Ever upon your lips, and vainly look, Because, dear, truth is an old habit in you, But not in this. Here in the night enchanted, With not an ear to catch the whispered truth, Let nothing but the truth between us be-- I love you, Lake; I love the fair mind moving In equal joy among men's praise or censure; I love the courage of its lonely flight, Here in a land of light convenience.

I love you for the years that you have given To Suss.e.x plough and pasture till they are grown Surer and richer in your wit than any.

I love you for the love in which you gather My mind that from youth on has gone unmated, And then I love you for the bearing kept In you when slight occasions something royal Take on because you silently are there.

I know you, Lake, for a man worthy honour, And well to honour is well to delight.

But, dear, with all this giving of my love, Great and unmeasured giving, sending back In joy the wors.h.i.+p that you bring to me, I love your glowing body, and you love mine.

No words, or thrift of philosophic thought, Can put that love out of the love we are.

At night, alone, when the dark covers me, I ache for you, body for body I ache.

And then I know that over you as well The dear, forlorn, resistless pain is full.

We may persuade, virtuously persuade, That this is but an accident of love, Not of love's very being, a thing to bind In brave captivity at the world's bidding, But I know, as you know it, that persuasion So made is outcast in the house of truth.

I love you, and the thing I love is made All wonderful of flesh and spirit both, Body and mind inseparably one, And I must spend my love on all or nothing.

Should I but love those limbs so rightly planned By ancestry so wise of English earth, It were a simple harlotry in me.

But, Lake, to love the life and not the house, The living house so admirably built Of tissue flawless as the material stars, Wherein the life I love is manifest, Were harlotry no less I know than that.

You, the dear Lake of my idolatry, For I am something near it, as you are, Are one life, whereto pilgrim thought conspires With all the cunning moulding of the flesh, And of my brain and body is my love, Dream to your dream, desire to your desire.

If you should die, my memory of you Would be no tale of the mere mind conceiving, Of contemplation thriving thus or thus, In trance of s.p.a.ces where not even wings nor breath Recall the moving of substantial things.

Rather in me for ever should be glowing The imaging mind mated in equal limbs, Thought visible in lines of the athlete, Wisdom persuading in the lover's clasp.

And how should thought know thought until the whole Of body's beauty is by body learnt?

Until the trial of that most dear seclusion Is past, and all the dangers of mere l.u.s.t Disproved, when in possession is no stale Regret and disillusion, how should be known That the still hours of thought with thought are stable Against the wearing of dissolving time?

Dear, we must love by all the tokens of love, Before the presence of love beyond dispute Is between us and for ever fixed.