11. The Sea and the Skylark   
   
   
ON ear and ear two noises too old to end      
  Trench—right, the tide that ramps against the shore;      
  With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,      
Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.      
   
Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,           5   
  His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score      
  In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour      
And pelt music, till none ’s to spill nor spend.      
   
How these two shame this shallow and frail town!      
  How ring right out our sordid turbid time,           10   
Being pure! We, life’s pride and cared-for crown,      
   
  Have lost that cheer and charm of earth’s past prime:      
Our make and making break, are breaking, down      
  To man’s last dust, drain fast towards man’s first slime.      

12. The Windhover   
   
   
To Christ our Lord   
   
   
I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-      
  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding      
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding      
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing      
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,           5   
  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding      
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding      
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!      
   
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here      
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion           10   
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!      
   
  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion      
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,      
  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

13. Pied Beauty   
   
   
GLORY be to God for dappled things—      
  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;      
    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;      
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;      
  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;           5   
    And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.      
   
All things counter, original, spare, strange;      
  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)      
    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;      
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:           10   
                  Praise him.

14. Hurrahing in Harvest   
   
   
SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise      
  Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour      
  Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier      
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?      
   
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,           5   
  Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;      
  And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a      
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?      
   
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder      
  Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—           10   
These things, these things were here and but the beholder      
  Wanting; which two when they once meet,      
The heart rears wings bold and bolder      
  And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.      

15. The Caged Skylark   
   
   
AS a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage      
  Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—      
  That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;      
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age.      
   
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,           5   
  Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,      
  Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells      
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.      
   
Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest—      
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,           10   
   But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.      
   
Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,      
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed      
  For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.      

16. In the Valley of the Elwy   
   
   
I REMEMBER a house where all were good      
  To me, God knows, deserving no such thing:      
  Comforting smell breathed at very entering,      
Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.      
That cordial air made those kind people a hood           5   
  All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing      
  Will, or mild nights the new morsels of spring:      
Why, it seemed of course; seemed of right it should.      
   
Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,      
All the air things wear that build this world of Wales;           10   
  Only the inmate does not correspond:      
God, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales,      
Complete thy creature dear O where it fails,      
  Being mighty a master, being a father and fond.      

17. The Loss of the Eurydice   
   
   
Foundered March 24. 1878   
   
   
1

THE Eurydice—it concerned thee, O Lord:      
Three hundred souls, O alas! on board,      
    Some asleep unawakened, all un-      
warned, eleven fathoms fallen      
   
2

Where she foundered! One stroke           5   
Felled and furled them, the hearts of oak!      
    And flockbells off the aerial      
Downs’ forefalls beat to the burial.      
   
3

For did she pride her, freighted fully, on      
Bounden bales or a hoard of bullion?—           10   
    Precious passing measure,      
Lads and men her lade and treasure.      
   
4

She had come from a cruise, training seamen—      
Men, boldboys soon to be men:      
    Must it, worst weather,           15   
Blast bole and bloom together?      
   
5

No Atlantic squall overwrought her      
Or rearing billow of the Biscay water:      
    Home was hard at hand      
And the blow bore from land.           20   
   
6

And you were a liar, O blue March day.      
Bright sun lanced fire in the heavenly bay;      
    But what black Boreas wrecked her? he      
Came equipped, deadly-electric,      
   
7

A beetling baldbright cloud thorough England           25   
Riding: there did stores not mingle? and      
    Hailropes hustle and grind their      
Heavengravel? wolfsnow, worlds of it, wind there?      
   
8

Now Carisbrook keep goes under in gloom;      
Now it overvaults Appledurcombe;           30   
    Now near by Ventnor town      
It hurls, hurls off Boniface Down.      
   
9

Too proud, too proud, what a press she bore!      
Royal, and all her royals wore.      
    Sharp with her, shorten sail!           35   
Too late; lost; gone with the gale.      
   
10

This was that fell capsize,      
As half she had righted and hoped to rise      
    Death teeming in by her portholes      
Raced down decks, round messes of mortals.           40   
   
11

Then a lurch forward, frigate and men;      
‘All hands for themselves’ the cry ran then;      
    But she who had housed them thither      
Was around them, bound them or wound them with her.      
   
12

Marcus Hare, high her captain,           45   
Kept to her—care-drowned and wrapped in      
    Cheer’s death, would follow      
His charge through the champ-white water-in-a-wallow,      
   
13

All under Channel to bury in a beach her      
Cheeks: Right, rude of feature,           50   
    He thought he heard say      
‘Her commander! and thou too, and thou this way.’      
   
14

It is even seen, time’s something server,      
In mankind’s medley a duty-swerver,      
    At downright ‘No or yes?’           55   
Doffs all, drives full for righteousness.      
   
15

Sydney Fletcher, Bristol-bred,      
(Low lie his mates now on watery bed)      
    Takes to the seas and snows      
As sheer down the ship goes.           60   
   
16

Now her afterdraught gullies him too down;      
Now he wrings for breath with the deathgush brown;      
    Till a lifebelt and God’s will      
Lend him a lift from the sea-swill.      
   
17

Now he shoots short up to the round air;           65   
Now he gasps, now he gazes everywhere;      
    But his eye no cliff, no coast or      
Mark makes in the rivelling snowstorm.      
   
18

Him, after an hour of wintry waves,      
A schooner sights, with another, and saves,           70   
    And he boards her in Oh! such joy      
He has lost count what came next, poor boy.—      
   
19

They say who saw one sea-corpse cold      
He was all of lovely manly mould,      
    Every inch a tar,           75   
Of the best we boast our sailors are.      
   
20

Look, foot to forelock, how all things suit! he      
Is strung by duty, is strained to beauty,      
    And brown-as-dawning-skinned      
With brine and shine and whirling wind.           80   
   
21

O his nimble finger, his gnarled grip!      
Leagues, leagues of seamanship      
    Slumber in these forsaken      
Bones, this sinew, and will not waken.      
   
22

He was but one like thousands more,           85   
Day and night I deplore      
    My people and born own nation,      
Fast foundering own generation.      
   
23

I might let bygones be—our curse      
Of ruinous shrine no hand or, worse,           90   
    Robbery’s hand is busy to      
Dress, hoar-hallowèd shrines unvisited;      
   
24

Only the breathing temple and fleet      
Life, this wildworth blown so sweet,      
    These daredeaths, ay this crew, in           95   
Unchrist, all rolled in ruin—      
   
25

Deeply surely I need to deplore it,      
Wondering why my master bore it,      
    The riving off that race      
So at home, time was, to his truth and grace           100   
   
26

That a starlight-wender of ours would say      
The marvellous Milk was Walsingham Way      
    And one—but let be, let be:      
More, more than was will yet be.—      
   
27

O well wept, mother have lost son;           105   
Wept, wife; wept, sweetheart would be one:      
    Though grief yield them no good      
Yet shed what tears sad truelove should.      
   
28

But to Christ lord of thunder      
Crouch; lay knee by earth low under:           110   
    ‘Holiest, loveliest, bravest,      
Save my hero, O Hero savest.      
   
29

And the prayer thou hearst me making      
Have, at the awful overtaking,      
    Heard; have heard and granted           115   
Grace that day grace was wanted.’      
   
30

Not that hell knows redeeming,      
But for souls sunk in seeming      
    Fresh, till doomfire burn all,      
Prayer shall fetch pity eternal.           120   

18. The May Magnificat   
   
   
MAY is Mary’s month, and I      
Muse at that and wonder why:      
    Her feasts follow reason,      
    Dated due to season—      
   
Candlemas, Lady Day;           5   
But the Lady Month, May,      
    Why fasten that upon her,      
    With a feasting in her honour?      
   
Is it only its being brighter      
Than the most are must delight her?           10   
    Is it opportunest      
    And flowers finds soonest?      
   
Ask of her, the mighty mother:      
Her reply puts this other      
    Question: What is Spring?—           15   
    Growth in every thing—      
   
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,      
Grass and greenworld all together;      
    Star-eyed strawberry-breasted      
    Throstle above her nested           20   
   
Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin      
Forms and warms the life within;      
    And bird and blossom swell      
    In sod or sheath or shell.      
   
All things rising, all things sizing           25   
Mary sees, sympathising      
    With that world of good,      
    Nature’s motherhood.      
   
Their magnifying of each its kind      
With delight calls to mind           30   
    How she did in her stored      
    Magnify the Lord.      
   
Well but there was more than this:      
Spring’s universal bliss      
    Much, had much to say           35   
    To offering Mary May.      
   
When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple      
Bloom lights the orchard-apple      
    And thicket and thorp are merry      
    With silver-surfèd cherry           40   
   
And azuring-over greybell makes      
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes      
    And magic cuckoocall      
    Caps, clears, and clinches all—      
   
This ecstasy all through mothering earth           45   
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth      
    To remember and exultation      
    In God who was her salvation.

   
19. Binsey Poplars   
   
   
felled 1879   
   
   
  MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,      
  Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,      
  All felled, felled, are all felled;      
    Of a fresh and following folded rank      
            Not spared, not one           5   
            That dandled a sandalled      
        Shadow that swam or sank      
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.      
   
  O if we but knew what we do      
        When we delve or hew—           10   
    Hack and rack the growing green!      
        Since country is so tender      
    To touch, her being só slender,      
    That, like this sleek and seeing ball      
    But a prick will make no eye at all,           15   
    Where we, even where we mean      
            To mend her we end her,      
        When we hew or delve:      
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.      
  Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve           20   
    Strokes of havoc únselve      
        The sweet especial scene,      
    Rural scene, a rural scene,      
    Sweet especial rural scene.      

   
20. Duns Scotus’s Oxford   
   
   
TOWERY city and branchy between towers;      
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded;      
The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did      
Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers;      
   
Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours           5   
That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded      
Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded      
Rural rural keeping—folk, flocks, and flowers.      
   
Yet ah! this air I gather and I release      
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what           10   
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;      
   
Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not      
Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;      
Who fired France for Mary without spot.