The Human Music

At evening when the aspens rustled soft     And the last blackbird by the hedge-nest laughed,     And through the leaves the moon's unmeaning face     Looked, and then rose in dark-blue leafless space;     Watching the trees and moon she could not bear     The silence and the presence everywhere.     The blackbird called the silence and it came     Closing and closing round like smoke round flame.     Into her heart it crept and the heart was numb,     Even wishes died, and all but fear was dumb--     Fear and its phantoms. Then the trees were enlarged,     And from their roundness unguessed shapes emerged,     Or no shape but the image of her fear     Creeping forth from her mind and hovering near.     If a bat flitted it was an evil thing;     Sadder the trees grew with every shadowy wing--     Their shape enlarged, their arms quivered, their thought     Stirring in the leaves a silent anguish wrought.     "What are they thinking of, the evil trees,     Nod-nodding, standing in malignant ease?     Something against man's mortal heart was sworn     Once, when their dark Powers were conceived and born;     And in such fading or such lightless hours     The world is delivered to these plotting Powers."     No physical swift blow she dreaded, not     Lightning's quick mercy; but her heart grew hot     And cold and hot with uncomprehended sense     Of an assassin spiritual influence     Moving in the unmoving trees....     Till, as she stared,     Her eyes turned cowards at last, and no more dared.     Yet could she never rise and shut the door:     Perhaps those Powers would batter at the door,     And that were madness. So right through the house     She set the doors all wide when she could arouse     The body's energy to serve the mind.     Then the air would move, and any little wind     Would cleanse awhile the darkness and diminish     Her fear, and the dumb shadow-war would finish.     But it was not the trees, the birds, the moon;     Birds cease, months fly, green seasons wither soon:     Nature was constant all the seasons through,     Sinister, watchful, and a thick cloud drew     Over the mind when its simplicity     Challenged what seemed with thought of what must be....     She wondered, seeing how a child could play     Lightly in a shady field all day:     For in that golden, brief, benignant weather     When spring and summer calling run together     And the sun's fresh and hot, she saw deep guile     In the sweetness of that unconditioned smile.     Sweetness not sweetness was but indifference     Or wantonness disguised, to her grave sense;     And if she could have seen the things she felt     She'd looked for darkness, and lit shapes that knelt     Appealing, unregarded, at a high     Altar uprising from the pit to the sky....     Had the trees consciousness, with flowers and clouds     And winds that hung like thin clouds in the woods,     And stars and silence:--had they each a mind     Bending on hers, clear eyes on her eyes blind?     In the green dense heights--elm, oak, ash, yew or beech     She scarce saw--was there not a brain in each,     An undiscovered centre of quick nerves     By which (like man) the tree lives, masters, serves,     Waxes and wanes? Oppressed her mind would shrink     From thought, and into her trembling body sink.     Something of this had childhood taught her when     Sickly she lay and peered again and again     At gray skies and white skies and void bright blue,     And watched the sun the bare town-tree boughs through,     And then through leafy boughs and once more bare.     Or in the west country's heavy hill-drawn air     Had felt the green grass pushing within her veins,     Tangling and strangling: and the warm spring rains     Tapping all night upon her childish head:     She shivered, lying lonely on her bed,     With all that life all round and she so weak,     Longing to speak--yet what was there to speak?     And as she grew and health came and love came     And life was happier, happier, still the same     Inhuman spirit rose whenever she     Held in her thoughts more than her eyes could see.     Behind the happiest hours the dark cloud hung     Distant or nearing, and its dullness flung     On the south meadows of her thought, the fairest     Shrinking in shadow; aspirations rarest     Falling, like shot birds in a reedy fen,     Slain by the old Enemy of men.     Life ebbed while men strove for the means of life;     The grudging earth turned labour into strife.     The moving hosts within the heavy clod     Seemed infinite in malice; frost and flood,     Season and inter-season, were conspired     In smiling or sour mockery; and untired     And undelighted, man scratched and scratched on,     And what he did, by Nature was undone.     She saw men twisted more than rocks or trees,     Bruised, numbed, by age and labour and the disease     Of labour in the cold fields; women worn     By many child-bearings, and their self-scorn     Because of time and their lost woman's powers.     Bitter was Nature to women; for those hours     Of the spirit's and the body's first delight     Passed soon, and the long day, evening, night     Of life uncherished; bitterest when even     That brief hour was denied, of dancing heaven,     Dewy love, and fulfilled desires.         But age     Of all ills made her pity and anger rage.     To see and smell the calm months bud and bloom,     April's first warmth, June's hues and slow perfume,     The sweetness drifting by in those long hours     While, out of her she nursed, the vital powers     Were pressed by pain and pressed by pain renewed,     Till, closing the life-long vicissitude,     Came starving death with full-heaped summer, and     Wrung the last pangs that spirit could withstand ...     Or to see age in its prison slowly freeze     With impotence more disastrous than disease,     While trees flowered on, or all the winter through     Upheld brave arms and with spring flowered anew     Above those living graves and graves of the dead;--     'Twas all such bitterness, but she nothing said.     She saw men as courageous boats that sailed     On all the seas, and some a far port hailed     Perhaps to sail again, or anchor there     Forever; some would quietly disappear     In stormless waters, and some in storms be broken     And all be hidden and no clear meaning spoken,     Nor any trace upon the waters linger.     Where the boat went the wind with hasty finger,     Savage and sly as aught of land could be,     Erased the little wrinkling of the sea.     O, in such enmity was man enisled,     Such loneliness, by foolish shades beguiled,     That it was bravery to see and live,     But cowardice to see and to forgive,     The wrong of evil, the wrong of death to life,     The defeat of innocence, the waste of strife,--     The heavy ills of time, injustice, pain--     In field and forest and flood rose huge and plain,     Brushing her mind with darkness, till she thought     Not with her brain, but all her nerves were wrought     Into an apprehension burning strong,     Unslackening, of mortality's old wrong.     But if her eyes she raised to those clear lonely     Altitudes of stars and ether only,     Her eyes fell and rebuked her as forbidden     With human mind to question what was hidden.     At summer dusk the broad moon rising high     Put gentleness in the vast strength of the sky,     Easing its weight; or the hot summer sun     Made noonday kind, and the hours lightly run.     But in those blazing midnights of the stars     Gathered and brightening for immortal wars     With spears and darts and arrows of sharp light,     She read the indifference of the infinite,     The high strife flashing through eternity     While on the earth stared mortals but as she.     O 'twas a living world that rose around     And in her sentience burned a hollow wound.     Such easy brightness as the poets see,     Or easy gloom, or hues of faerie,     She never saw, but into her own heart peered     To find what spirit indeed it was she feared:--     Whether in antique days a divine foe     Sprung branchlike from dense woods had wrought her woe;     Whether in antique days a pagan rite     (Herself a pagan still) unfilmed her sight     And taught her secrets never to be forgot,     And by man's generation pardoned not....     The same blood in ancestral veins ran fleet     As now made hers a road for pain's quick feet.     Into the marrow of her hidden life     Had poured the agony of their termless strife     With immaterial and material things;     And as a bird an unlearned music sings     Because a million generations sang,     So in her breast the old alarum rang,     So the old sorrowfulness in her thought     Renewed, and apprehensions all untaught;     As if indeed a creature primitive     Still did she in the world's dim morning live,     That wanted human warmth and gentleness     To make its solitude a little less.     Kindness gave solitude the lovely light     She loved, and made less terrible black midnight.     Even as a bird its unlearned music pours     Though windows all be blind and shut the doors,     And sings on still though no faint sound be heard     But wind and leaves and another lonely bird:     So poured she untaught kindness all around     And in that human music comfort found--     Music her own and music heard from others,     Prime music of all lovers, children, mothers,     Precarious music between all men sounding,     The horror of silent and dark Powers confounding.     Singing that music she could bravely live;     Hearing it, find less sorrow to forgive.