Beechwood

Hear me, O beeches! You     That have with ageless anguish slowly risen     From earth's still secret prison     Into the ampler prison of aery blue.     Your voice I hear, flowing the valleys through     After the wind that tramples from the west.     After the wind your boughs in new unrest     Shake, and your voice--one voice uniting voices     A thousand or a thousand thousand--flows     Like the wind's moody; glad when he rejoices     In swift-succeeding and diminishing blows,     And drooping when declines death's ardour in his breast;     Then over him exhausted weaving the soft fan-like noises     Of gentlest creaking stems and soothing leaves     Until he rest,     And silent too your easied bosom heaves.     That high and noble wind is rootless nor     From stable earth sucks nurture, but roams on     Childless as fatherless, wild, unconfined,     So that men say, "As homeless as the wind!"     Rising and falling and rising evermore     With years like ticks, ons as centuries gone;     Only within impalpable ether bound     And blindly with the green globe spinning round.     He, noble wind,     Most ancient creature of imprisoned Time,     From high to low may fall, and low to high may climb,     Andean peak to deep-caved southern sea,     With lifted hand and voice of gathered sound,     And echoes in his tossing quiver bound     And loosed from height into immensity;     Yet of his freedom tires, remaining free.     --Moulding and remoulding imponderable cloud,     Uplifting skiey archipelagian isles     Sunnier than ocean's, blue seas and white isles     Aflush with blossom where late sunlight glowed;--     Still of his freedom tiring yet still free,     Homelessly roaming between sky, earth and sea.     But you, O beeches, even as men, have root     Deep in apparent and substantial things--     Earth, sun, air, water, and the chemic fruit     Wise Time of these has made. What laughing Springs     Your branches sprinkle young leaf-shadows o'er     That wanting the leaf-shadows were no Springs     Of seasonable sweet and freshness! nor     If Summer of your murmur gathered not     Increase of music as your leaves grow dense,     Might even kine and birds and general noise of wings     Of summer make full Summer, but the hot     Slow moons would pass and leave unsatisfied the sense.     Nor Autumn's waste were dear if your gold snow     Of leaves whirled not upon the gold below;     Nor Winter's snow were loveliness complete     Wanting the white drifts round your breasts and feet.     To hills how many has your tossed green given     Likeness of an inverted cloudy heaven;     How many English hills enlarge their pride     Of shape and solitude     By beechwoods darkening the steepest side!     I know a Mount--let there my longing brood     Again, as oft my eyes--a Mount I know     Where beeches stand arrested in the throe     Of that last onslaught when the gods swept low     Against the gods inhabiting the wood.     Gods into trees did pass and disappear,     Then closing, body and huge members heaved     With energy and agony and fear.     See how the thighs were strained, how tortured here.     See, limb from limb sprung, pain too sore to bear.     Eyes once looked from those sockets that no eyes     Have worn since--oh, with what desperate surprise!     These arms, uplifted still, were raised in vain     Against alien triumph and the inward pain.     Unlock your arms, and be no more distressed,     Let the wind glide over you easily again.     It is a dream you fight, a memory     Of battle lost. And how should dreaming be     Still a renewed agony?     But O, when that wind comes up out of the west     New-winged with Autumn from the distant sea     And springs upon you, how should not dreaming be     A remembered and renewing agony?     Then are your breasts, O unleaved beeches, again     Torn, and your thighs and arms with the old strain     Stretched past endurance; and your groans I hear     Low bent beneath the hoofs by that fierce charioteer     Driven clashing over; till even dreaming is     Less of a present agony than this.     Fall gentler sleep upon you now, while soft     Airs circle swallow-like from hedge to croft     Below your lowest naked-rooted troop.     Let evening slowly droop     Into the middle of your boughs and stoop     Quiet breathing down to your scarce-quivering side     And rest there satisfied.     Yet sleep herself may wake     And through your heavy unlit dome, O Mount of beeches, shake.     Then shall your massy columns yield     Again the company all day concealed....     Is it their shapes that sweep     Serene within the ambit of the Moon     Sentinel'd by shades slow-marching with moss-footed hours that creep     From dusk of night to dusk of day--slow-marching, yet too soon     Approaching morn? Are these their grave     Remembering ghosts?     ... Already your full-foliaged branches wave,     And the thin failing hosts     Into your secrecies are swift withdrawn     Before the certain footsteps of the dawn.     But you, O beeches, even as men have root     Deep in apparent and substantial things.     Birds on your branches leap and shake their wings,     Long ere night falls the soft owl loosens her slow hoot     From the unfathomed fountains of your gloom.     Late western sunbeams on your broad trunks bloom,     Levelled from the low opposing hill, and fold     Your inmost conclave with a burning gold.     ... Than those night-ghosts awhile more solid, men     Pass within your sharp shade that makes an arctic night     Of common light,     And pause, swift measuring tree by tree; and then     Paint their vivid mark,     Ciphering fatality on each unwrinkled bark     Across the sunken stain     That every season's gathered streaming rain     Has deepened to a darker grain.     You of this fatal sign unconscious lift     Your branches still, each tree her lofty tent;     Still light and twilight drift     Between, and lie in wan pools silver sprent.     But comes a day, a step, a voice, and now     The repeated stroke, the noosed and tethered bough,     The sundered trunk upon the enormous wain     Bound kinglike with chain over chain,     New wounded and exposed with each old stain.     And here small pools of doubtful light are lakes     Shadowless and no more that rude bough-music wakes.     So on men too the indifferent woodman, Time,     Servant of unseen Master, nearing sets     His unread symbol--or who reads forgets;     And suns and seasons fall and climb,     Leaves fall, snows fall, Spring flutters after Spring,     A generation a generation begets.     But comes a day--though dearly the tough roots cling     To common earth, branches with branches sing--     And that obscure sign's read, or swift misread,     By the indifferent woodman or his slave     Disease, night-wandered from a fever-dripping cave.     No chain's then needed for no fearful king,     But light earth-fall on foot and hand and head.     Now thick as stars leaves shake within the dome     Of faintly-glinting dusking monochrome;     And stars thick hung as leaves shake unseen in the round     Of darkening blue: the heavenly branches wave without a sound,     Only betrayed by fine vibration of thin air.     Gleam now the nearer stars and ghosts of farther stars that bare,     Trembling and gradual, brightness everywhere....     When leaves fall wildly and your beechen dome is thinned,     Showered glittering down under the sudden wind;     And when you, crowded stars, are shaken from your tree     In time's late season stripped, and each bough nakedly     Rocks in those gleamless shallows of infinity;     When star-fall follows leaf-fall, will long Winter pass away     And new stars as new leaves dance through their hasty May?     --But as a leaf falls so falls weightless thought     Eddying, and with a myriad dead leaves lies     Bewildered, or in a little air awhile is caught     Idly, then drops and dies.     Look at the stars, the stars! But in this wood     All I can understand is understood.     Gentler than stars your beeches speak; I hear     Syllables more simple and intimately clear     To earth-taught sense, than the heaven-singing word     Of that intemperate wisdom which the sky     Shakes down upon each unregarding century,     There lying like snow unstirred,     Unmelting, on the loftiest peak     Above our human and green valley ways.     Lowlier and friendlier your beechen branches speak     To men of mortal days     With hearts too fond, too weak     For solitude or converse with that starry race.     Their shaken lights,     Their lonely splendours and uncomprehended     Dream-distance and long circlings 'mid the heights     And deeps remotely neighboured and attended     By spheres that spill their fire through these estranging nights:--     Ah, were they less dismaying, or less splendid!     But as one deaf and mute sees the lips shape     And quiver as men talk, or marks the throat     Of rising song that he can never hear,     Though in the singer's eyes her joy may dimly peer,     And song and word his hopeless sense escape--     Sweet common word and lifted heavenly note--     So, beneath that bright rain,     While stars rise, soar and stoop,     Dazzled and dismayed I look and droop     And, blinded, look again.     "Return, return!" O beeches sing you then.     I like a tree wave all my thoughts with you,     As your boughs wave to other tossed boughs when     First in the windy east the dawn looks through     Night's soon-dissolving bars.     Return, return? But I have never strayed:     Hush, thoughts, that for a moment played     In that enchanted forest of the stars     Where the mind grows numb.     Return, return?     Back, thoughts, from heights that freeze and deeps that burn,     Where sight fails and song's dumb.     And as, after long absence, a child stands     In each familiar room     And with fond hands     Touches the table, casement, bed,     Anon each sleeping, half-forgotten toy;     So I to your sharp light and friendly gloom     Returning, with first pale leaves round me shed,     Recover the old joy     Since here the long-acquainted hill-path lies,     Steeps I have clambered up, and spaces where     The Mount opens her bosom to the air     And all around gigantic beeches rise.