Reverie

Here in the unfrequented noon,In the green hermitage of June,While overhead a rustling wingMinds me of birds that do not singUntil the cooler eve rewakesThe service of melodious brakes,And thoughts are lonely rangers, here,In shelter of the primrose year,I curiously meditateOur brief and variable state.

I think how many are aliveWho better in the grave would thrive,If some so long a sleep might giveBetter instruction how to live;I think what splendours had been saidBy darlings now untimely deadHad death been wise in choice of these,And made exchange of obsequies.

I think what loss to governmentIt is that good men are content--Well knowing that an evil willIs folly-stricken too, and stillItself considers only wiseFor all rebukes and surgeries--That evil men should raise their prideTo place and fortune undefied.I think how daily we beguileOur brains, that yet a little whileAnd all our congregated schemesAnd our perplexity of dreams,Shall come to whole and perfect state.I think, however long the dateOf life may be, at last the sunShall pass upon campaigns undone.

I look upon the world and seeA world colonial to me,Whereof I am the architect,And principal and intellect,A world whose shape and savour springOut of my lone imagining,A world whose nature is subduedFor ever to my instant mood,And only beautiful can beBecause of beauty is in me.And then I know that every mindAmong the millions of my kindMakes earth his own particularAnd privately created star,That earth has thus no single state,Being every man articulate.Till thought has no horizon thenI try to think how many menThere are to make an earth apartIn symbol of the urgent heart,For there are forty in my street,And seven hundred more in Greet,And families at Luton Hoo,And there are men in China, too.

And what immensity is thisThat is but a parenthesisSet in a little human thought,Before the body comes to naught.There at the bottom of the copseI see a field of turnip tops,I see the cropping cattle passThere in another field, of grass.And fields and fields, with seven towns,A river, and a flight of downs,Steeples for all religious men,Ten thousand trees, and orchards ten,A mighty span that curves awayInto blue beauty, and I layAll this as quartered on a sphereHung huge in space, a thing of fearVast as the circle of the skyCompleted to the astonished eye;And then I think that all I see,Whereof I frame immensityGlobed for amazement, is no moreThan a shire’s corner, and that fourGreat shires being ten times multipliedAre small on the Atlantic tideAs an emerald on a silver bowl ...And the Atlantic to the wholeSweep of this tributary starThat is our earth is but ... and farThrough dreadful space the outmeasured mindSeeks to conceive the unconfined.

I think of Time. How, when his wingComposes all our quarrellingIn some green corner where May leavesAre loud with blackbirds on all eves,And all the dust that was our bonesIs underneath memorial stones,Then shall old jealousies, while weLie side by side most quietly,Be but oblivion’s fools, and stillWhen curious pilgrims ask--“What skillHad these that from oblivion saves?”--My song shall sing above our graves.

I think how men of gentle mind,And friendly will, and honest kind,Deny their nature and appearFellows of jealousy and fear;Having single faith, and natural witTo measure truth and cherish it,Yet, strangely, when they build in thought,Twisting the honesty that wroughtIn the straight motion of the heart,Into its feigning counterpartThat is the brain’s betrayal ofThe simple purposes of love;And what yet sorrier declineIs theirs when, eager to confineNo more within the silent brainIts habit, thought seeks birth againIn speech, as honesty has doneIn thought; then even what had wonFrom heart to brain fades and is lostIn this pretended pentecost,This their forlorn captivityTo speech, who have not learnt to beLords of the word, nor kept amongThe sterner climates of the tongue ...So truth is in their hearts, and thenFalls to confusion in the brain,And, fading through this mid-eclipse,It perishes upon the lips.

I think how year by year I stillFind working in my dauntless willSudden timidities that areMerely the echo of some farForgotten tyrannies that cameTo youth’s bewilderment and shame;That yet a magisterial gown,Being worn by one of no renownAnd half a generation lessIn years than I, can dispossessSomething my circumspecter moodOf excellence and quietude,And if a Bishop speaks to meI tremble with propriety.

I think how strange it is that heWho goes most comradely with meIn beauty’s worship, takes delightIn shows that to my eager sightAre shadows and unmanifest,While beauty’s favour and behestTo me in motion are revealedThat is against his vision sealed;Yet is our hearts’ necessityNot twofold, but a common pleaThat chaos come to continence,Whereto the arch-intelligenceRichly in divers voices makesIts answer for our several sakes.

I see the disinheritedAnd long procession of the dead,Who have in generations goneHeld fugitive dominionOf this same primrose pasturageThat is my momentary wage.I see two lovers move alongThese shadowed silences of song,With spring in blossom at their feetMore incommunicably sweetTo their hearts’ more magnificence,Than to the common courts of sense,Till joy his tardy closure tellsWith coming of the curfew bells.I see the knights of spur and swordCrossing the little woodland ford,Riding in ghostly cavalcadeOn some unchronicled crusade.I see the silent hunter goIn cloth of yeoman green, with bowStrung, and a quiver of grey wings.I see the little herd who bringsHis cattle homeward, while his sireMakes bivouac in WarwickshireThis night, the liege and loyal manOf Cavalier or Puritan.And as they pass, the nameless dead,Unsung, uncelebrate, and spedUpon an unremembered hourAs any twelvemonth fallen flower,I think how strangely yet they liveFor all their days were fugitive.

I think how soon we too shall beA story with our ancestry.

I think what miracle has beenThat you whose love among this greenDelightful solitude is stillThe stay and substance of my will,The dear custodian of my song,My thrifty counsellor and strong,Should take the time of all time’s tideThat was my season, to abideOn earth also; that we should beCharted across eternityTo one elect and happy dayOf yellow primroses in May.

The clock is calling five o’clock,And Nonesopretty brings her flockTo fold, and Tom comes back from townWith hose and ribbons worth a crown,And duly at The Old King’s HeadThey gather now to daily bread,And I no more may meditateOur brief and variable state.