The vapour, twining and twitching, seems to throw
Black, precipitous boulders to and fro
Light as a bandied scoff; and, look, the cliff--
Whose root claws at the midworld fire with stiff
Unmolten, adamantine fingers--fails,
Lurches. Above, cold and eternal gales
Run worrying, shredding, eternal sunlight; snatch
At the heather; puff at the flocks of cotton; scratch
White scars along the bents. If strangers climb
To this plateau that buffets back slow time,
They stand awhile impotent, grey with fear,
And feel solidity’s foundation stir.
But even here a cottage free from harms
Lies havened, hugged and sheltered by the arms
Of a narrow, green recess. A few stunt oaks,
Elders, and barren apples beard the rocks;
But, sleeker than a pool, the lawn beneath
Burns white and blue, bewildering the heath.
On a low wood-bench, rifted by years of rain,
Warped at one end, split far along the grain,
A meagre man with a waste, weary smile
Reads to a boy and girl, or plays awhile
Some quiet, grown-up game. He suddenly bows
Head between hands: no more his children rouse
Flicker or flame, by question or caress,
To break the dead, monotonous, featureless
Winter of grief. At last he rises, and,
With empty scrutiny, feet that understand
No path but falter at random, stumbles out
Where tigrish winds whirry and havoc and shout.
His back-blown hair, wet, smarting eyes, recall
The conscious pang of life; and he must fall
Faint on the ground, or whet his courage keen,
Clench all his being, prise a path between
The loud, inimical flaws. With even might
He batters on, to earth’s and air’s despite,
In storm and tumult winning peace and light.
Yet, in these roads of quiet, muniment
From fury of nature, home from discontent
Surely of earth’s mean, trafficking miseries,
In this domain of flower and fragrance, this
Green plat of smooth, immotionable ground,
Why does the panther sorrow skulk around
And leap like fear from unsuspected fourm?
Weigh this doubt rather--if the embittered swarm
Of multitudinous grief thins ever or stays
From most unmerited sally; for in what ways
A man may tread, and fate how seeming fair,
His intimate heart is troubled, and despair
Lays present ambush. Many feel the sting
Of casual time like bramble-thorns, that bring
A not-enduring spasm: in other blood,
More sensitive, urging a froward, perilous flood,
It racks like tropic ivy, whose embrace
Turns travellers maniac; nor shall lapse of days,
Nor drug, nor simple, medicine back the mind;
They go forgetting all their manhood, find
No recollection save the venom of death
That whistles about their brain and sears their breath.
Thus almost had it been with him, thus grief
Came turbulent, and left him no relief.