A Channel Passage and Other Poems/Hawthorn Tide
HAWTHORN TIDE
I
and of earth
Subsides in the light of a smile more sweet than the loud
noon's mirth,
Spring lives as a babe lives, glad and divine as the sun,
and unsure
If aught so divine and so glad may be worshipped and
loved and endure.
A soft green glory suffuses the love-lit earth with delight,
And the face of the noon is fair as the face of the
star-clothed night.
Earth knows not and doubts not at heart of the glories
again to be:
Sleep doubts not and dreams not how sweet shall the
waking beyond her be.
A whole white world of revival awaits May's whisper
awhile,
Abides and exults in the bud as a soft hushed laugh in a
smile.
As a maid's mouth laughing with love and subdued for
the love's sake, May
Shines and withholds for a little the word she revives to
say.
When the clouds and the winds and the sunbeams are
warring and strengthening with joy that they live,
Spring, from reluctance enkindled to rapture, from
slumber to strife,
Stirs, and repents, and is winter, and weeps, and awakes
as the frosts forgive,
And the dark chill death of the woodland is troubled,
and dies into life.
And the honey of heaven, of the hives whence night
feeds full on the springtide's breath,
Fills fuller the lips of the lustrous air with delight in
the dawn:
Each blossom enkindling with love that is life and
subsides with a smile into death
Arises and lightens and sets as a star from her sphere
withdrawn.
Not sleep, in the rapture of radiant dreams, when
sundawn smiles on the night,
Shows earth so sweet with a splendour and fragrance
of life that is love:
Each blade of the glad live grass, each bud that receives
or rejects the light,
Salutes and responds to the marvel of Maytime around
and above.
Joy gives thanks for the sight and the savour of heaven,
and is humbled
With awe that exults in thanksgiving: the towers of
the flowers of the trees
Shine sweeter than snows that the hand of the season
has melted and crumbled,
And fair as the foam that is lesser of life than the
loveliest of these.
But the sense of a life more lustrous with joy and
enkindled of glory
Than man's was ever or may be, and briefer than joys
most brief,
Bids man's heart bend and adore, be the man's head
golden or hoary,
As it leapt but a breath's time since and saluted the
flower and the leaf.
The rapture that springs into love at the sight of the
world's exultation
Takes not a sense of rebuke from the sense of
triumphant awe:
But the spirit that quickens the body fulfils it with
mute adoration,
And the knees would fain bow down as the eyes that
rejoiced and saw.
II
of May,
But the sky's and the sea's joy fades not as earth's pride
passes away.
Yet hardly the sun's first lightning or laughter of love on
the sea
So humbles the heart into worship that knows not or
doubts if it be
As the first full glory beholden again of the life
newborn
That hails and applauds with inaudible music the season
of morn.
A day's length since, and it was not: a night's length
more, and the sun
Salutes and enkindles a world of delight as a strange
world won.
A new life answers and thrills to the kiss of the young
strong year,
And the glory we see is as music we hear not, and dream
that we hear.
From blossom to blossom the live tune kindles, from tree
to tree,
And we know not indeed if we hear not the song of the
life we see.
For the first blithe day that beholds it and worships and
cherishes cannot but sing
With a louder and lustier delight in the sun and the
sunlit earth
Than the joy of the days that beheld but the soft green
dawn of the slow faint spring
Glad and afraid to be glad, and subdued in a
shame-fast mirth.
When the first bright knoll of the woodland world
laughs out into fragrant light,
The year's heart changes and quickens with sense of
delight in desire,
And the kindling desire is one with thanksgiving for utter
fruition of sight,
For sight and for sense of a world that the sun finds
meet for his lyre.
Music made of the morning that smites from the chords
of the mute world song
Trembles and quickens and lightens, unfelt,
unbeholden, unheard,
From blossom on blossom that climbs and exults in the
strength of the sun grown strong,
And answers the word of the wind of the spring with
the sun's own word.
Hard on the skirt of the deep soft copses that spring
refashions,
Triumphs and towers to the height of the crown of a
wildwood tree
One royal hawthorn, sublime and serene as the joy that
impassions
Awe that exults in thanksgiving for sight of the grace
we see,
The grace that is given of a god that abides for a season,
mysterious
And merciful, fervent and fugitive, seen and unknown
and adored:
His presence is felt in the light and the fragrance, elate
and imperious,
His laugh and his breath in the blossom are love's,
the beloved soul's lord.
For surely the soul if it loves is beloved of the god as a
lover
Whose love is not all unaccepted, a worship not utterly
vain:
So full, so deep is the joy that revives for the soul
to recover
Yearly, beholden of hope and of memory in sunshine
and rain.
III
stilled.
But yet is the cup of delight and of worship unpledged
and unfilled.
A handsbreadth hence leaps up, laughs out as an angel
crowned,
A strong full fountain of flowers overflowing above and
around.
The boughs and the blossoms in triumph salute with
adoring mirth
The womb that bare them, the glad green mother, the
sunbright earth.
Downward sweeping, as song subsides into silence,
none
May hear what sound is the word's they speak to the
brooding sun.
None that hearken may hear: man may but pass and
adore,
And humble his heart in thanksgiving for joy that is now
no more.
And sudden, afront and ahead of him, joy is alive and
aflame
On the shrine whose incense is given of the godhead,
again the same.
Pale and pure as a maiden secluded in secret and
cherished with fear,
One sweet glad hawthorn smiles as it shrinks under
shelter, screened
By two strong brethren whose bounteous blossom
outsoars it, year after year,
While earth still cleaves to the live spring's breast as
a babe unweaned.
Never was amaranth fairer in fields where heroes of old
found rest,
Never was asphodel sweeter: but here they endure
not long,
Though ever the sight that salutes them again and
adores them awhile is blest,
And the heart is a hymn, and the sense is a soul, and
the soul is a song.
Alone on a dyke's trenched edge, and afar from the
blossoming wildwood's verge,
Laughs and lightens a sister, triumphal in love-lit pride;
Clothed round with the sun, and inviolate: her blossoms
exult as the springtide surge,
When the wind and the dawn enkindle the snows of
the shoreward tide.
Hardly the worship of old that rejoiced as it knelt in the
vision
Shown of the God new-born whose breath is the
spirit of spring
Hailed ever with love more strong and defiant of death's
derision
A joy more perfect than here we mourn for as May
takes wing.
Time gives it and takes it again and restores it: the
glory, the wonder,
The triumph of lustrous blossom that makes of the
steep sweet bank
One visible marvel of music inaudible, over and under,
Attuned as in heaven, pass hence and return for the
sun to thank.
The stars and the sun give thanks for the glory bestowed
and beholden,
For the gladness they give and rejoice in, the night
and the dawn and the day:
But nought they behold when the world is aflower and
the season is golden
Makes answer as meet and as sweet as the flower that
itself is May.