Read Ebook: A Tale of Two Monkeys and other stories by Anonymous

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THE TRUMPET THE SIGN-POST TEARS TWO PEWITS THE MANOR FARM THE OWL SWEDES WILL YOU COME? As THE TEAM'S HEAD-BRASS THAW INTERVAL LIKE THE TOUCH OF RAIN THE PATH THE COMBE IF I SHOULD EVER BY CHANCE WHAT SHALL I GIVE? IF I WERE TO OWN AND YOU, HELEN WHEN FIRST HEAD AND BOTTLE AFTER YOU SPEAK SOWING WHEN WE TWO WALKED IN MEMORIAM FIFTY FAGGOTS WOMEN HE LIKED EARLY ONE MORNING CHERRY TREES IT RAINS THE HUXTER A GENTLEMAN THE BRIDGE LOB BRIGHT CLOUDS THE CLOUDS THAT ARE SO LIGHT SOME EYES CONDEMN MAY 23 THE GLORY MELANCHOLY ADLESTROP THE GREEN ROADS THE MILL-POND IT WAS UPON TALL NETTLES HAYMAKING HOW AT ONCE GONE, GONE AGAIN THE SUN USED TO SHINE OCTOBER THE LONG SMALL ROOM LIBERTY NOVEMBER THE SHEILING THE GALLOWS BIRDS' NESTS RAIN "HOME" THERE'S NOTHING LIKE THE SUN WHEN HE SHOULD LAUGH AN OLD SONG THE PENNY WHISTLE LIGHTS OUT COCK-CROW WORDS

THE TRUMPET

RISE up, rise up, And, as the trumpet blowing Chases the dreams of men, As the dawn glowing The stars that left unlit The land and water, Rise up and scatter The dew that covers The print of last night's lovers-- Scatter it, scatter it!

While you are listening To the clear horn, Forget, men, everything On this earth newborn, Except that it is lovelier Than any mysteries. Open your eyes to the air That has washed the eyes of the stars Through all the dewy night: Up with the light, To the old wars; Arise, arise!

THE SIGN-POST

THE dim sea glints chill. The white sun is shy. And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry, Rough, long grasses keep white with frost At the hilltop by the finger-post; The smoke of the traveller's-joy is puffed Over hawthorn berry and hazel tuft.

I read the sign. Which way shall I go? A voice says: You would not have doubted so At twenty. Another voice gentle with scorn Says: At twenty you wished you had never been born.

One hazel lost a leaf of gold From a tuft at the tip, when the first voice told The other he wished to know what 'twould be To be sixty by this same post. "You shall see," He laughed--and I had to join his laughter-- "You shall see; but either before or after, Whatever happens, it must befall, A mouthful of earth to remedy all Regrets and wishes shall freely be given; And if there be a flaw in that heaven 'Twill be freedom to wish, and your wish may be To be here or anywhere talking to me, No matter what the weather, on earth, At any age between death and birth,-- To see what day or night can be, The sun and the frost, the land and the sea, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring,-- With a poor man of any sort, down to a king, Standing upright out in the air Wondering where he shall journey, O where?"

TEARS

IT seems I have no tears left. They should have fallen-- Their ghosts, if tears have ghosts, did fall--that day When twenty hounds streamed by me, not yet combed out But still all equals in their rage of gladness Upon the scent, made one, like a great dragon In Blooming Meadow that bends towards the sun And once bore hops: and on that other day When I stepped out from the double-shadowed Tower Into an April morning, stirring and sweet And warm. Strange solitude was there and silence. A mightier charm than any in the Tower Possessed the courtyard. They were changing guard Soldiers in line, young English countrymen, Fair-haired and ruddy, in white tunics. Drums And fifes were playing "The British Grenadiers". The men, the music piercing that solitude And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed And have forgotten since their beauty passed.

TWO PEWITS

UNDER the after-sunset sky Two pewits sport and cry, More white than is the moon on high Riding the dark surge silently; More black than earth. Their cry Is the one sound under the sky. They alone move, now low, now high, And merrily they cry To the mischievous Spring sky, Plunging earthward, tossing high, Over the ghost who wonders why So merrily they cry and fly, Nor choose 'twixt earth and sky, While the moon's quarter silently Rides, and earth rests as silently.

THE MANOR FARM

THE rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills Ran and sparkled down each side of the road Under the catkins wagging in the hedge. But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun; Nor did I value that thin gilding beam More than a pretty February thing Till I came down to the old Manor Farm, And church and yew-tree opposite, in age Its equals and in size. The church and yew And farmhouse slept in a Sunday silentness. The air raised not a straw. The steep farm roof, With tiles duskily glowing, entertained The mid-day sun; and up and down the roof White pigeons nestled. There was no sound but one. Three cart-horses were looking over a gate Drowsily through their forelocks, swishing their tails Against a fly, a solitary fly.

The Winter's cheek flushed as if he had drained Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught And smiled quietly. But 'twas not Winter-- Rather a season of bliss unchangeable Awakened from farm and church where it had lain Safe under tile and thatch for ages since This England, Old already, was called Merry.

THE OWL

DOWNHILL I came, hungry, and yet not starved; Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill, No merry note, nor cause of merriment, But one telling me plain what I escaped And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose, Salted and sobered, too, by the bird's voice Speaking for all who lay under the stars, Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

SWEDES

THEY have taken the gable from the roof of clay On the long swede pile. They have let in the sun To the white and gold and purple of curled fronds Unsunned. It is a sight more tender-gorgeous At the wood-corner where Winter moans and drips Than when, in the Valley of the Tombs of Kings, A boy crawls down into a Pharaoh's tomb And, first of Christian men, beholds the mummy, God and monkey, chariot and throne and vase, Blue pottery, alabaster, and gold.

But dreamless long-dead Amen-hotep lies. This is a dream of Winter, sweet as Spring.

WILL YOU COME?

WILL you come? Will you come? Will you ride So late At my side? O, will you come?

Will you come? Will you come If the night Has a moon, Full and bright? O, will you come?

Would you come? Would you come If the noon Gave light, Not the moon? Beautiful, would you come?

Would you have come? Would you have come Without scorning, Had it been Still morning? Beloved, would you have come?

If you come Haste and come. Owls have cried: It grows dark To ride. Beloved, beautiful, come.

AS THE TEAM'S HEAD-BRASS

As the team's head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm That strewed an angle of the fallow, and Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square Of charlock. Every time the horses turned Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned Upon the handles to say or ask a word, About the weather, next about the war. Scraping the share he faced towards the wood, And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed Once more.

The blizzard felled the elm whose crest I sat in, by a woodpecker's round hole, The ploughman said. "When will they take it away?" "When the war's over." So the talk began-- One minute and an interval of ten, A minute more and the same interval. "Have you been out?" "No." "And don't want to, perhaps?" "If I could only come back again, I should. I could spare an arm. I shouldn't want to lose A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so, I should want nothing more. . . . Have many gone From here?" "Yes." "Many lost?" "Yes: good few. Only two teams work on the farm this year. One of my mates is dead. The second day In France they killed him. It was back in March, The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if He had stayed here we should have moved the tree." "And I should not have sat here. Everything Would have been different. For it would have been Another world." "Ay, and a better, though If we could see all all might seem good." Then The lovers came out of the wood again: The horses started and for the last time I watched the clods crumble and topple over After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.

THAW

OVER the land freckled with snow half-thawed The speculating rooks at their nests cawed And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass, What we below could not see, Winter pass.

INTERVAL

GONE the wild day: A wilder night Coming makes way For brief twilight.

Where the firm soaked road Mounts and is lost In the high beech-wood It shines almost.

The beeches keep A stormy rest, Breathing deep Of wind from the west.

The wood is black, With a misty steam. Above, the cloud pack Breaks for one gleam.

It smokes aloft Unwavering: It hunches soft Under storm's wing.

It has no care For gleam or gloom: It stays there While I shall roam,

Die, and forget The hill of trees, The gleam, the wet, This roaring peace.

LIKE THE TOUCH OF RAIN

LIKE the touch of rain she was On a man's flesh and hair and eyes When the joy of walking thus Has taken him by surprise:

With the love of the storm he burns, He sings, he laughs, well I know how, But forgets when he returns As I shall not forget her "Go now."

Those two words shut a door Between me and the blessed rain That was never shut before And will not open again.

THE PATH

RUNNING along a bank, a parapet That saves from the precipitous wood below The level road, there is a path. It serves Children for looking down the long smooth steep, Between the legs of beech and yew, to where A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women Content themselves with the road and what they see Over the bank, and what the children tell. The path, winding like silver, trickles on, Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain. The children wear it. They have flattened the bank On top, and silvered it between the moss With the current of their feet, year after year. But the road is houseless, and leads not to school. To see a child is rare there, and the eye Has but the road, the wood that overhangs And underyawns it, and the path that looks As if it led on to some legendary Or fancied place where men have wished to go And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.

THE COMBE

IF I SHOULD EVER BY CHANCE

IF I should ever by chance grow rich I'll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch, Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater, And let them all to my elder daughter. The rent I shall ask of her will be only Each year's first violets, white and lonely, The first primroses and orchises-- She must find them before I do, that is. But if she finds a blossom on furze Without rent they shall all for ever be hers, Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch, Roses, Pyrgo and Lapwater,-- I shall give them all to my elder daughter.

WHAT SHALL I GIVE?

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