The Poetry Corner

Beechwood

By John Frederick Freeman

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.