第2章 IN FRONT OF THE LANDSCAPE

Plunging and labouring on in a tide of visions, Dolorous and dear, Forward I pushed my way as amid waste waters Stretching around, Through whose eddies there glimmered the customed landscape Yonder and near, Blotted to feeble mist. And the coomb and the upland Foliage-crowned, Ancient chalk-pit, milestone, rills in the grass-flat Stroked by the light, Seemed but a ghost-like gauze, and no substantial Meadow or mound.

What were the infinite spectacles bulking foremost Under my sight, Hindering me to discern my paced advancement Lengthening to miles;

What were the re-creations killing the daytime As by the night?

O they were speechful faces, gazing insistent, Some as with smiles, Some as with slow-born tears that brinily trundled Over the wrecked Cheeks that were fair in their flush-time, ash now with anguish, Harrowed by wiles.

Yes, I could see them, feel them, hear them, address them -

Halo-bedecked -

And, alas, onwards, shaken by fierce unreason, Rigid in hate, Smitten by years-long wryness born of misprision, Dreaded, suspect.

Then there would breast me shining sights, sweet seasons Further in date;

Instruments of strings with the tenderest passion Vibrant, beside Lamps long extinguished, robes, cheeks, eyes with the earth's crust Now corporate.

Also there rose a headland of hoary aspect Gnawed by the tide, Frilled by the nimb of the morning as two friends stood there Guilelessly glad -

Wherefore they knew not--touched by the fringe of an ecstasy Scantly descried.

Later images too did the day unfurl me, Shadowed and sad, Clay cadavers of those who had shared in the dramas, Laid now at ease, Passions all spent, chiefest the one of the broad brow Sepulture-clad.

So did beset me scenes miscalled of the bygone, Over the leaze, Past the clump, and down to where lay the beheld ones;

--Yea, as the rhyme Sung by the sea-swell, so in their pleading dumbness Captured me these.

For, their lost revisiting manifestations In their own time Much had I slighted, caring not for their purport, Seeing behind Things more coveted, reckoned the better worth calling Sweet, sad, sublime.

Thus do they now show hourly before the intenser Stare of the mind As they were ghosts avenging their slights by my bypast Body-borne eyes, Show, too, with fuller translation than rested upon them As living kind.

Hence wag the tongues of the passing people, saying In their surmise, "Ah--whose is this dull form that perambulates, seeing nought Round him that looms Whithersoever his footsteps turn in his farings, Save a few tombs?"