Classic Poem

Midsummer Eve

TO CLINTON BALMER AND THE DEAR MEMORY OF JAMES
HAMILTON HAY

for the summer of 1900 at cartmel

I N the lost Valley all is still
To-day: upon the stony hill
The heat of the late afternoon
Settles in coppery haze: and soon
A voice not known to me will call
Silent obedient cows to stall,
In the same immemorial cry
From century to century
Changing but by the uttering voice.
And in a while a little noise
(Hou! Hou!) far off near Newton Head
Will tell that at another stead
The browsing cattle pause and turn
Unwilling heads to seem to learn
That which they know, and move in train
Now milking-time has come again.

In Well Knowe garden now, I know,
Where the pale larkspur used to grow
In the far nook, a sound is heard
(If any is there to hear save bird
And field-mouse in the strawberries
Stirring like a local breeze —
Here, there — the low leaves soundlessly);
A glistening slender wasp-like fly
Is using will and wing to stand
Upon the air as though it spanned
A chasm with trembling outstretched arms,
And in the silence of heat-stilled farms
And heat-veiled wood that seems to shake
Dim clotted leaves yet does not break
By sigh or rustle the hush so dear
Its tiny sting of sound sings clear.

Oft have I heard that elfin horn
Sound suddenly, as cobweb torn
Must sound in startled elfin ears
Pricked and on edge with elfin fears;
And as I upward watched those spare
Twin shreds of silver like slit air,
Beating and shining, straight and tense,
Simulating impotence
Of motion, enviously I thought
" Had my half useless flesh been caught,
Upborn, and for all limit bound
Between such gossamers of sound,
Not thus, not thus would I deny
My spirit's reach and endlessly
Use all conception and all force
To limit my short vital course.
Had I such wings of urgent light,
Insistent not alone on height
But stretched for sweep and latitude,
I would not evade flight, I would
Employ my heat and power and sense
In realising difference,
And see my world's variety,
Restricted but by energy."

But Well Knowe garden only shines
In memory now, and its dear signs
Only persist and gleam again
In a shut chamber of my brain:
While in a distant place I brood
Upon lost things, and in a mood
Of longing and remembrance feel
The wisdom of that immobile
And senseless mote and think " Were I
Carnate in a slim glistening fly,
I would flash back upon that fair
Laurel-walled rood, then drop in air
Till no translucent nerve should stir
From strained precision, nor wing should whir
But to maintain one changeless height,
Nor move nor waver from that sight;
And think the years have not gone by
When James and Clinton harboured nigh
And, working in another art
Than mine, yet peopled for my heart
The Valley with the very core
Of vital beauty for evermore —
So that when the air is still
I hear below the meadow-rill
Clinton singing softlier still
Entranced by his own moving brush
Among the stream-side bracken and rush —
Or James repeats with his long hand
The distant line of hills that stand
Between the Valley and the lake
And yet seem lovelier for his sake."

How many generations past
Should I be dead had I been cast
In that small rapid shape of light?
Though wings may stand, years move in flight;
And, while I dream, I know, I know
That it is useless I should go
To Well Knowe garden again to see
Things that cannot return to me —
James dead and Clinton gone away,
And one whose name I cannot say
Who built in Cyclopean sound
Other magic heights around
That little place, then turned apart,
Untrue to friendship and to art,
A man of nothing — vanished things,
Dead friends, dead hopes, that must remain
In a shut chamber of my brain;
While only Clinton far away
Will in these verses and this play
See that country of our youth
And our dead friend and our old troth
Of friendship fixed in amber light,
A timeless hour that holds no night.