Classic Poem

I

I WALKED near sunset through wet fields towards the leafless beechen shaws
That no more warmed the air with fire and gave new colours to the sun.
I saw a man that digged with spade all silver in the silver light,
Heaping the soft clay on the grass. His eyes with the same pale light shone.

Each looked at each, and to my eye he answered: " I am digging a grave,
Needs must be deep, and time is short, and cloudy night comes on apace.
And weary, weary is digging, for I've digged a hundred wasted graves, And this must deeper be than any digged in other fields and days. "

Each looked at each, and to my eye he answered: " 'Tis the past I bury,
Buried already thrice and thrice and thrice a hundred times in vain;
Buried in cities sunken by the restless worm's uprising,
And watery cities whose green-weedy streets no step may wake again;

" And in the darkened mountain caves, where all the frozen winds find way,
And where eternal roots of trees are ribbed about the breast of earth;
And in those lonely isles amid the mist and waves of northern seas: —
Buried a hundred times; a hundred times from vain burial broken forth.

" And now, on this cold hillside; where so many a past forgot is buried,
English, Roman, Iberian, I dig another deeper grave
To bury the new-dead past, the past that in few years engulfed the earth
With sorrow, and pained darkness, and made the earth one grave. "

" O deeper, dig deeper, yet never deep enough, "
I answered as he lifted slow his silver spade and thrust.
" Deeper, deeper, deeper, but never deep enough to hide —
The bones that you would bury there will never turn to dust. "

II

I walked the fields when morning freshened. All the long and lovely hills
Were slipping thin clouds from their heads, shaking, lifting in the light —
The miles and miles of hills embayed and mounded high on either hand,
And before me the dark Malverns and the Welsh hills faint in sigh.

The greening woods behind me made a bright reed-music in the wind
As I climbed the stile and crossed the field. I had forgot 'twas here
That lonely figure digged; but here his empty work unfinished lay,
His spade long-rusted in the running grass; and he was nowhere near.

Who was it now was treading near? A young man straight and bright who stepped
Against the sun's light up the hill, the sun's light in his eyes and hair.
He rose as fresh as grasses rise that the sun fingers after rain;
As he came near I heard him sing some half-forgot old country air.

Each looked at each, and to his eye I answered: " In that shallow trench
Last winter stood a man who digged a grave for the unburied past.
His silver spade heaped up the clay, but now the clay sinks back again,
And still, I know, the naked past unburied on the wide land's cast. "

Each looked at each, and to my eye he answered: " Let the dead bury its dead!
Earth's lovely weed o'ercovers all the deaths of all her myriad brood.
Rain washes wise forgetfulness, and clouds their kindly darkness wave;
Morn springs again, and out of sleep man's generations rise renewed.

" See how the children cross the fields below, shouting and playing there.
One stoops for cowslips and one holds in cuplike hands their yellow flowers.
They would but dance in this vain grave with, " Let's pretend this is a grave,
And I'm the digger, you the corpse, and Tom's the rector, and here's flowers." "

Each looked at each. " It is too hard, " he said, " to keep the past alive,
And live. Let the past be forgot as storms that leave the drenched earth sad,
Till after gray dawn dense clouds thin with the new wind, and men bestir,
And ruined spring renews her flower and anxious eyes are once more glad. "

III

Following his look, I saw the Vale shaking its miles-long flower of pear,
And village smoke like darker bloom, and distant steam's white-flying mane.
The hills were throbbing, and the light quickened and quivered on the green,
And " New, new, new! " a shrill thrush sang, and " New, new, new! " the larks again.

I took the rusted spade and turned the clay back to its bed of clay.
The grass was yellow where the clay had crushed it all the winter through.
He stood beside me as I bent, each silent for the singing thought
That sang in every nerve and cell reiterating " New, new, new! "

I ended, and he moved away, half substance and half visionary,
Disappearing in the trees, the grass, the flowers, and wind that in them blew.
I remembered him but young and bright, and in his fading hands and brow
Faint marks renewed where Love burned through, how many centuries ago!