SPRING 55 



of leaf and flower and grass and clod, of the plumage of 

 birds and fur of animals and breath and hair of women 

 and children. 



How can our thoughts, the movements of our bodies, 

 our human kindnesses, ever fit themselves with this blithe 

 world? Is it but vain remorse at what is lost, or is it 

 not rather a token of what may yet be achieved, that 

 makes these images blind us as does the sight of children 

 dressed for a play, some solemn-thoughtful, some wholly 

 gay, suddenly revealed to us in brilliant light after the 

 night wind and rain ? 



But at morning twilight I see the moon low in the 

 west like a broken and dinted shield of silver hanging 

 long forgotten outside the tent of a great knight in a 

 wood, and inside are the knight's bones clean and white 

 about his rusted sword. In the east the sun rises, a red- 

 faced drover and a million sheep going before him silent 

 over the blue downs of the dawn : and I am ill-content 

 and must watch for a while the fraying, changeful edges 

 of the lesser clouds drift past and into the great white 

 ones above, or hear rebellious music that puts for one 

 brief hour into our hands the reins of the world that we 

 may sit mightily behind the horses and drive to the 

 goal of our dreams. 



A footpath leads from the Pilgrims' Way past the 

 divine undulations and beech glades of a park — a broad 

 piece of the earth that flows hither and thither in curves, 

 sudden or slow but flawless and continuous, and every- 

 where clothed in a seamless garment of grass. The path 

 crosses the white main road into a lesser one that traverses 

 a common of beech and oak and birch. The leaves make 



