• Fern Hill
• A Refusal to Mourn

Soundings Index

Fern Hill

 Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
 About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
 	The night above the dingle starry,
 		Time let me hail and climb
 	Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
 And honoured among the wagons I was prince of the apple
 		towns
 And once below a time I lordly had the trees an leaves
 		Trail with daisy and barley
	Down the rivers of the windfall light.

 And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
 About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
 	In the sun that is young once only,
		Time let me play and be
	Golden in the mercy of his means,
 And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the
 		calves
 Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
 		And the sabbath rang slowly
	In the pebbles of the holy streams.

 All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
 Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was
 		air
 	And playing, lovely and watery
		And fire green as grass
	And nightly under the simple stars
 As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
 All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
 	Flying with the ricks and the horses
		Flashing into the dark.

 And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
 With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
 	Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
		The sky gathered again
	And the sun grew round that very day.
 So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
 In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
 	Out of the whinnying green stable
		On to the fields of praise.

 And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
 Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
 	In the sun born over and over,
		I ran my heedless ways,
	My wishes raced through the house high hay
 And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
 In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
 	Before the children green and golden
		Follow him out of grace,

 Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take
	me
 Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
 	In the moon that is always rising,
		Nor that riding to sleep
	I should hear him fly with the high fields
 And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
 Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
 		Time held me green and dying
	Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

A Refusal to Mourn

 Never until the mankind making
 Bird beast and flower
 Fathering and all humbling darkness
 Tells with silence the last light breaking
 And the still hour
 Is come to the sea tumbling in harness.

 And I must enter again the round
 Zion of the water bead
 And the synagogue of the ear of corn
 Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
 Or sow my salt seeds
 In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

 The majesty and burning of the child's death.
 I shall not murder
 The mankind of her going with a grave truth
 Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
 With and further
 Elegy of innocence and youth.

 Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
 Robed in the long friends,
 The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
 Secret by the unmourning water
 Of the riding Thames.
 After the first death, there is no other.