The Tree

Ballad! I have a message you must bear
Unto a certain tree : I may not tell
Where she abides, only, she is more fair
Than any tree that grows down in the dell,
Or on the mountain top, or by the well,
Or as a lovely sentinel beside
The roaming stream. No words can speak her well,
Nor lyric sing enough her arms so wide,
Her grace, her peace, her innocence, her happy pride.

Come quickly, Ballad, back to me again,
After you have delivered to the tree
My humble service, and if she will deign
To trust you with a message back, then see
Most strictly you forget no word that she
Shall speak to you, no lightest yes or no:
And what she looked like when she spoke of me,
And if she begged you stay or bade you go,
Or hesitated ere she said — what you shall know.

Say — I will come before the day is done,
When the cool evening trembles to the dark
And one ray only of the dying sun
Rests on her topmost branches, when the lark
Dips steeply to the grasses in the park
And only now and then sends from below
Her sleepy song: then, swift as to the mark
An arrow flies, so swiftly I will go
Nor stay until her branches wide I halt below.

There is a crow, a fowl of evil fame,
Whom one day by the grace of God I'll slay,
Because he has adventured to my dame
And in her bosom hides himself away:
A wicked, curious crow, all hoary-gray;
He listens to her heart that throbs so fleet
Along the trunk and by the slender way
Of her young veins whereat the branches meet:
A curious, bad, old, wicked crow and indiscreet.

Most Beautiful! of every tree the queen!
About her feet the grasses wave for glee,
About her feet the forest folk are seen;
The timid nymph bends down a ready knee,
And mighty Pan himself, unwillingly,
Yet all perforce, must stoop before her grace,
And round about in a wild ecstasy
The light- foot satyrs (stayed from an embrace)
Stare shamefully and dance and mince with antic pace.

Fortress of melody! well hidden heart!
Deep bosomed lady whom I love so well !
Dear solitude of singers without art!
Sweet shadiness wherein I long to dwell,
Enrapt and comforted from any spell
Of thought or care or woefulness or sin;
Or trouble which a man may not foretell;
Or slothful ease which it is death to win;
Or fear which cometh at the last and creepeth in.

If you among her little leaves will fly
And what they whisper bring to me again,
Dear Ballad, I will write your history
Upon a sheepskin with a golden pen;
It shall be read by women and by men:
Each youth will sing it to his paramour
As they go roving in the evening when
All joy is innocence and love is lore,
And you and youth and love will live for evermore.

Rapture and joy and ecstasy and pain!
The windy trumpets of the void shall soar
Over the sky. The Morning Stars again
Will sing together joyous as of yore:
The sea shall tramp with banners on the shore :
The little hills skip merrily along
The forest leave its field and with a roar
Stride down the pathway shouting out a song,
And everything be happy as the day is long.

               Envoi
Ballad, farewell! go tell her how I burn,
Say I am dead until her face I see:
And I will wait and sigh till you return,
And plague the god of love and life to favour me.

The Hill of Vision [1912]