Themes and Variations/Through the Woods
THROUGH THE WOODS.
Esther.—I am going to church through the woods. It is Catherine’s Eve.
Eliot.—I will walk with you there, and will wait till your service is done.
I am a doubter, you know. ’Tis the mould of the age.
I fear we are children of Thomas the doubter, to-day.
Esther.—Yet Thomas was still an Apostle, and one of the saints,
And blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.
Eliot.— Alas! we are all tao unworthy! but yet, in our hearts
Something cleaves, were it only the hymns and the prayers of the past. . . .
As you see in this oak-tree, fast-locked in the thick folded wood,
The nail that a child’s hand has driven in when it was green.
But speak of your childhood to me. Was your home always here?
Esther.—When I was a child I remember we lived on a hill
In the far-off Australian landscape, not here in the green.
How high was the sky in those days! The wide plain at our feet
Stretched out like the sea, and the long, long horizon unbound,
Seemed to faint in mirage, like the smoke of a surf-beaten shore.
From my window high up in the roof I could look out for leagues
O’er the great plains unploughed, white and sere in the midsummer heats,
Not dipped in green leaves, like your England in ripening June.
. . . . There was only one track; it went wandering round and about
Till it climbed on a ridge of the hills, and went over the spur.
To my fancy it seemed like the road that the pilgrims of old,
Good Christian, and Hopeful, climbed on to the heavenly land.
Haw often I looked, half in hope, that the Three Shining Ones
Would walk there in light; but they never came over the hills. . . . .
Some days I would see on the road the slow yoke-laden steers
Dragging patiently on in the dust-cloud their burden of wool
From the far-inland desert; and sometimes at dusk on the pass
Their camp-fires shone friendly, like lighthouses over the plain.
I never can bear now to look at the cherry in Spring,
When her boughs are down-pressed by the weight of her bee-haunted snow.
For when the bloom whitens I feel my first sorrow again—
That first pain, so strange and so keen; when he left me alone,
My brother, my playmate, my friend, in the blossoming Spring;
The Three Shining Ones came in the midnight and led him away.
But I looked for the watch-fires and dreamed—though I knew it was vain—
He might send me a word; or perhaps in that house on the pass,
Where the ringlet of smoke used to rise on the grey granite wall,
I might find the Interpreter’s house, and would play with him there. . . .
But here is the church,—do not wait,—I will walk home alone.
Eliot.—I will walk with you there, and will wait till your service is done.
I am a doubter, you know. ’Tis the mould of the age.
I fear we are children of Thomas the doubter, to-day.
Esther.—Yet Thomas was still an Apostle, and one of the saints,
And blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.
Eliot.— Alas! we are all tao unworthy! but yet, in our hearts
Something cleaves, were it only the hymns and the prayers of the past. . . .
As you see in this oak-tree, fast-locked in the thick folded wood,
The nail that a child’s hand has driven in when it was green.
But speak of your childhood to me. Was your home always here?
Esther.—When I was a child I remember we lived on a hill
In the far-off Australian landscape, not here in the green.
How high was the sky in those days! The wide plain at our feet
Stretched out like the sea, and the long, long horizon unbound,
Seemed to faint in mirage, like the smoke of a surf-beaten shore.
From my window high up in the roof I could look out for leagues
O’er the great plains unploughed, white and sere in the midsummer heats,
Not dipped in green leaves, like your England in ripening June.
. . . . There was only one track; it went wandering round and about
Till it climbed on a ridge of the hills, and went over the spur.
To my fancy it seemed like the road that the pilgrims of old,
Good Christian, and Hopeful, climbed on to the heavenly land.
Haw often I looked, half in hope, that the Three Shining Ones
Would walk there in light; but they never came over the hills. . . . .
Some days I would see on the road the slow yoke-laden steers
Dragging patiently on in the dust-cloud their burden of wool
From the far-inland desert; and sometimes at dusk on the pass
Their camp-fires shone friendly, like lighthouses over the plain.
I never can bear now to look at the cherry in Spring,
When her boughs are down-pressed by the weight of her bee-haunted snow.
For when the bloom whitens I feel my first sorrow again—
That first pain, so strange and so keen; when he left me alone,
My brother, my playmate, my friend, in the blossoming Spring;
The Three Shining Ones came in the midnight and led him away.
But I looked for the watch-fires and dreamed—though I knew it was vain—
He might send me a word; or perhaps in that house on the pass,
Where the ringlet of smoke used to rise on the grey granite wall,
I might find the Interpreter’s house, and would play with him there. . . .
But here is the church,—do not wait,—I will walk home alone.