Pack up the house, and close the creaking door. The fields are dull this morning in the rain. It's difficult to leave that homely floor. Wave a light hand; we will return again. (What was that bird?) Good-bye, ecstatic tree, Floating, bursting, and breathing on the air. The lonely farm is wondering that we Can leave. How every window seems to stare! That bag is heavy. Share it for a bit. You like that gentle swashing of the ground As we tread?... It is over. Now we sit Reading the morning paper in the sound Of the debilitating heavy train. London again, again. London again. THE BIRD AT DAWN What I saw was just one eye In the dawn as I was going: A bird can carry all the sky In that little button glowing. Never in my life I went So deep into the firmament. He was standing on a tree, All in blossom overflowing; And he purposely looked hard at me, At first, as if to question merrily: 'Where are you going?' But next some far more serious thing to say: I could not answer, could not look away. Oh, that hard, round, and so distracting eye: Little mirror of all sky!-- And then the after-song another tree Held, and sent radiating back on me. If no man had invented human word, And a bird-song had been The only way to utter what we mean, What would we men have heard, What understood, what seen, Between the trills and pauses, in between The singing and the silence of a bird? * * * * * JOHN MASEFIELD SEVEN POEMS [POEM NO.] I Here in the self is all that man can know Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power, All the unearthly colour, all the glow, Here in the self which withers like a flower; Here in the self which fades as hours pass, And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass In which it sees its glory still unrotten. Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind, Swift in the blood and throbbing on the bone, Beauty herself, the universal mind, Eternal April wandering alone; The God, the holy Ghost, the atoning Lord, Here in the flesh, the never yet explored. [POEM NO.] II What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt Held in cohesion by unresting cells Which work they know not why, which never halt, Myself unwitting where their master dwells. I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin; A world which uses me as I use them, Nor do I know which end or which begin, Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn. So, like a marvel in a marvel set, I answer to the vast, as wave by wave The sea of air goes over, dry or wet, Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave, Or the great sun comes north, this myriad I Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why. [POEM NO.] III