They called that broken hedge The Haunted Gate. Strange fires (they said) burnt there at moonless times. Evil was there, men never went there late, The darkness there was quick with threatened crimes. And then one digging in that bloodied clay Found, but a foot below, a rotted chest. Coins of the Romans, tray on rusted tray, Hurriedly heaped there by a digger prest. So that one knew how, centuries before, Some Roman flying from the sack by night, Digging in terror there to hide his store, Sweating his pick, by windy lantern light, Had stamped his anguish on that place's soul, So that it knew and could rehearse the whole. There was an evil in the nodding wood Above the quarry long since overgrown, Something which stamped it as a place of blood Where tortured spirit cried from murdered bone. Then, after years, I saw a rusty knife Stuck in a woman's skull, just as 'twas found, Blackt with a centuried crust of clotted life, In the red clay of that unholy ground. So that I knew the unhappy thing had spoken, That tongueless thing for whom the quarry spoke, The evil seals of murder had been broken By the red earth, the grass, the rooted oak, The inarticulate dead had forced the spade, The hand, the mind, till murder was displayed. Go, spend your penny, Beauty, when you will, In the grave's darkness let the stamp be lost. The water still will bubble from the hill, And April quick the meadows with her ghost; Over the grass the daffodils will shiver, The primroses with their pale beauty abound, The blackbird be a lover and make quiver With his glad singing the great soul of the ground; So that if the body rot, it will not matter; Up in the earth the great game will go on, The coming of Spring and the running of the water, And the young things glad of the womb's darkness gone; And the joy we felt will be a part of the glory In the lover's kiss that makes the old couple's story. Not for your human beauty nor the power To shake me by your voice or by your touch, Summer must have its rose, the rose must flower, Beauty burn deep, I do not yield to such. No, but because your beauty where it falls Lays bare the spirits in the crowded streets, Shatters the lock, destroys the castle walls, Breaks down the bars till friend with comrade meets, So that I wander brains where beauty dwelled In long dead time, and see again the rose By long dead men for living beauty held, That Death's knife spares, and Winter with his snows, And know it bloodied by that pulse of birth Which greens the grass in Aprils upon earth.