EARNEST, earthless, equal, attuneable, | vaulty, voluminous, . . stupendous Evening strains to be time's vast, | womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night. Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, | her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the height Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, | stars principal, overbend us, Fire-featuring heaven. For earth | her being has unbound, her dapple is at an end, as- tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; | self in self steeped and pashed--quite Disremembering, dismembering | all now. Heart, you round me right With: Our evening is over us; our night | whelms, whelms, and will end us. Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish | damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black, Ever so black on it. Our tale, our oracle! | Let life, waned, ah let life wind Off her once skeined stained veined variety | upon, all on two spools; part, pen, pack Now her all in two flocks, two folds--black, white; | right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mind But these two; ware of a world where but these | two tell, each off the other; of a rack Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, | thoughts against thoughts in groans grind. _33 Inversnaid_ THIS darksome burn, horseback brown, His rollrock highroad roaring down, In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam Flutes and low to the lake falls home. A windpuff-bonnet of faawn-froth Turns and twindles over the broth Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning, It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. Degged with dew, dappled with dew Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn. What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. _34 As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves--goes itself; _myself_ it speaks and spells, Crying _What I do is me: for that I came._ I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is-- Christ--for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men's faces. _35 Ribblesdale_ EARTH, sweet Earth, sweet landscape, with leaves throng And louched low grass, heaven that dost appeal To, with no tongue to plead, no heart to feel; That canst but only be, but dost that long-- Thou canst but be, but that thou well dost; strong Thy plea with him who dealt, nay does now deal, Thy lovely dale down thus and thus bids reel Thy river, and o'er gives all to rack or wrong.