Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A WALK, by NORMAN ROWLAND GALE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A WALK, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Cow-honeybourne, that dost survey
Last Line: The priestess and the bread.
Subject(s): Country Life; Courtship; Walking


COW-HONEYBOURNE, that dost survey
The profile of the great green range
So seeming near, so far away,
It was from out thy sleepy heart
My friend and I did start
To tramp toward the temple of the hills,
Past poising hawks, past little gossip rills,
To win the Cotswolds, and enjoy thereon
The fine frugality of winter sun.

The great tit in the apple-tree
Delayed us long;
The shrill staccato song
The creeper chirped amid his industry
Drew us from pollard unto pollard, till
We drank our fill
Of that white-feathered patch, his breast,
His busy bill
That with detective skill
Stabbed at each crevice in the wood
In search of food.

'Twas through an orchard valley that we passed,
And all the pear-tree boles were painted white;
Small wonder if the pinky maid,
A kiss half-melted on her lips,
Should shrink at night
When not embraced
About her waist
By Dick the ploughman's arms;
For ghostly, ghostly in the gloom
These whitened files of pear-trees loom
Beside the farm.

We strode toward the succour of the hills,
And came to Weston at the middle day.
We hymned the rural loveliness
With glowing words,
And made response with clumsy human lips
To all the easy chattering of the birds.
The hedge's darkly purple top
We praised;
The verdure of the coming crop;
The glazed
And glorious bulwark of the beech;
The wind that with clear Cotswold speech
Addressed the poplar gustily—
The poplar that would rather be
A spire to pierce the blue
Than lend its secret energy
To grow
In liberal breadth below.

The lane that led us upward now was steep,
And slowlier we stept.
Ah! how the peace of God was there!
And how the country slept!
Ten leagues away the city's filth
That gnaws our faculties by stealth,
And we were free
Of towns and townbred slavery.
Nothing between our lowliness
And God on high!
Here in this pure encampment of repose
The grass can watch the sky,
And all the acres of exceeding blue
Look down upon the dew;
No hell of manufactured fog
Can come betwixt these two.

We stood upon the forehead of the hills,
And lifted up our hearts in prayer;
And as we halted, reverent,
Meseemed that Nature o'er us bent,
That she did bid us sup
From bread she gave and from her cup.
There at her large communion did we feast,
Herself the Substance and herself the Priest.
The immaterial wine she poured,
And standing on the Cotswold sward
Administered to us
Beneath the unsupported sky
Her sacrament of scenery.

Thus made her child, I inly felt
My risen soul again possess
Its zenith, like a lark;
Accumulated baseness melt,
And on the inner dark
A newborn rainbow press
Courageous colours. I perceived
How quickly I had grieved:
How obstinately borne a useless load
Where fingerposts were false upon the road;
How readily had penned my spirit in a cave;
How seldom been a god, how often been a slave.

Mouse-grey and half-asleep, the village showed
Its neighboured thatches. Musingly we strode
Toward its dreaminess, both tasting as we went
The cup of an imagined sacrament.
That night it was as if we slept
Within an Angel's tent,
Among his benedictions.
How many years have withered, like the leaves
In Autumn's languid illness, since the hour
When Nature used for us her secret vine
And never-sickled wheat!
Yet only when at last we meet
The Worker of the Dark Design,
That cannot be a masterpiece till we are dead,
Shall we, the blest communicants, forget
The Altar and the Wine,
The Priestess and the Bread.





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