Old Meadows

How much we have forgotten that we knew!
The warmth of udders, and the cool of dew,
The flow of darkness when the sun goes down —
We have forgotten meadows in the town —
The sign of beasts, the easy lilt of wings;
We miss the miracle of usual things.

Once we were one with daily mysteries,
Trusting the arms in which our life began;
Earth in the cloudy nursery of high hills
Unswathed her mountain breasts to infant man,
But now her meadows' calm beatitudes
Are stifled by the city's platitudes,
And we forget Earth's hills, her ocean faces,
And the austere-grotesquery of desert places.

Yet, it is true, beneath the city's robe
The desecrated pastures dream of stars
That still behold from quiet places
The ocean-staring, sun-bathed globe
Slip through he nether spaces.
In the night interludes, when streets are solitudes,
They sleep and wait, dreaming of llium's fate,
And of the grass that time will reinstate.

Old fields bear epochs patiently, but men
Cannot abide till towns grow trees again,
And so they ravish Beauty for their joy,
And bring her home as Helen came to Troy.
A prisoner to the chisel or the pen.
But in the town she walks a stolen bride,
And only plays at marriage with the throng;
She lives in thrall, and gazes homesick from the city wall,
While Earth's wild genius fights against the wrong.

Long cataracts of streets make us forget
That underneath the stones are ancient fields
Which whisper to the feet of Beauty yet
A longing for the grass until she yields.
And even while we claim her gratitude
For building her a house in which to die,
She seeks green solitude,
Where shepherds pipe in an eternal mood,
And daffs the mad world by.