The Poems of A. C. Benson

The saddest sight! Oh, there are sights and sounds
And thoughts enough in this brief world of ours
To wet with tears the stony face of Time,
Who has seen the suns flame out, the mountains piled,
And guesses at the vast designs of God.

What think His angels, as they go and come
On some prodigious errand duly bent,
Whirled in the howling wind, or veiled in cloud,
Or in the shadowy columns of the rain,
To battle with the careless mountain peak
Or rend the forest, or intently charged
With storm and ruin for some innocent vale?
Care they for human griefs, for lifelong woes?
And would they stay the hand that strikes the blow,
Wipe, if they could, the bitter tears away?
And do they hide the head and steel the eye,
Too pure to question those permitted wrongs,
Too pitiful to see them and be glad?

'Twas summer, summer on the pineclad mound,
On the low pastures and the rushing stream,

On the brown ribs of high enormous hills,
And on the cold transparencies of snow.
The great house blinked through all its shuttered blinds,
Light happy laughter echoed in the court,
And here and there an eager couple met
With interchange of airy compliment,
Light foot and fluttering vesture:—happy souls
Who live and still are fed, they know not how
Nor why, and mock the easy heaven they gave,
And that uneasy doom that waits for all.

Or down the steps a dusty climber came
Reddened and roughened, ripe with early suns,
Attended by a grave and frieze-clad guide:
Here in an arbour, screened by trailing vines,
A group of sturdy Swabians hourly sate;—
A score of bottles clinked upon the board,
And vapour streamed from many an oozy pipe.
Meanwhile they made unlovely argument
With shrill, insistent voices, of the way
They came, and what the cost of bite and sup.

I laughed, and thought the world was well content,
Not beautiful, nor wanting to be wise,
But kind and comely, gay and bountiful;
Heedless of all it fared so far to see,
The steadfast faces of the monstrous hills,
The far white horns, the black-ribbed precipices,
The good grave thunder of the waterfall

Among his dripping gorges, and the talk
Of streams, and whisper of the tasselled pines.

Meanwhile I viewed, aside the merry din,
An iron cage bedizened and festooned,
That grimly in a sunless corner stood;
And peering in, amid the shadow, saw
The melancholy brooding yellow eyes
Of a great ruffled bird, that moping sate
With all his seemly feathers staring rough;
His great claws listlessly involved the perch,
His beak close shut, as in a dismal muse.

Suddenly from the court there broke and blared,
With delicate shiver of the violin,
And the low crooning of the labouring horn,
And piping tremulous flute, a minuet
Penned by a merry master of old time,
Amid the roses in a bower of May,
Thoughtless, and redolent of youth and love;—
Till all the jovial loiterers drew round
And hushed their prattle, and had thoughts of heaven.

But those wild eyes dwelt ever on the hills,
Unmoved and unregarding—and a child
That strayed alone came idly to the cage,
And pushed a wondering finger: growing bold
He smoothed the starting down, and felt the mail
Of those black horny claws: but when he saw
The sad bird heeded not the shy caress,

Grew vexed, and reached, and smote him on the wing,
So that he staggered sidelong on the perch,
But gript again, and never turned his head.

In that dim brain and dull bewildered sense,
He seemed once more to sail aloft the breeze,
To feel the strong sun beating on his wings,
To tread once more the powdered peak, and peer
Through all his cloudy valleys: or beneath
The dripping brow of some o'er-arching rock,
With harsh screams chide his loitering partner home.

Up to the hills he lifted longing eyes,
And waited for the help that never came;
Too proud to wonder what had torn him thence,
Too sad to mourn, too strong to be consoled.

University of Virginia Library

IN THE IRON CAGE