Landscapes

(thing) by wharfinger Sun Apr 23 2000 at 18:39:34
Landscapes
by T.S. Eliot


III. Usk

Do not suddenly break the branch, or
Hope to find
The white hart behind the white well.
Glance aside, not for lance, do not spell
Old enchantments. Let them sleep.
'Gently dip, but not too deep',
Lift your eyes
Where the roads dip and where the roads rise
Seek only there
Where the grey light meets the green air
The hermit's chapel, the pilgrim's prayer.


I. New Hampshire

Children's voices in the orchard
Between the blossom- and the fruit-time:
Golden head, crimson head,
Between the green tip and the root.
Black wing, brown wing, hover over;
Twenty years and the spring is over;
To-day grieves, to-morrow grieves,
Cover me over, light-in-leaves;
Golden head, black wing,
Cling, swing,
Spring, sing,
Swing up into the apple-tree.


II. Virginia

Red river, red river,
Slow flow heat is1 silence
No will is still as a river
Still. Will heat move
Only through the mocking-bird
Heard once? Still hills
Wait. Gates2 wait. Purple trees,
White trees, wait, wait,
Delay, decay. Living, living,
Never moving. Ever moving
Iron thoughts came with me
And go with me:
Red river, river, river.


1 "Is" looks wrong to me too, but that's the way it is in my copy of The Waste Land and Other Poems, Harcourt, Brace & World, NY. I just don't have the energy right now to get all redactive with it.

2 No relation, I'm sure.

A-hem.

Bluntly, I and II are crap. I bothered because "Usk" is worthwhile. I resequenced them for that reason.
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