free-verse201 lines

The Landscape

by Edgar Lee Masters

You and your landscape! There it lies

Stripped, resuming its disguise,

Clothed in dreams, made bare again,

Symbol infinite of pain,

Rapture, magic, mystery

Of vanished days and days to be.

There's its sea of tidal grass

Over which the south winds pass,

And the sun-set's Tuscan gold

Which the distant windows hold

For an instant like a sphere

Bursting ere it disappear.

There's the dark green woods which throve

In the spell of Leese's Grove.

And the winding of the road;

And the hill o'er which the sky

Stretched its pallied vacancy

Ere the dawn or evening glowed.

And the wonder of the town

Somewhere from the hill-top down

Nestling under hills and woods

And the meadow's solitudes.

* * * * *

And your paper knight of old

Secrets of the landscape told.

And the hedge-rows where the pond

Took the blue of heavens beyond

The hastening clouds of gusty March.

There you saw their wrinkled arch

Where the East wind cracks his whips

Round the little pond and clips

Main-sails from your toppled ships. ...

Landscape that in youth you knew

Past and present, earth and you!

All the legends and the tales

Of the uplands, of the vales;

Sounds of cattle and the cries

Of ploughmen and of travelers

Were its soul's interpreters.

And here the lame were always lame.

Always gray the gray of head.

And the dead were always dead

Ere the landscape had become

Your cradle, as it was their tomb.

* * * * *

And when the thunder storms would waken

Of the dream your soul was not forsaken:

In the room where the dormer windows look -

There were your knight and the tattered book.

With colors of the forest green

Gabled roofs and the demesne

Of faery kingdoms and faery time

Storied in pre-natal rhyme. ...

Past the orchards, in the plain

The cattle fed on in the rain.

And the storm-beaten horseman sped

Rain blinded and with bended head.

And John the ploughman comes and goes

In labor wet, with steaming clothes.

This is your landscape, but you see

Not terror and not destiny

Behind its loved, maternal face,

Its power to change, or fade, replace

Its wonder with a deeper dream,

Unfolding to a vaster theme.

From time eternal was this earth?

No less this landscape with your birth

Arose, nor leaves you, nor decay

Finds till the twilight of your day.

It bore you, moulds you to its plan.

It ends with you as it began,

But bears the seed of future years

Of higher raptures, dumber tears.

* * * * *

For soon you lose the landscape through

Absence, sorrow, eyes grown true

To the naked limbs which show

Buds that never more may blow.

Now you know the lame were straight

Ere you knew them, and the fate

Of the old is yet to die.

Now you know the dead who lie

In the graves you saw where first

The landscape on your vision burst,

Were not always dead, and now

Shadows rest upon the brow

Of the souls as young as you.

Some are gone, though years are few

Since you roamed with them the hills.

So the landscape changes, wills

All the changes, did it try

Its promises to justify?...

* * * * *

For you return and find it bare:

There is no heaven of golden air.

Your eyes around the horizon rove,

A clump of trees is Leese's Grove.

And what's the hedgerow, what's the pond?

A wallow where the vagabond

Beast will not drink, and where the arch

Of heaven in the days of March

Refrains to look. A blinding rain

Beats the once gilded window pane.

John, the poor wretch, is gone, but bread

Tempts other feet that path to tread

Between the barn and house, and brave

The March rain and the winds that rave. ...

O, landscape I am one who stands

Returned with pale and broken hands

Glad for the day that I have known,

And finds the deserted doorway strown

With shoulder blade and spinal bone.

And you who nourished me and bred

I find the spirit from you fled.

You gave me dreams,'twas at your breast

My soul's beginning rose and pressed

My steps afar at last and shaped

A world elusive, which escaped

Whatever love or thought could find

Beyond the tireless wings of mind.

Yet grown by you, and feeding on

Your strength as mother, you are gone

When I return from living, trace

My steps to see how I began,

And deeply search your mother face

To know your inner self, the place

For which you bore me, sent me forth

To wander, south or east or north. ...

Now the familiar landscape lies

With breathless breast and hollow eyes.

It knows me not, as I know not

Its secret, spirit, all forgot

Its kindred look is, as I stand

A stranger in an unknown land.

* * * * *

Are we not earth-born, formed of dust

Which seeks again its love and trust

In an old landscape, after change

In hearts grown weary, wrecked and strange?

What though we struggled to emerge

Dividual, footed for the urge

Of further self-discoveries, though

In the mid-years we cease to know,

Through disenchanted eyes, the spell

That clothed it like a miracle -

Yet at the last our steps return

Its deeper mysteries to learn.

It has been always us, it must

Clasp to itself our kindred dust.

We cannot free ourselves from it.

Near or afar we must submit

To what is in us, what was grown

Out of the landscape's soil, the known

And unknown powers of soil and soul.

As bodies yield to the control

Of the earth's center, and so bend

In age, so hearts toward the end

Bend down with lips so long athirst

To waters which were known at first -

The little spring at Leese's Grove

Was your first love, is your last love!

* * * * *

When those we knew in youth have crept

Under the landscape, which has kept

Nothing we saw with youthful eyes;

Ere God is formed in the empty skies,

I wonder not our steps are pressed

Toward the mystery of their rest.

That is the hope at bud which kneels

Where ancestors the tomb conceals.

Age no less than youth would lean

Upon some love. For what is seen

No more of father, mother, friend,

For hands of flesh lost, eyes grown blind

In death, a something which assures,

Comforts, allays our fears, endures.

Just as the landscape and our home

In childhood made of heaven's dome,

And all the farthest ways of earth

A place as sheltered as the hearth.

* * * * *

Is it not written at the last day

Heaven and earth shall roll away?

Yes, as my landscape passed through death,

Lay like a corpse, and with new breath

Became instinct with fire and light -

So shall it roll up in my sight,

Pass from the realm of finite sense,

Become a thing of spirit, whence

I shall pass too, its child in faith

Of dreams it gave me, which nor death

Nor change can wreck, but still reveal

In change a Something vast, more real

Than sunsets, meadows, green-wood trees,

Or even faery presences.

A Something which the earth and air

Transmutes but keeps them what they were;

Clear films of beauty grown more thin

As we approach and enter in.

Until we reach the scene that made

Our landscape just a thing of shade.