55808: Up in the Wind
Creators: name: Project Team, First World War Poetry Digital Archive
Publisher: name: University of Oxford
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 430304
subject: British history
classificationCode: 430308
subject: European history (excl. British, classical Greek and Roman)
classificationCode: 430316
subject: International history

description: 'I could wring the old thing's neck that put it here!<br> A public house! it may be public for birds,<br> Squirrels, and such-like, ghosts of charcoal-burners<br> And highwaymen.' The wild girl laughed. 'But I<br> Hate it since I came back from Kennington.<br> I gave up a good place.' Her Cockney accent<br> Made her and the house seem wilder by calling up---<br> Only to be subdued at once by wildness---<br> The idea of London, there in that forest parlour,<br> Low and small among the towering beeches,<br> And the one bulging butt that's like a font.<br> Her eyes flashed up; she shook her hair away<br> From eyes and mouth, as if to shriek again;<br> Then sighed back to her scrubbing. While I drank<br> I might have mused of coaches and highwaymen,<br> Charcoal-burners and life that loves the wild.<br> For who now used these roads except myself,<br> A market waggon every other Wednesday,<br> A solitary tramp, some very fresh one<br> Ignorant of these eleven houseless miles,<br> A motorist from a distance slowing down<br> To taste whatever luxury he can<br> In having North Downs clear behind, South clear before,<br> And being midway between two railway lines,<br> Far out of sight or sound of them? There are<br> Some houses---down the by-lanes; and a few<br> Are visible---when their damsons are in bloom.<br> But the land is wild, and there's a spirit of wildness<br> Much older, crying when the stone-curlew yodels<br> His sea and mountain cry, high up in Spring.<br> He nests in fields where still the gorse is free as<br> When all was open and common. Common 'tis named<br> And calls itself, because the bracken and gorse<br> Still hold the hedge where plough and scythe have chased them.<br> Once on a time 'tis plain that 'The White Horse'<br> Stood merely on the border of waste<br> Where horse and cart picked its own course afresh.<br> On all sides then, as now, paths ran to the inn;<br> And now a farm-track takes you from a gate.<br> Two roads cross, and not a house in sight<br> Except 'The White Horse' in this clump of beeches.<br> It hides from either road, a field's breadth back;<br> And it's the trees you see, and not the house,<br> Both near and far, when the clump's the highest thing<br> And homely, too, upon a far horizon<br> To one that knows there is an inn within.<br> ''Twould have been different,' the wild girl shrieked, 'suppose<br> That widow had married another blacksmith and<br> Kept on the business. This parlour was the smithy.<br> If she had done, there might never have been an inn;<br> And I, in that case, might never have been born.<br> Years ago, when this was all a wood<br> And the smith had charcoal-burners for company,<br> A man from a beech-country in the shires<br> Came with an engine and a little boy<br> (To feed the engine) to cut up timber here.<br> It all happened years ago. The smith<br> Had died, his widow had set up an alehouse---<br> I could wring the old thing's neck for thinking of it.<br> Well, I suppose they fell in love, the widow<br> And my great-uncle that sawed up the timber:<br> Leastways they married. The little boy stayed on.<br> He was my father.' She thought she'd scrub again---<br> 'I draw the ale and he grows fat,' she muttered---<br> But only studied the hollows in the bricks<br> And chose among her thoughts in stirring silence.<br> The clock ticked, and the big saucepan lid<br> Heaved as the cabbage bubbled, and the girl<br> Questioned the fire and spoke: 'My father, he<br> Took to the land. A mile of it is worth<br> A guinea; for by that time all trees<br> Except these few about the house were gone:<br> That's all that's left of the forest unless you count<br> The bottoms of the charcoal-burners' fires---<br> We plough one up at times. Did you ever see<br> Our signboard?' No. The post and empty frame<br> I knew. Without them I should not have guessed<br> The low grey house and its one stack under trees<br> Was a public house and not a hermitage.<br> 'But can that empty frame be any use?<br> Now I should like to see a good white horse<br> Swing there, a really beautiful white horse,<br> Galloping one side, being painted on the other.'<br> 'But would you like to hear it swing all night<br> And all day? All I ever had to thank<br> The wind for was for blowing the sign down.<br> Time after time it blew down and I could sleep.<br> At last they fixed it, and it took a thief<br> To move it, and we've never had another:<br> It's lying at the bottom of the pond.<br> But no one's moved the wood from off the hill<br> There at the back, although it makes a noise<br> When the wind blows, as if a train were running<br> The other side, a train that never stops<br> Or ends. And the linen crackles on the line<br> Like a wood fire rising.' 'But if you had the sign<br> You might draw company. What about Kennington?'<br> She bent down to her scrubbing with 'Not me:<br> Not back to Kennington. Here I was born,<br> And I've a notion on these windy nights<br> Here I shall die. Perhaps I want to die here.<br> I reckon I shall stay. But I do wish<br> The road was nearer and the wind farther off,<br> Or once now and then quite still, though when I die<br> I'd have it blowing that I might go with it<br> Somewhere distant, where there are trees no more<br> And I could wake and not know where I was<br> Nor even wonder if they would roar again.<br> Look at those calves.'<br> Between the open door<br> And the trees two calves were wading in the pond,<br> Grazing the water here and there and thinking,<br> Sipping and thinking, both happily, neither long.<br> The water wrinkled, but they sipped and thought,<br> As careless of the wind as it of us.<br> 'Look at those calves. Hark at the trees again.'<br>