55852: Wind and Mist
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: They met inside the gateway that gives the view,<br> A hollow land as vast as heaven. 'It is<br> A pleasant day, sir.' 'A very pleasant day.'<br> 'And what a view here! If you like angled fields<br> Of grass and grain bounded by oak and thorn,<br> Here is a league. Had we with Germany<br> To play upon this board it could not be<br> More dear than April has made it with a smile.<br> The fields beyond that league close in together<br> And merge, even as our days into the past,<br> Into one wood that has a shining pane<br> Of water. Then the hills of the horizon---<br> That is how I should make hills had I to show<br> One who would never see them what hills were like.'<br> 'Yes. Sixty miles of South Downs at one glance.<br> Sometimes a man feels proud of them, as if<br> He had just created them with one mighty thought.'<br> 'That house, though modern, could not be better planned<br> For its position. I never liked a new<br> House better. Could you tell me who lives in it?'<br> 'No one.' 'Ah---and I was peopling all<br> Those windows on the south with happy eyes,<br> The terrace under them with happy feet;<br> Girls---' 'Sir, I know. I know. I have seen that house<br> Through mist look lovely as a castle in Spain,<br> And airier. I have thought: ""'Twere happy there<br> To live."" And I have laughed at that<br> Because I lived there then.' 'Extraordinary.'<br> 'Yes, with my furniture and family<br> Still in it, I, knowing every nook of it<br> And loving none, and in fact hating it.'<br> 'Dear me! How could that be? But pardon me.'<br> 'No offence. Doubtless the house was not to blame,<br> But the eye watching from those windows saw,<br> Many a day, day after day, mist---mist<br> Like chaos surging back---and felt itself<br> Alone in all the world, marooned alone.<br> We lived in clouds, on a cliff's edge almost<br> (You see), and if clouds went, the visible earth<br> Lay too far off beneath and like a cloud.<br> I did not know it was the earth I loved<br> Until I tried to live there in the clouds<br> And the earth turned to cloud.' 'You had a garden<br> Of flint and day, too.' 'True; that was real enough.<br> The flint was the one crop that never failed.<br> The clay first broke my heart, and then my back;<br> And the back heals not. There were other things<br> Real, too. In that room at the gable a child<br> Was born while the wind chilled a summer dawn:<br> Never looked grey mind on a greyer one<br> Than when the child's cry broke above the groans.'<br> 'I hope they were both spared.' 'They were. Oh yes!<br> But flint and day and childbirth were too real<br> For this cloud-castle. I had forgot the wind.<br> Pray do not let me get on to the wind.<br> You would not understand about the wind.<br> It is my subject, and compared with me<br> Those who have always lived on the firm ground<br> Are quite unreal in this matter of the wind.<br> There were whole days and nights when the wind and I<br> Between us shared the world, and the wind ruled<br> And I obeyed it and forgot the mist.<br> My past and the past of the world were in the wind.<br> Now you may say that though you understand<br> And feel for me, and so on, you yourself<br> Would find it different. You are all like that<br> If once you stand here free from wind and mist:<br> I might as well be talking to wind and mist.<br> You would believe the house-agent's young man<br> Who gives no heed to anything I say.<br> Good-morning. But one word. I want to admit<br> That I would try the house once more, if I could;<br> As I should like to try being young again.'<br>