The Combat
It was not meant for human eyes,
That combat on the shabby
Of clods and trampled turf that
Somewhere beneath the sodden
It was not meant for human eyes,
That combat on the shabby
Of clods and trampled turf that
Somewhere beneath the sodden
Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face
I in my mind had waited for this long,
Seeing the false and searching for the true,
Then found you as a traveller finds a
Issuing from the Word The seven days came,
Each in its own place,
Its own name
And the first long days A hard and rocky spring,
Our fathers all were poor,
Poorer our fathers' fathers;
Beyond, we dare not look
We, the sons, keep
If a good man were ever housed in
By needful error of the qualities,
Perhaps to prove the rule or shame the devil,
Or speak the truth only a stranger sees,
Barely a twelvemonth
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
The windless northern surge, the sea-gull's scream,
And Calvin's kirk crowning the barren brae
I think of Giotto the Tuscan shepherd's dream,
Christ, man and creature in their inner day
That was the day they killed the Son of
On a squat hill-top by Jerusalem
Zion was bare, her children from their
Sucked by the dream of
So from the ground we felt that virtue branch Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists As fresh and pure as water from a well,
Our hands made new to handle holy things,
The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed Till ea...
They could not tell me who should be my lord,
But I could read from every word they said The common thought:
Perhaps that lord was dead,
And only a story now and a wandering word