From the Prologue to All Hallows

Se N e VOL. XLVII

pra) NO. IV

A Magazine of Verse

JANUARY 1936

WINTRY WORDS

FROM THE PROLOGUE TO "ALL HALLOWS"

The IS the autumn wind. In the high hills

Rain is falling. The wind smells of the rain.

The leaves are driven into the cold ground.

Over the fields lie shadows of sleep and death.

In the houses they have started fires. The smoke

Whips in the wind.

All day the men of this land,

The watchers of seasons, the watchers of on-coming death,

Muse by the burning coals. In slow hushed voices

They speak of their fathers, they speak of their dead mothers,

Long years in the ground. It is the season

Brings them to this.

Their ministers are wise.

They know the thoughts of men when the wind is heavy.

They have seen a man stand by his door and stare

A long time at the hill where his young wife sleeps,

Hold his hand open, feeling the icy rain,

Then turn shuddering into the empty house.

And these priests learned, oh centuries ago,

How in autumn, amid the falling leaves,

Under the darkening skies, in the afternoons

When only the rain is noisy, in the gloom,

These men will ponder, slowly, life and death,

Speaking simply, without rancor, of them.

They are good men. They talk to their horses. Dogs

Come near them. They are kind to the bitch that whelps.

They stroke her ears and look in her piteous eyes,

For they are acquainted with pain: it is the great

Purge. Man after pain finds peace -

Listen -

The autumn wind!

- but in that pain finds God.

Their religion is full of a great pity for sorrow.

It is full of an older suffering, it is the dream

Of men in a conquered land. Their prayers are phrased

To the long patience of love.

O crying wind,

Weeping and cold! Winter-driven, dark

Commotion of the earth and sky! O vast

Storm-music for the toneless song of death,

When shall these men who know the earth in spring,

Who get their children with such brave delight,

Who plow and sow and reap the golden wheat,

Be less - they too - than wheat, than a single grain

They scatter, being but dust, being at last

But dust?

There is no wisdom beyond theirs,

They watch, and know the end, and they remember.

They meet with their priests to speak in quiet prayers

For those who are gone, who have passed utterly

Out of the sun, who no more down the paths

Ever turn homeward in the spring or summer:

Saying their God who gave has taken away;

Praising His mercy.

They call their God their Father.