Читать книгу Poems, and The Spring of Joy - Mary Webb - Страница 29

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In this old town I know so well

I have dwelt in heaven and in hell,

And seen its folk go to and fro

With faces of unthinkable woe,

Ferocious as primæval beasts,

Or rapt as angels at their feasts,

When close they press in silver rows

While up and down the chalice goes,

Made of a sapphire, filled to the brim

With God. I have seen them walk like kings

Pondering on majestic things.

And where the gossip gables lean

Chatting, I’ve met with faces mean

With meanness past all grace or cure.

As long as those blue hills endure,

That stand around the gracious plain

Which circles-in the town, and rain

Marches across the corn, and tears

Weigh down the harvest of our years,

So long what I have seen and felt,

When in its churches I have knelt

And wandered by the evening stream

And seen the April roadways gleam,

Shall live. And when the traffic’s hum

Is gone, the busy market dumb

As a winter bee, and all the spires

Are melted in the hungry fires

Of Time, and not a house remains—

Then here, upon the empty plains,

Encircled by the changeless heights,

As changeless through the days and nights

As they, in colours that cannot fade,

Shall stand the town that I have made

With golden house and silver steeple

And a strange uplifted people,

Who in their charmed streets shall go

Hushed with a tremendous woe

And a joy as deep and vast

As shadows that the mountains cast.

And I shall dwell where once unknown

I passed, and all shall be my own,

Because I built of joy and tears

A city that defies the years.