The Book of the Green Man

Then cam four grett wodyn

with four grett clumes all in grene

& with skwybes

borning -

by Ronald Johnson

For Jonathan & for Dorothy

who made it possible
 Of the seasons,
seamless, a garland.

Solstice
to equinox -
days,

measured a cock's stride

come full circle.

The length of
breath,
a sequential foliage

firmly planted in
our veins,
we stand in our rayed form:

blue-eyed,
a chicory,

Sponsa Solis - & upon the sun appears

a face
also with rays

in descent
through an undulant

blue.
Part 1: Winter

. . . Visionary power
Attends the motions of the viewless winds,
Embodied in the mystery of words:
There, darkness makes abode, and all the host
Of shadowy things work endless changes.

William Wordsworth

Tchink, Tchink. Tsee!

Then low,
continuous warbles

pure as a Thrush.
A maze
of sound!

The Rothay, deliquescent

somewhere
in these airs

& the sinuous yews.

Tsee!

There is a blinding
darkness, here,

in Grasmere Churchyard

with the movement

of yews, blackbirds & River Rothay
running,
as it has
a hundred years

past Wordsworth's grave-side

- Wordsworth

who could not see

daffodils
only

'huge forms', Presences & earth 'working

like a sea'.

It was Dorothy
who lies

at his side,
who brought home

lichen & cushions of

moss,
who saw

these Lakes
in all their weathers -

'dim mirrors',
'bright slate'

- the sheens like herrings

& spear-shaped
streaks

of polished steel.

For William
there was only
one

wind off
the Lakes -

that, that had no

boundary, but entered
'skiey
influences'
into his pores

to animate some inner country

of deep, clear Lakes.

Windermeres
of his mind's eye.

As I sit in this darkness,

the Rothay hissing

like its geese

& the night

forming itself

into shapes of yew

& blackbird songs,

I wish
for this earth, beneath,
to move, to issue some dark, meditated

syllable perhaps -

something more
than this inarticulate

warble
& seething.

But this soil, once

Wordsworth, lies
in silence.

I wish
to make something circular,
seasonal, out

of this 'wheel' of
mountains
- some
flowering thing in its
cycle - an image of our footsteps

planted in homage

over each ridge

& valley.

But having come

to Grasmere,

from where the Lakes radiate

like spokes,

I see only the descent

to this darkness -

the rest
vanishes

- the steaming breath of sheep,

high, upon the fells:

the view
from Great Tongue

to Silver How -

a cone of light, thickening

to greys
down its slopes

- & down
by a ghyll lined with
rowan. Red-berry

- waterfall.
A rising mist to meet us.

Down, to
the quickly darkness
Lake.
The burning blues
of Dove Cottage
garden -

the spectral
October flowers
of night

- hydrangea,
gentian.

This soil, once

Wordsworth. . .

O,
let us give stems to
the flowers!

Substance to this
fog: some

subtle, yet enduring mold,

a snare

for bird-song,

night, & rivers flowing.

Let us catch
the labyrinthine wind,
in words -

syllable, following
on syllable,

somewhere in these airs, these

sinuous yews

- Gentian, Great Tongue, Westmorland,

England:

out of this soil, once

Wordsworth. . .
Tsee! Tsee!
Then low,

continuous warbles,
pure,
as a Thrush.

I slept
& dreamed
the encircling Mountains

moved toward me in
my sleep.

To the horizon,
the grass
was a deep indigo:

waving & sparkling with hidden

lights.

The edges
of the Mountains moved slowly,

against the stars,

& there were

sounds as of great doors

opening

as their bases bit

into earth.

I lay
on the sublime motions
of the grasses

& saw stars

descend like snow,

through snow-white brightness

of the skies -

'as if
the Sun shined

for the Snow is reflected

by the Air

just as Fire by Night

is'.

And as the grass grew higher,

I entered into
its Maze -

as of a field of infinite
hoar-frosts melting

& shapes reforming in

shapes

of beasts & curious

vegetation.

I traced

the convolutions of

turf, laid out by men,

& made new windings with the mole

through undisturbed

barrows.

I entered the architecture of

bees - the gold of

their mossed bodies

linked in warmth.

I followed
the patterns of waters

within earth,

& saw the whorls of buried

shells.

I followed the mottled lizard into

scrolls of leaves

& traced the plover to its

nest.

And came, at last, to pastures

where the spiders

had built

on every bush -

that intricate webbing

to which the 'dew

doth perch'.

And on webs, more

tenuous

than these, & of even more

complexity -

the interweavings

of man with earth: warp & woof with

the stuff of Mountains -

I retraced my steps around

the Lakes:
encompassing

Ullswater,

Derwent, Crummock, Buttermere,

Ennerdale, Wastwater,

Conniston, Esthwaite,

Windermere to Elterwater, Rydal, & finally

in a circle back

to Wordsworth & Grasmere.

And this, where I began, was the center

of the Maze:

where the blackbird still sang - its song more

clear

into the night, than any

words -
with the boundless

ambiguity,
ceaseless turnings &

redoubling
& 'motions

of the viewless

winds'.

3
The Oak of the Maze

Lichen.

Lion's shin, oak-limb, tomb:

all acquire
a hundred years'
skin,
a winter's pelt - bones

that 'being
striken one against
another

break out
like fire

& wax greene'.

Mistletoe. Its seeds

ripened
within birds -

out of the quickening gut,

it clings to oak.

An aerial
green,

white-berried.

Ivy. Springs out

of earth,
to cover it

with dark, shining leaves.

It is the mythic coat

of an oak -

made of a shining
& dark-
leaved thunder,

lightnings
& the owls

of its hollows.

There are connections in these

- between an earth, sentient with moles,

& the owl's
radiant eyes -
fine as a web drawn
by spiders,

close as the grain of oak'

from earth, to mistletoe, ivy & lichen, to owl's-

wing, to thunder, to lightning, to earth - & back.

There are many ways

to look at an oak, & one, with its

own eyes:

the blunt, burning push

of acorns

in an earth full

of movements, slight rustlings, as a passage of night-birds,

& bones

that 'being striken one against another

break out like fire

& wax greene'.

Part 2: Spring

April 12, 1875

The morning had become grey and overcast, but. . . as we glided

up the valley, sweeping round bend after bend we saw new prospects
and beauties still unfolding and opening before us, distant azure
mountains, green sunny bursts and dark blue wooded hollows of the
nearer hills with gentle dips and dimpling swells on the hillsides
softly bosoming. Then suddenly came a vivid flash, dazzling with a
blaze of diamond sparks thrown off as if by a firework, on the
stream suddenly caught and tangled amongst broken rocks, swept
roaring in a sheet of white foam through the narrowing channel, or
with a stately and gracious bend the river broadened, peaceful and
calm, to a majestic reach, long and silver shining, veiled here
and there by a fringing, overhanging woods and broken by the larch
spires dawning a thickening green.

Francis Kilvert

1
Evocations

`Rise, and put on your foliage'.

Come, as the Green Knight to Gawain at the beginning

of the new year. . .

out of his oaken crevice:

lhude sing cuccu!

Move with a spring & vegetable swiftness,

seed-case & burr & tremulous grasses, a grove. . .vocal in the wind. . .

(`the rustling of the leaves and

the songs of birds denoting his presence there')

cuckoo!

(`at thes day we in ye

sign call them Green Men, covered with green bones')

cuckoo!
(`I have listened to the cuckoo in the ivy-tree,
I have listened to the note of the birds

in the crest of the rustling oak,

loud cuckoo')

cuckoo!
cuckoo!

Rise as the sun: antlered. . .

bearded with greenery. . .the leaf-vein pulsing

in your throat. Budded all over with small flame, & motley
with birds in your hair & arms. Rise,

& put on your foliage!

2
April 8th

We began today
to trace the course
of the Wye

into `Wild
Wales', Chepstow to Plynlimmon. . .

limestone bed & cliff. . .

forest & grassy source.

And as I write this, tonight, at St. Briavels

. . .a castle squat as a toad, with a moat full of primroses. . .

I invoke the Wye itself

to cut these pages: its Celtic loops & interlacements,

its continuities that lead the view

onward, & back

to Kilvert. . .Vaughan.
The echoes of its slow rush ever to be
listened for
in Watershed. . .

Greensward & Sheep. . .

O wind your waters through my song, green Wye.

We first saw the river,

tidal at the Severn, an indefinite
expanse

in morning haze.
Its castle, an extension of the cliff,

an eyrie of
rock, dissolved in the muted,

aerial

greys.

From there up Wyndcliffe, wooded with huge oaks, where the eyes
soar, like birds buoyed up in air:

from the oak-tops. . .coral & willow with first leaf

& tassle. . .to clusters of mistletoe

& rookeries, down to gnarled boles slanting against wind

& covered with growths

of ivy, to the carpet of wood-anemone (wood-

anemones, Flowers-Of-The-Wind),

out, over the Wye turning through valleys of

mists, 800 feet below.

Lambs bleating, an `exaltation'

of larks.

A steady, hushed flow.

Then descended
afoot,

fields bounded with hedge,

each bud & thorn
pendant with
water,

to Tintern. . .

not one tufted column, no wall

a mass of moving foliage. Only. . .the Window.

Its seven delicate shafts

the frame for a more ephemeral world
than glass:

the passing clouds,

the passing, voluminous, green clouds. . .

in hilly

horizon.

Then, leaving the river, over the hill, to St. Briavels.

The wind off

Wyndcliffe

& the spiraling out of sight

of larks in flight.

O wind your waters through these songs, & mine. . .

river Wye,

green Wye.

3
April 12th

Two days of mossy mists,

soft & clinging. The river, a single grey thread
to be followed through other greys.
Quiet brown blurs
of Hereford cattle, shadowy
swans.

Only the harsh clamor of rooks penetrates.

Though once, a dead sheep floated downstream, every curl,

of its coat, distinct as the bubble

in a house-of-spittle.
Its head like a withered apple.

Today, the Black

Mountains

are a smoke

you could put your hand through

& celandines reflect

the light back like mirrors.

We stopped at Moccas, where Kilvert wrote:

`Those grey
old men of Moccas. . .

those grey, gnarled, low-browed, knock-kneed,

bowed, bent, huge, strange,
long-armed, deformed, hunch-backed, misshapen oak men. . .

that stand with both feet in the grave,

yet seeing out,

with such tales to tell,

as when they whisper to each other,
nights,

the silver
birches weep, poplars
& aspens shiver

& long ears of the hares

& rabbits stand
on end'.

And a sparkling snow. . .from somewhere. . .through sunshine. . .

appeared

in clear air.

The Moccas church of

tufa. North Door carved with a Beast eating

the Tree of Life, & the South, with Beast seen devouring a man

who holds the Tree of Life, the branches of which

form a cross.

And close by, Bredwardine, where Kilvert lies buried.

Where from his grave, `bright

shootes':

daffodil, primrose, snow-drop, white violet.

4
Emanations

`I am a walking fire, I am all leaves'.

`I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss,

fruit, grains, esculent roots.
And am stucco'd with quadrupeds & birds all over'.

I find I advance with

sidereal motions
. . .my eyes containing substance

of the sun,
my ears built of beaks & feathers. . .

I ascend with saps

& flower in season

& eddy with tides.

With every moon,

I come from the darkness into incandescence.

My tongue assumes the apple's flesh

& my skin, the infinite spheres of the thistle's prickle. And as I
breathe

the wind has its billow. . .& all the grasses. . .

in a combing, mazy movement.

5
April 13th

Here, the river swept great

curves
along wide valleys.

We left our footprints

green, behind,
as we followed the straight bright dew-path, meadow banks gleaming.

Clouds moved down the valley. . .their shadows

a river of huge dapples. . .their glowing masses opening above
as we came,

a white, enveloping progression.

Mid-day, whole
clouds lowered

& one leaned into wind to walk. . .

a brisk,
wet fog blowing. . .

through by evening the sun set westward

in our eyes
among slow cumulus that shafted bands of yellow
light

& remained black spaces

neither earth,
nor air,

suspended in that `vacant interlunar cave'

where all the stars

revolved, wheeled, glittered.

6
Apparitions

`I thought I saw an angel in an azure robe

coming towards me across the lawn,

but it was only the blue sky through the feathering branches
of the lime'.

7
April 15th, Easter Sunday

We walked in rain
to Llansantffread

. . .Vaughan buried at St. Bridgit

(the Saint of Light,

born at sunrise on the first day of spring) on

the Usk (as Vaughan,

the Swan of). Inside, a font of yellow

sallow,

white iris
& freesia the color of ivory.

`. . . With what floures

And shoots of glory, my Soul breaks'. `Living bowers'.

Silex Scintillans these mountains. . .

the Black & Brecon Beacons

. . .a deep but dazzling darkness. Beckoning. . .

dissolving,

to white cloud,

& swan, & clod.

Everything,

one river running. . .

8
April 18th

For two days it has rained

& the Wye has been
swollen & brown.

But today it is both clear

& warm & suddenly, everywhere, all things
are green.

The river, narrowed to a stream,

is a current of long mosses. The trees are fleshed out
with leaf.

There is a constant burbling of curlews.

Crwee, crwee: thick, Welsh consonants, blending with the shallows
of the Wye on rock.

Lambs kick up their heels,

as the bracken unfurls. And as we walk onward, the high, round
hills come with us all the way. . .
rising into the distance. . .each one more blue than
the other. . .out to the long slope
of Plynlimmon. To the sea. O run slowly, Wye, & evergreen,

& never end. . .

9
Landscapes & Mandrakes

Then came, like the Celtic Blodeuwedd,

who was made of blossoms of oak

& broom & meadow-sweet,

a green man out of Wales. . .of more than flowers:

as if all Hafod

rose up again, & came in strides of vistas into England.

And Hafod, that most
sublime of gardens, gone into earth

these hundred years.

And with those lost romantic

promontories, prospects, vapors & auroras,
rolling

& losing themselves in irregularities,

was the half-legendary Wales of Giraldus, where a man could command

the birds to sing: `& immediately the birds,

beating the water with their wings, began to cry aloud

& proclaim him'.

And farther back in time,

the lineaments clearly discerned of
Lothlorien -

of the mallorn trees. . .& shades

of the Blesséd Isles.

And immediately the birds, beating the water
with their wings,

began to cry

aloud & proclaim him:

`each grain of

sand, every stone on the land,

each rock & each hill, each fountain & rill,

each herb & each tree, mountain, hill,

earth & sea, are men seen

afar'

& near. . .

10
April 19th

Cuckoo. . .cuckoo. . .cuckoo. . .

I had been listening for the first cuckoo, Delius' cuckoo. . .

but the sound is softer, more penetrant. `Calling

about the hills', Kilvert says. Yes,

it is that. An echo. . .:

this green source, this welling-forth in ever-widening circles,

this `spring'.
Part 3: Summer

As the morning advanced the sun became bright and warm, cloudless, calm, serene. About nine
an appearance very unusual began to demand our attention - a shower of cobwebs falling from
very elevated regions, & continuing, without any interruption, till the close of the day...

There is a natural occurrence to be met with upon the highest part of our down in hot summer
days, and that is a loud audible humming of bees in the air, though not one insect is to be seen...

In a district so diversified as this, so full of hollow vales and hanging woods, it is no wonder
that echoes should abound. Many we have discovered that return a tunable ring of bells, or the
melody of birds; but we were still at a loss for a polysyllabical, articulate echo, till a young
gentleman, who had parted from his company in a summer walk, and was calling after them,
stumbled upon a very curious one in a spot where it might least be expected...

We procured a cuckoo, and cutting open the breastbone and exposing the intestines to sight,
found the crop lying as mentioned above. This stomach was large and round, and stuffed hard,
like a pincushion, with food, which upon nice examination, we found to consist of various
insects, such as small scarabs, spiders, and dragon-flies; the last of which, as they were just
emerging out of the aurelia state, we have seen cuckoos catching on the wing. Among this
farrago also were to be seen maggots, and many seeds, which belonged either to gooseberries,
currants, cranberries, or some such fruit...

All nature is so full, that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most
examined...

Gilbert White

1
Upon First Opening a Cuckoo

I saw the sweet-briar & bon-fire & strawberry wire now

relaxed into intricate thicket.

It was as if seen in strong sunlight, flat

& tapestried, all edge & definition. Here, an airy bone shaped

like a plowshare, there, vibratory membranes within a space

from which the song must come: a syrinx (hollow

pipes of reeds) now silent

in return to the 'Salliter' of earth.

Little more than

a drift of air, brought

into form by plumes. Mulch to stone.

Yeast of the clouds.

2
What the Earth Told Me

No surface is allowed to be bare,

& nothing to stand still. A man could forever study a pebble

& at last see dilations & expansions of the hills -

to pull the most slender stalk, is to jostle the stars,

& between the bearded grass

& man 'looking in the vegetable glass

of Nature', is a network of roots & suckers

fine as hairs.

I threw a stone upon a pond

& it bounded the surface, its circles interlacing

& radiating out to the most ephemeral edge.

Flint & Mica, Lichened Limestone, Shale & Sarcens, Sandstone, Soil.

I saw the wind moving on a meadow

& the meadows moving under wind

lifting, & settling & accumulating.

Flint & Mica, Lichened Limestone,

Shale & Sarcens, Sandstone, Soil.

3
What the Air Told Me

It is breathed into Orpheus' lyre & as rocks & trees & beasts

is divided there. Its original strain

precedes the sound, by as much as echoes follow after:

the quivering of 'cow-quake', a 'loud audible

humming of bees on the down', stresses within the sustaining earth,

clouds of fleece & mare's tail.

I saw with single eye, the facet of the fly -

the infinitesimal mechanics & all the metallic sheens

of a blue-bottle. In a land where the sun grows fat on cloud

& summer hasn't come

till your foot can cover twenty daisies,

she came to the dark, open beak

& laid a myriad of eggs. And in two day's time the dead

bird's body simulated life: maggots in eye-socket &

under feather, in a subtle movement.

The White & the Glistening.

4
What the Leaf Told Me

Today I saw the word written on the poplar leaves.

It was 'dazzle'. The dazzle of the poplars.

As a leaf startles out

from an undifferentiated mass of foliage,

so the word did form a leaf

A Mirage Of The Delicate Polyglot

inventing itself as cipher. But this, in shifts & gyrations,

grew in brightness, so bright

the massy poplars soon outshone the sun

'My light - my dews - my breezes -my bloom'. Reflections

In A Wren's Eye.
5
De Vegetabilibus

For there are splendors of flowers called DAY'S EYES in every field.

For one cannot walk but to walk upon sun.

For the sun has also a stem, on which it turns.

For the tree forms sun into leaves, & its branches & saps

are solid & liquid states of sun.

For the sun has many seasons, & all of them summer.

For the carrot & bee both bless with sun,

the carrot beneath the earth & the bee with its dusts & honies.

For the sun has stippled the pear & polished the apple.

1
De Animalibus

For there are owls in the air & moles in the earth

& THEY ALSO have eyes.

For there are shapes of air which are OWL

& shapes of earth which are MOLE,

& the mole brings air to the earth & the owl, earth into air.

For the turtle's back is another firmament & dappled like the cloud.

For there are birds who nest on the earth

& are feathered in its form.

For the rook & the worm are only one cycle out of many.

for man rejoices with rook & worm

& owl & mole & turtle,

& they are only one cycle out of many.

1
Turner, Constable & Stubbs

To see, Turner had himself lashed to the ship's mast

& Constable sat still in the fields

till something came - a bird - some living thing appropriate to

the place'. He noted the wind's direction, pile

of clouds, the time of day. Stubbs

fixed an iron bar to the ceiling of his room, with hooks

of various sizes & lengths, in order to suspend the body of a horse.

The horse remained for six or seven weeks

'until no longer endurable'.

The form of muscles, blood vessels & nerves was retained

by tallow injections — Stubbs methodically

cutting to the skeleton, making full length drawings

& studies of the ear & nose.

'He was possessed of great physical

strength, being able,

it is said, to carry a dead horse on his back

to a dissecting room,

at the top of a narrow flight of stairs'.

The work was finished in eighteen months.

8
Natural Productions, Occurrences & Antiquities

'August is by much the most mute month', yet,

the air may be so strongly electric

that bells may ring & sparks be discharged in their clappers:

'put a bird in motion, et vera incessu patuit-'

To distinguish a bird by its 'air', to 'hear'

the buoyant owls - woodpeckers rising & falling in curves

-the perpendicularity of skylarks

Gilbert White quotes from the Latin: He preferred

the sounds of birds to those of men. The music of men left his mind

disturbed by engaging his attention

with its rise & fall, while the warbling

of birds left no such hold

'to tease my imagination & recur irresistibly

at seasons -'
All day the cobweb fell silently

in the air, till whole

baskets-full lay round about, & still

more descending.

9
The Leaves of Southwell

Maple & hawthorn & oak. Crow-foot & cinquefoil

(Aubrey's Midsummer Silver?).

Vine & ivy & hops. Rose, bryony (a Mandrake), geranium, mulberry,
wormwood. Fig, bittersweet & blackthorn.

It is an assemblage (a community?) including its dragons with

crisply carved acorns.

Two hounds devour a hare. A bird seizes a grape with its

beak. Both green men & the winged

fruit of maple are in hierarchy of accuracy - the ribbed & the delicate
ascending to the general. But here, a throat

come aleaf, there a branch held aloft.

And a kind of greening speech comes from those mouths

all but winged - each leaf

cleft & articulate. Southwell, of the leaves

of limestone: trefoil, quartrefoil, cinquefoil (as foil means

leaf): a 'burnisht corall' & geranium

brain: cranesbill, crow-foot: blackthorn & whitethorn,

quickthorn, Jack-in-the-green:
a man cleft, as Mandrakes, the 'man-shaped
dragon', Mandragora.

10
Exhibit from Frederik Ruysch's Anatomical Museum

A skeleton balances an injected spermatic plexus

in one hand & a coil of viscera
in the other. Minatory assortments

of calculi of all sizes

occupy the foreground. In the rear, a
variety of injected vessels, backed by an inflated & injected

tunica vaginalis,
combine to form a grotesque & arboreal
perspective. Another skeleton,

in extremis, is grasping a skeleton

of that emblem of insect mortality, the mayfly, & a third
is performing

a composition 'expressing the sorrows of mankind'

on a violin, symbolized
by bundles of arteries & a fragment

of necrotic femur.
Bones are arranged to represent
a cemetery - wrists are adorned with organic & injected

frills - & human, comparative

& pathological exhibits
are mingled, as the exigencies of space required.
11
'Unless the Humming of a Gnat is as the Music of the Spheres

& the music of the spheres is as the humming

of a gnat -' A spectre came, transparent-winged,

out of the interstices of light,

& shadow went up like smoke & everywhere

the hills were as clouds over valleys of water, rippling

& reverberating.

And before him the sands of the beach swarmed as insects, close-knit

in electrical flight

'For MATTER is the dust of the Earth,

every atom of which is the life.

For the flames of fire may be blown thro musical pipes'.

And everywhere the hills were as clouds over

valleys of water, rippling

& reverberating.
12
What the Light Told Me

It is now a circle, now a spiral or wheel.

It merges with the eye, with a wing of a sickle-shaped horn.

It takes on the form of beasts - a dragon, fish or bird.

As an orb, at summer solstice,

it balances on the altar-stone at Stonehenge -

& as beam, expands, elongates, twists & 'attenuates

itself into leafen gold
as a covering for the quince'.

With arc & parabolic

& serpent-oblique -'musical in ocular
harmony'. Expanding, elongating, twisting
& attenuating.

An encompassing eye.
Within and out, round as a ball -
With hither and thither, as straight as a line.
Slight as a fox-whisker,
spiraled, twined - rayed as chicory-flower.

Within and out, round as a ball -

With hither and thither, as straight as a line.
With lily, germander
And sops-in-wine. With sweet-briar and
Bon-fire and strawberry wire
And columbine.
Part 4: Autumn

Creation sometimes pours into the spiritual eye the radiance of Heaven: the green mountains
that glimmer in a summer gloaming from the dusky yet bloomy east; the moon opening her
golden eye, or walking in brightness among innumerable islands of light, not only thrill the optic
nerve, but shed a mild, a grateful, an unearthly luster into the inmost spirits, and seem the
interchanging twilight of that peaceful country, where there is no sorrow and no night.

Samuel Palmer

A chryselephantine sky. The round earth

on flat paper. 'The clouds which drop fatness
upon our fields & pastures'.

Islands - eye-lands-& piled mountains

of light. A circumambient voyage into the visible.

I saw that at Shoreham.

I saw hybernacula move

like clouds, & the turtle's eyes red
within.

I saw a badger root among soft

yellow plums of moonlight, & at dawn, a sheep
shade the dews
from its coat, in coronae.

I saw 'vegetable gold'

- the light of suns fold in upon itself,
as leaves
of a cabbage -

I watched the elder grow first

green, then white,
then a lustrous black.

'Thoughts on RISING
MOON with raving-mad splendour
of orange twilight glow on
landscape. I was that at Shoreham'.

Shoreham - the ripeness

- proliferation. 'Excess more abundantly
excessive'. Its whale-shaped
hills, above the valleys of the hops
& apples. Its shepherds of the many-colored sheep.

I saw ascensions, transformations

& flights 'from a leaf
of kale, across the disc of a planet'.

I saw a world of Leviathan

& the thousand repetitions of spore & insect
intermixed.

Shoreham. Autumnal, mercurial.

A world where the skies
dome above, almost so high as to hold
both rising, meridian & setting suns, with moons large
as barn doors.

A land, perpetually coming

to harvest. The light come out of earth,
a heavy hay & piled up in stooks
beneath the budding, leafing, flowering chestnut.
I saw that at Shoreham.

I saw all that at Shoreham

& more - the 'cherub-turtles' - the Shining

Ones, where they commonly walk. . .

2
Most Rich, Most Glittering, Most Strange

The Beetle, of a coppery green & blue.

Feathers of Peacock & Pheasant.
The live flashing Mackerel,
its thin, transparent colors laid

over silver & gold. Its back, blue

& around its gills, greens which take on
casts of blue. Silvery
belly & eyes a hard, jet black.

The white Owls (inhabiting a shell-room

of a Folly in Wiltshire)
their feathers flecked & barred with
colors of straw & dun. Their

silky eyes blinking in the half-

light of pearled Conch, Cowrie & Coral
spray. The Moth, the Mantis,
Dragon-fly. A Snail's path seen shining

in sunlight. Pope's grotto built

at Twickensham, with its Marble of diverse
colors. And between each course of
Marble, many kinds of Ores, such as Tin

Ore, purpled Copper Ores & Wild Lead

intermixed with large clumps of
Cornish Diamonds. Rich,
White Spars interlaced with Cockle

& Spars shot with prisms of

different degrees of waters. Fossils
interspersed with Grains of Mundic:
some yellow, some purple & some deep blue

inclining to black. Crystal from

Germany, Gold from Peru, Silvers from
Spain & Mexico. Gold Clift
from Gloucestershire, Egyptian Pebbles.

Petrified Wood & Moss. Blood-

stones, clumps of Amethyst, 'Isicles'.
Curious stones from everywhere & several
Humming-birds, with nests.

Those opalescent clouds in the form

of scales of fish: striped, undulating,
cirrus-like - with spectral 'eyes'
of a bright, metallic luster.

Fog-bow & Moon-bow. Haloes observed

around the sun, with Mock Suns, upon days
of peculiar, milky light. Green
'Rays', or Flames, seen to
shoot up, high, above the setting sun.
Multiple Crescents of the moon.
Mirage & iridescence of oil-spots & suns
'Drawing Water'. Moonglade,

Touch-wood. That luminescence,

phosphorescence, fluorescence, to be seen
in plant, animal & stone. Rabbits'
eyes, Will-o'-the-Wisp,

the shimmering hand dipped in warm

waters. The ancient trees
whose every leaf is a streak of
pale flame, the glow of whose roots can

be traced upon earth. The legend

of electrical hail-stones, 'Hercynian'
birds like plumed lamps
lighting the forests at night

& the vine said to entangle the cattle's

hooves & horns in networks
of fiery tendril. All things 'most rich,
most glittering, most strange'.

3
Of Certaine White Nights Wherein the
Darkes Doe Seem to Gette Up
& Walk & How Wee Saw Divers Wonders in Bothe
Earth & Element

As we descended to this valley,

where Samuel Palmer had used to walk - bareheaded
under the moon -
the passing clouds above
'did marvellously supple the ground'.

And there were seen many blackbirds to settle

as shapes of water on the land.

Out of the warm hills at our backs

a nebulous lightning
pulsed & flickered, a false
Aurora Borealis, enfolding us as we came.
Wee had observed
these glows to collect as solid
as stones, at the sides of our eies -

& the hollows,

each, to appear to rise out
of its owne darkeness.

We also came upon one tree,

out of those that abound here, whose leaves
seemed brought into curious relief
by the twilight being reflected upon one
side, & a waxing moon,
on the other -

it is thus our nights, everywhere,

continued
but dusks of daies.

William Stukeley made his own Stonehenge,

a Druid Temple 'formed out of an old ort-
chard'. 'Tis thus', he writes - 'there is
a circle of tall filberd trees in the nat-
ure of a hedg, which is 70 foot diameter
& round it a walk 15 foot broad, circular

too, so that the whole is 100 foot diame-

ter. The walk from one high point slopes
each way, gradually, till you come to the
lowest point opposite, there is the en-
trance to a temple, to which the walk may
be es-teemed as porticoe. When one enters

into this innermost circle or temple, one

sees, in the center, an antient appletree
oregrown with sacred mistletoe. Round it
is another concentric circle of a 50 foot
diameter made all of pyramidal greens, at
an equal interval, that appear as verdant

when fruit trees have dropt their leaves.

The pyramidals are in imitation of Stone-
henge's inner circles. The whole of this
is included within a square wall on every
side, except the grand avenue to the por-
ticoe, which is an appletree avenue. The

angles are filled in fruit trees, plumbs,

pears, & walnuts, & such are likewise in-
terspersed in the filberd hedg & borders,
with some sort of irregularity to prevent any
stiffness in its appearance & make it
look more easy & natural. At that point,

where is an entrance from the porticoe to

the temple, is a tumulus, but I must take
it for a cairn, or celtic barrow. I have
sketched you out the whole thing as it is
formed. These are some of the amusements
of country folk, instead of conversation'.

Alexander Pope: 'I have some-

times had the idea of planting
an old gothic cathedral. Good

large poplars with their white

stems (cleared of their boughs
to a proper height) w'ld serve
well for columns, & might form

the aisles or the peristiliums

by their different distances &

heights. These w'ld look very

well near, & a dome rising all
in a proper tuft in the middle
w'ld look well at a distance'.
This is the man whose parodies

of topiary were inimitable, who deplored the

fantastical & wished for 'unadorned
Nature'. But the 'Gothick' was in fashion & has
since been destroyed as
the formal topiary before it - to serpen-
tinize brooks, to make vistas.

Now, the obelisks are toppled,

labyrinth & maze are uprooted to pasture
& ivies hide the Folly.
The giantesque animals, lop-sided arches & cones
& pyramids, have been allowed, now,
to grow into ghosts of shapes they once had.

'A laurestine bear in blossom, with a

juniper hunter in berries. A pair of
giants, stunted. A lavender pig with
sage growing in his belly. The Tower
of Babel. St. George in box, his arm

scarce long enough, but able to stick

the dragon by next April ... the dragon,
also of box, with ground-ivy tail. A
pair of maiden-heads in fir, in great
forwardness. A quickset hog, shot up

to a to a porcupine, by its being forgot

a week in rainy weather. Noah's ark in
holly, Adam & Eve in yew - the serpent
flourishing. Edward the Black Prince in
cypress, an old maid in wormwood'.

The Balancings Of The Clouds - their breeze

& darknesses. Wheaten emanations
of earth. A man come piping
over the hills - an interpenetration of
moth-wing & seed-case & burr, of tremulous grasses
& ripening apples.

I saw that at Shoreham.

In the 'yellow spot' of clear vision,

the apples grew & reddened -
the trunk of their tree come suddenly out
of a slope, as Arcimboldo's lemons from a throat.

'Unless the eye

contained the substance of the sun'...

Unless the ears are shaped

of song, out nose is of air, our skin, of the thistle,

& our tongue, of apples & water:

'The Apple-Tree, the Singing & the Gold...'

It is here
was Hesperides, Paradisi in Sole
Paradisus Terrestris.

I held a yellow twilight in my head.

I saw the glow if its after-
image, green & blue, circle the globes of apple.
I walked upon the clods
of cumulus, & saw a 'glory' moving always before me
on the grass. And melody came, in openings

of the air. All

eyes. In Shoreham's Albion. A Paradys

Erthely.

At 5º altitude of the sun, on a clear

day, the horizon has become warm

yellow, a faintly yellow horizontal stripe

becomes visible below the sun,

& concentrically above is a luminous
white arc. The eastern counter-twilight

is a transition of orange,
yellow, green & blue. At altitude
0º, in the west, the horizontal stripe
becomes white-yellow, yellow

& green. The arching, white transparency

is encircled by brown tones.
In the east, the shadow of earth rises.
It is bluish-grey, shifting to
purple. Above, the counter-twilight

becomes more vivid, & higher still

there is a bright reflection of the light
in the west - a widespread
illumination. At -1º the color
from the earth upwards is brown-orange
fading to gold. The eastern shadow

rises higher & is darker.

The counter-twilight develops a
border of colors shading from violet to
crimson, orange, yellow, green
& blue. And above that - brightness.
At -3º the colors in the east are

at their most vivid & in the west, a rose-

red spot appears above the
white arc. It grows larger & more
diffuse, the color of salmon.
At -5º this has changed to a radiant

purple. Trunks of trees & soil

take on its warm tint & the east becomes
an after-glow of dull reds.
This purple light fades, apparently

mingling with the horizontal striping,

& the boundary of earth-shadow
disappears in the east. Landscape

illumination fails so rapidly it becomes

difficult to see. Imperceptibly

all colors vanish & there is darkness.

THE WHITE CLOUD. There is a sound of thunder

from the sea, over the slate-blue
Kentish hills. Overhead, the blue sky

intensifies its blue & the wheat radiates yellow.

Upper slopes of the cloud-bank
reflect the rays of the sun. It is a massive
ridge, its underside a misty black
reaching to the horizon.

A dull booming rolls in from

the south, as if through
solid sunlight.
A warm haze settles over the wheat.

The air is sibilant with

insect wings. In the distance,
several reapers bend
to scythe grain

& all is quickened

with hidden electricity.

The field, with its broken fence,

slopes down to where a thatched barn is half
hidden among beeches.

This is a plain structure, shaped like

a hill. Its roof sags, encrusted
with that emerald-green moss, Tortula ruralis:
smooth, rounded clumps -
now, in the dryness of harvest,

partly shrunken, & of a yellow-stained

olive. Three large rooks move slowly above the ripe
stalks unperturbed
by the reapers. A white owl
leaves the barn - whiter still against the dark
valley.

The beeches tremble imperceptibly.

An old, gnarled oak, blasted in the past by
lightning, turns yellow.

The reapers working

against the low rumble
at their backs.
The white cloud still, haze
suspended,

dust from stubble

hanging in the heavy
air, & far
behind the barn a brook
audible.

The dry wheat,

straw warm to the
touch, earth
hot beneath the
foot.

Insect wings. Light feet of squirrels

in the beeches. Rustling of dry leaves on the oak.
Waters. The sunlight in rippling spots as it
plays on the ground. Hues of the swaying wheat
from palest yellows to ruddy gold.
Sheen on the blackbirds. Undertone of thunder.

Dry scrape of grasshoppers. Quick

patter of squirrels. Wind in the oak leaf
& water on stone. A maze of sun dappled over earth.
The straw whispering as it is scythed.
Wings of blackbirds glistening as they settle.
The thunder barely to be heard.

At our backs, surrounding the picture,

is the whole world.

Sun caps the tops of clouds

with silver. Bells in the churches
begin to ring from distant hills.
The moon, rising over a hill, casts long shadows
from a clump
of horse-chestnuts.

A YELLOW MOON, A YELLOW MOON, A YELLOW MOON.

Scents of newly-cut wheat
billow on the night air. An owl
calls. . . echoes & reverberates around us.
Dimness & brilliance meet.
Large stars.

I walked up to the CLOUD,

'a country
where there is no
night'

but of moons
& with heads of fish

in the furrow,

& on each
ear, beneath a husk
of twilight

were as many suns as

kernels,
& fields were far

as the eye
could reach.

Then dipping their silver oars,

the eyes
shed characters of fire
in the grain,

its sheaves as if mackerel

shone on the waves

of air.

I walked up to the CLOUD

& the white light

opened
like flowers -

dog violet,
& asphodel, celandine,

red clover.

I walked up to the CLOUD

& peal after peal

rang out of earth.

First, stones
underfoot
in a sound like muffled

sheep-bells.
Then the roots of the trees

clanged:
rooks, rooks, blackbirds. Cuckoos awoke
in the tubers

- earth-worm & mole & turtle -

all danced to the thunder,

the peal & thunder.
A bellow & clamor
came out
of the hills:

in diapason. . . a dissonance
& musical order.

ROOKS, ROOKS, BLACK-

BIRDS, CUCKOOS.

EARTH-WORM & MOLE

& TURTLE.