Lloyd Roberts

“ And winds beyond the heavens are dancing in the light.
One Morning when the Rain-Birds Call
The snows have joined the little streams and slid into the sea;
The mountain sides are damp and black and steaming in the sun;
But Spring, who should be with us now, is waiting timidly
For Winter to unbar the gates and let the rivers run.
It matters not how green the grass is lifting through the mold,
How strong the sap is climbing out to every naked bough,
That in the towns the market-stalls are bright with jonquil gold,
And over marsh and meadowland the frogs are fluting now. ”

“ A thousand little summer winds are singing in the wheat.
Red-lipped poppies stand and burn,
The hedges are aglow;
The daisies climb the windy hills
Till all grow white like snow.
And when the slim, pale moon slides up, and dreamy night is near,
There's a whisper in the beeches for lonely hearts to hear.
Poppies burn in Italy,
And suns grow round and high;
The black pines of Posilipo
Are gaunt upon the sky—
And yet I know an English elm beside an English lane
That calls me through the twilight and the miles of misty rain. ”

“ A thousand stars are scattered thick beneath the forest lake;
We pass—with only laughter for the havoc we have made.
There's not a wind that brushes the long bright fields of corn,
Or, shrieking, drives the broken wreck beneath a blackened sea,
There's not a wind that draws the rain across the face of morn
That does not rise when I arise and sink again with me. ”

“ And chaos lifts the heavy sea and bends the hollow sky.
The winds are drunk with freedom—the crowded valleys roar;
The madness surges through their veins, and when they gallop out
The black rain follows close behind, the pale sun flees before,
And recklessly across the world goes all the broken rout.
I was striding on the uplands when the host was running mad,
I saw them threshing through the leaves and daisy tops below,
And as their feet came up the hill, my tired heart grew glad—
Till at the music of their throats I knew that I must go. ”

“ Runners of the Rain
Gaunt and black the naked pines are scrawled across the sky;
The wild wet winds are clinging where the hard peaks lift and soar;
They watch our long gray hosts of rain forever marching by,
While up through all the canyons we send our sullen roar.
From every sodden meadow we've trodden out the sun;
We've ground the pale green stalks of grass
that lifted through the hills;
Across the yelping torrents a thousand feet have run,
Till waters scream in anger and the wide-mouthed valley fills. ”

“ We stamped the miles of mosses and blackened out the day,
And waked the awful silence where all the winds have died.
The stars flamed brave before us and the greater light hung still
When the white smoke of our breath blew up
and drowned the hollow night.
We crushed them out beneath our feet and leapt from hill to hill,
Till east to east the sweep of space was rocking with our flight.
The little walls of man uprose like shields beneath our feet;
We beat upon their hollow cells a million shafts of rain ”

“ While Death stalks free in the silent world,
Through the gloom of a winter's day.
In the creeping night the black winds cry.
The daylight comes like a stifled sigh.
The hearths gleam red, while the long smoke
Crawls up to a grayer sky.
Winter Winds
Like a hard cruel lash the long lean winds
are laid on the back of the land,
Curling over the breast of the hills and cutting
the feet of the plain,
Till the naked limbs of the forest host cringe
at the lift of the hand,
And the white-ribbed waves on the granite shore
moan and sob in their pain. ”

“ O England! when our feet grow cold and will no longer roam,
We see beyond your milk-white cliffs the round,
green fields of home.
The Madness of Winds
On all the upland pastures the strong winds gallop free,
Trampling down the flowered stalks sleepy in the sun,
Whirl away in blue and gold all their finery,
Till naked crouch the gentle hosts where the winds have run. ”

“ And sweet and hot, the scented winds puff sultry to the bay,
The shadow of Vesuvius lies gray across the land—
And on my heart a loneliness that calls me far away.
My restless feet are weary of these hills of purple vines,
These crooked groves of olive trees that scrawl the crooked lanes
The walnuts shoulder weakly round the tall Italian pines,
That whisper like the waves of wheat across the yellow plains.
All day beneath the ruins of Donn' Anna gaunt and black,
The boats of fisher-folk go by with song and trailing net ”

“ And a wind in every tree-top was talking small and thin:
"The dead hand of Winter is knocking at the door,
And the white froth of flowers will float no more.
"The gray ranks of grasses are bared of their bees,
Their voices sound like falling spume between the leaden seas ”

“ The folk were walking two-and-two in every lane and street—
You scarce could hear your neighbour for the racket of their feet.
She could not see the sun shine for dust about the sky;
She could not hear the winds call, the walls went up so high;
And even when the night came to brush aside the day,
She found about the city they were driving it away.
"Then what have you got here?" the Country asked the Town.
"There's not a green leaf anywhere, the world is bleak and brown,
I haven't seen a red cheek nor heard a woman's laughter ”