54036: The Chalk-Pit

<p dir="ltr"> 'Is this the road that climbs above and bends<br> Round what was one a chalk-pit: now it is<br> By accident an amphitheatre.<br> Some ash trees standing ankle-deep in briar<br> And bramble act the parts, and neither speak<br> Nor stir,' 'But see: they have fallen, every one,<br> And briar and bramble have grown over them.'<br> 'That is the place. As usual no one is here.<br> Hardly can I imagine the drop of the axe,<br> And the smack that is like an echo, sounding here.'<br> 'I do not understand.' 'Why, what I mean is<br> That I have seen the place two or three times<br> At most, and that its emptiness and silence<br> And stillness haunt me, as if just before<br> It was not empty, silent, still, but full<br> Of life of some kind, perhaps tragical.<br> Has anything unusual happened here?'<br> 'Not that I know of. It is called the Dell.<br> They have not dug chalk here for a century.<br> That was the ash trees' age. But I will ask.'<br> 'No. Do not. I prefer to make a tale,<br> Or better leave it like the end of a play,<br> Actors and audience and lights all gone;<br> For so it looks now. In my memory<br> Again and again I see it, strangely dark,<br> And vacant of a life but just withdrawn.<br> We have not seen the woodman with the axe.<br> Some ghost has left it now as we two came,'<br> 'And yet you doubted if this were the road?'<br> 'Well, sometimes I have thought of it and failed<br> To place it. No. And I am not quite sure,<br> Even now, this is it. For another place,<br> Real or painted, may have combined with it.<br> Or I myself a long way back in time . . .'<br> 'Why, as to that, I used to meet a man---<br> I had forgotten,---searching for birds' nests<br> Along the road and in the chalk-pit too.<br> The wren's hole was an eye that looked at him<br> For recognition. Every nest he knew.<br> He got a stiff neck, by looking this side or that,<br> Spring after spring, he told me, with his laugh,---<br> A sort of laugh. He was a visitor,<br> A man of forty,---smoked and strolled about.<br> At orts and crosses Pleasure and Pain had played<br> On his brown features;---I think both had lost;---<br> Mild and yet wild too. You may know the kind.<br> And once or twice a woman shared his walks,<br> A girl of twenty with a brown boy's face,<br> And hair brown as a thrush or as a nut,<br> Thick eyebrows, glinting eyes---' 'You have said enough.<br> A pair,---free thought, free love,---I know the breed:<br> I shall not mix my fancies up with them.'<br> 'You please yourself. I should prefer the truth<br> Or nothing. Here, in fact, is nothing at all<br> Except a silent place that once rang loud,<br> And trees and us---imperfect friends, we men<br> And trees since time began; and nevertheless<br> Between us still we breed a mystery.'<br></p>