1630 Nature poems

The well rising without sound, the spring on a hillside, the plowshare brimming through deep ground everywhere in the field— The sharp swallows in their swerve flaring and hesitating hunting for the final curve coming closer and closer— The swallow heart from wingbeat to wingbeat counseling decision, decision: thunderous examples. I place my feet with care in such a world.

The sea bit, As they said it would, And the hill slid, As they said it would, And the poor dead Nodded agog The poor head. O topmost lofty Tower of Troy, The poem apparently Speaks with joy Of terrible things. Where is the pleasure The poetry brings? Tell if you can, What does it make? A city of man That will not shake, Or if it shake, Shake with the splendor Of the poem’s pleasure.

Wheal Emma and Brookwood are abandoned copper mines whose remains are located near Buckfastleigh, within the Dartmoor National Park, an area with a long history of widespread industrial activity. From this one locality, in the second half of the nineteenth century, more than thirty thousand tons of copper ore were raised, processed, and shipped for smelting. In 1859, in order to stabilize and increase the power supply, Wheal Emma Leat (a fifteen-mile-long channel) was cut across moorland and around woodland valleys to transport water from the River Swincombe and to feed the mines by supplementing the Mardle, a tributary of the Dart. Some of this now empty moorland waterway can be walked today on Dartmoor. I am grateful to Kevin and Donna Cox, owners of the Brook Manor estate, for showing my collaborator, Ignacio Acosta , and me over the remains of mine workings on their land. Widening the plug doorway on the bob wall left no surface evidence. The Mardle has a floodplain fair and wide. Material would have been trammed directly, although blacked ochreous water flows freely from the collapsed portal. Humphrey kept Kevin back when we went into the near horizontal dark adit stooped at the panic shaft. In Brook Wood at the combe head is a small killas quarry predating all three setts. Rent was paid to the Brook Wood adventurers. Three areas of dumping partially covered this crumbled masonry within woodland of varying density just south of the tarmac road. Yet a leat is depicted on the 1886 OS map channeled entirely in a raised wooden aqueduct. Wheal Emma Leat, 2017, by Ignacio Acosta. Engine House, 2017, by Ignacio Acosta. Then buildings fall into decay where ivy and tree growth have taken hold. The silted channel follows the contour round hills and combes using the best-fit method to Wheal Emma sett. Whereas conifer scrub and dense patches of rhododendron are seen quite late in the sequence. All 99 stations were used and having passed over the wheel water may have been diverted. The long wheelhouse sides are not straight but slightly kinked to provide for a dished 60-ft wheel over an arched tailrace exit at floor level. In this same evening were those people engaged to feast on roast beef and strong ale nearby. Within the valley of the holy brook the mines are situated near Buckfastleigh, crushed ores are hauled for the South Wales copper smelters, Alfred Jenkin their agent in Cornwall. Over and over had they been in the heaven of expectation finding the ore ground pitched eastward; those who gambled their lives in swift currents and dark treacherous pools. Granting two properties as one sett at a royalty of 1/24 together with fine machinery, wheels, a beam engine, and water privileges. One hundred and twenty- five workers being then separated only by a small transverse valley. The flat rods moved off so quietly that those not looking were unconscious of their being in motion. Steam was employed only at limited scale. Emma, 116 fathoms below adit, pumping backed-up water for life itself: men cutting lode in fume- and dust-ridden air or crushing with hand tools, spalling, cobbing, came our tramroad to harbor direct in Totnes and thence by sea to Neath — no more windlass or horse-whim turning. What you see here is the dressing floor. Their Phoenician purple dye — their copper with fifteen percent Cornish tin. Remember when a solid solution of metal elements was defined by ecstatic bonding. Water poured over its surface producing hydrogen gas. The new material is stable and ready for use but scaled-up production could fuel cannibal drones. Tailrace, 2017, by Ignacio Acosta. Green Pool, 2017, by Ignacio Acosta. We love the color and the stillness. Nothing would live in this water now at the base of a spoil heap two stories high. Worm casts and broadly scattered pits are laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. This is the green pool: a water soak away made from glass epoxy. They are brown and green like uneven flat loaves and the museum label reads tortas de cobre . Moss grows on anything like black flame retardant mechanically supports and electrically connects — the fenced-off shaft protecting the river from what leaches out between sea-borne traders. At these horizons the levels were extended over 330 fathoms. Small groups of self-employed miners and their families continued to migrate. Here was alluvial gold mixed with sand and gravel, producing more than 14 heads of stamps were capable of crushing. Composed of quartz, peach, and gossan with black and yellow copper letting down a stream of mineralized water. For in much of this section the leat had been cut from solid rock. A stone-lined sluice is just visible. 4,000 shares on the cost book system, streamworks in eluvial ground, 5 shillings each deposit. Nothing but a washing strake such as we use, commodified and priced both minerals since the Bronze Age in West Devon, in Cornwall beneath a layer of black sand. An adit is also brought home to the spot from below: narrow tailings in steep profile cast every shovel full as it rises into a tye. £40,000 worth of copper ore from above the 50-fathom level. Water breaks up the soil, exposing mere threads of land, linear strips cut into channels called races dug across the ground to be worked, removing the overburden.

The Republic lies in the blossoms of Washington. —Robert Bly White petals drop into the dark river. Heedless of political significance, they ride out to the sea like stars. I'm the space explorer. I travel to a planet where there are no plants or animals. Everyone lives in harmony. I don't want to go home. I'm the pioneer man and the pioneer woman, both at the same time. I build my house with my own hands, and it's beautiful, with simple, perfect lines. I'm the farmer waiting for the vegetables to grow, so I can eat. I'm the hunter aiming at the bear. I don't want to shoot it, but my family needs meat. The bear gives me a long dumb animal look. We'll use his skin for blankets, his fat to light our lamps. Our cabin will stink all night. I'm the cabin boy who graduates to captain. Shipboard sex is rough, but it suits my taste. I'm the man on the steps of the house where the President's widow lives. All night I wait for the stranger to get out of his car so I can flash my look of recognition. I'm the cowpoke who sleeps with his horses. I'm the man who loves dogs. I'm the cranky President sneaking away to swim in the Potomac. I'm the black man. I close my eyes and it gets dark inside. I feel the sun on my face. I see the light through my eyelids. It's bright, intelligent free of all cares. I'm the heir of a great American family. My success is guaranteed. Unexpected tragedy is all that can stop me. I'm the popular senator teaching his son to shave.

A huge purple door washed up in the bay overnight, its paintwork blistered and peeled from weeks at sea. The town storyteller wasted no time in getting to work: the beguiling, eldest girl of a proud, bankrupt farmer had slammed that door in the face of a Freemason’s son, who in turn had bulldozed both farm and family over the cliff, except for the girl, who lived now by the light and heat of a driftwood fire on a beach. There was some plan to use the door as a jetty or landing-stage, but it was all bullshit, the usual idle talk. That’s when he left and never returned. Him I won’t name — not known for his big ideas or carpentry skills, a famous non-swimmer, but last seen sailing out, riding the current and rounding the point in a small boat with tell-tale flashes of almost certainly purple paint.

TO THE LORD FAIRFAX See how the archèd earth does here Rise in a perfect hemisphere! The stiffest compass could not strike A line more circular and like; Nor softest pencil draw a brow So equal as this hill does bow. It seems as for a model laid, And that the world by it was made. Here learn, ye mountains more unjust, Which to abrupter greatness thrust, That do with your hook-shouldered height The earth deform and heaven fright, For whose excrescence, ill-designed, Nature must a new centre find, Learn here those humble steps to tread, Which to securer glory lead. See what a soft access and wide Lies open to its grassy side; Nor with the rugged path deters The feet of breathless travellers. See then how courteous it ascends, And all the way it rises bends; Nor for itself the height does gain, But only strives to raise the plain. Yet thus it all the field commands, And in unenvied greatness stands, Discerning further than the cliff Of heaven-daring Tenerife. How glad the weary seamen haste When they salute it from the mast! By night the Northern Star their way Directs, and this no less by day. Upon its crest this mountain grave A plump of agèd trees does wave. No hostile hand durst ere invade With impious steel the sacred shade. For something always did appear Of the great Master’s terror there: And men could hear his armour still Rattling through all the grove and hill. Fear of the Master, and respect Of the great Nymph, did it protect, Vera the Nymph that him inspired, To whom he often here retired, And on these oaks engraved her name; Such wounds alone these woods became: But ere he well the barks could part ’Twas writ already in their heart. For they (’tis credible) have sense, As we, of love and reverence, And underneath the coarser rind The genius of the house do bind. Hence they successes seem to know, And in their Lord’s advancement grow; But in no memory were seen, As under this, so straight and green; Yet now no further strive to shoot, Contented if they fix their root. Nor to the wind’s uncertain gust, Their prudent heads too far intrust. Only sometimes a fluttering breeze Discourses with the breathing trees, Which in their modest whispers name Those acts that swelled the cheek of fame. ‘Much other groves’, say they, ‘than these And other hills him once did please. Through groves of pikes he thundered then, And mountains raised of dying men. For all the civic garlands due To him, our branches are but few. Nor are our trunks enow to bear The trophies of one fertile year.’ ’Tis true, ye trees, nor ever spoke More certain oracles in oak. But peace, (if you his favour prize): That courage its own praises flies. Therefore to your obscurer seats From his own brightness he retreats: Nor he the hills without the groves, Nor height, but with retirement, loves.

XLV. Upon the Vine-tree. What is the Vine, more than another Tree, Nay most, than it, more tall, more comly be? What Work-man thence will take a Beam or Pin, To make ought which may be delighted in? It's Excellency in it's Fruit doth lie. A fruitless Vine! It is not worth a Fly. Comparison. What are Professors more than other men? Nothing at all. Nay, there's not one in ten, Either for Wealth, or Wit, that may compare, In many things, with some that Carnal are. Good are they, if they mortifie their Sin; But without that they are not worth a Pin.

Look, above the creek, hummingbirds in the trumpet vine. Not too close, wait. See the green blurs stitching the leaves? Here at the edge of the millennium I don’t imagine you’d call them anything as archaic as angels. But aren’t they agents of a sort, and secret, dissolving and solidifying, spying from their constantly shifting perches of air, always nervous of us, risking only a stab in a bell of petals? Don’t look so stunned, lay your pack in the needles and catch a breath. I know, you thought you knew me, and now to hear me talk this way ... I’m glad I’ve stopped pretending to love people and the cities where people can’t love themselves. This is what the quiet accomplishes, and the water trusting the shadows to eventually peel back to the trees. Small wonder the angels are said to despise us. Still, without them how do we account for our meanness? Look at that, what else can promenade in the air? And how easily they’re alarmed, revving off into the mist.

Green mwold on zummer bars do show That they’ve a-dripp’d in winter wet; The hoof-worn ring o’ groun’ below The tree, do tell o’ storms or het; The trees in rank along a ledge Do show where woonce did bloom a hedge; An’ where the vurrow-marks do stripe The down, the wheat woonce rustled ripe. Each mark ov things a-gone vrom view— To eyezight’s woone, to soulzight two. The grass ageän the mwoldrèn door ’S a tóken sad o’ vo’k a-gone, An’ where the house, bwoth wall an’ vloor, ’S a-lost, the well mid linger on. What tokens, then, could Meäry gi’e That she’d a-liv’d, an’ liv’d vor me, But things a-done vor thought an’ view? Good things that nwone ageän can do, An’ every work her love ha’ wrought To eyezight’s woone, but two to thought.

As it would for a prow, the basin parts with your foot. Never a marsh, of heron blue but the single red feather from the wing of some black bird, somewhere a planked path winds above water, the line of sky above this aching space. Movement against the surface is the page that accepts no ink. A line running even over the alternating depths, organisms, algae, a rotting leaf. Walk naked before me carrying a sheaf of sticks. It’s the most honest thing a man can do. As water would to accept you, I part a mouth, a marsh, or margin is of containment, the inside circuitous edge. No line to follow out to ocean, no river against an envelope of trembling white ships. Here I am landlock. Give me your hand.