Clown In The Moon

 by Dylan Thomas

Clown In The Moon 

My tears are like the quiet drift

Of petals from some magic rose;

And all my grief flows from the rift

Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,

It would crumble;

It is so sad and beautiful,

So tremulously like a dream. 

In Country Sleep 

I

Never and never, my girl riding far and near

In the land of the hearthstone tales, and spelled asleep,

Fear or believe that the wolf in a sheepwhite hood

Loping and bleating roughly and blithely shall leap,

My dear, my dear,

Out of a lair in the flocked leaves in the dew dipped year

To eat your heart in the house in the rosy wood.

Sleep, good, for ever, slow and deep, spelled rare and wise,

My girl ranging the night in the rose and shire

Of the hobnail tales: no gooseherd or swine will turn

Into a homestall king or hamlet of fire

And prince of ice

To court the honeyed heart from your side before sunrise

In a spinney of ringed boys and ganders, spike and burn,

Nor the innocent lie in the rooting dingle wooed

And staved, and riven among plumes my rider weep.

From the broomed witch's spume you are shielded by fern

And flower of country sleep and the greenwood keep.

Lie fast and soothed,

Safe be and smooth from the bellows of the rushy brood.

Never, my girl, until tolled to sleep by the stern

Bell believe or fear that the rustic shade or spell

Shall harrow and snow the blood while you ride wide and near,

For who unmanningly haunts the mountain ravened eaves

Or skulks in the dell moon but moonshine echoing clear

From the starred well?

A hill touches an angel. Out of a saint's cell

The nightbird lauds through nunneries and domes of leaves

Her robin breasted tree, three Marys in the rays.

_Sanctum sanctorum_ the animal eye of the wood

In the rain telling its beads, and the gravest ghost

The owl at its knelling. Fox and holt kneel before blood.

Now the tales praise

The star rise at pasture and nightlong the fables graze

On the lord's-table of the bowing grass. Fear most

For ever of all not the wolf in his baaing hood

Nor the tusked prince, in the ruttish farm, at the rind

And mire of love, but the Thief as meek as the dew.

The country is holy: O bide in that country kind,

Know the green good,

Under the prayer wheeling moon in the rosy wood

Be shielded by chant and flower and gay may you

Lie in grace. Sleep spelled at rest in the lowly house

In the squirrel nimble grove, under linen and thatch

And star: held and blessed, though you scour the high four

Winds, from the dousing shade and the roarer at the latch,

Cool in your vows.

Yet out of the beaked, web dark and the pouncing boughs

Be you sure the Thief will seek a way sly and sure

And sly as snow and meek as dew blown to the thorn,

This night and each vast night until the stern bell talks

In the tower and tolls to sleep over the stalls

Of the hearthstone tales my own, lost love; and the soul walks

The waters shorn.

This night and each night since the falling star you were born,

Ever and ever he finds a way, as the snow falls,

As the rain falls, hail on the fleece, as the vale mist rides

Through the haygold stalls, as the dew falls on the wind-

Milled dust of the apple tree and the pounded islands

Of the morning leaves, as the star falls, as the winged

Apple seed glides,

And falls, and flowers in the yawning wound at our sides,

As the world falls, silent as the cyclone of silence.

II

Night and the reindeer on the clouds above the haycocks

And the wings of the great roc ribboned for the fair!

The leaping saga of prayer! And high, there, on the hare-

Heeled winds the rooks

Cawing from their black bethels soaring, the holy books

Of birds! Among the cocks like fire the red fox

Burning! Night and the vein of birds in the winged, sloe wrist

Of the wood! Pastoral beat of blood through the laced leaves!

The stream from the priest black wristed spinney and sleeves

Of thistling frost

Of the nightingale's din and tale! The upgiven ghost

Of the dingle torn to singing and the surpliced

Hill of cypresses! The din and tale in the skimmed

Yard of the buttermilk rain on the pail! The sermon

Of blood! The bird loud vein! The saga from mermen

To seraphim

Leaping! The gospel rooks! All tell, this night, of him

Who comes as red as the fox and sly as the heeled wind.

Illumination of music! the lulled black-backed

Gull, on the wave with sand in its eyes! And the foal moves

Through the shaken greensward lake, silent, on moonshod hooves,

In the winds' wakes.

Music of elements, that a miracle makes!

Earth, air, water, fire, singing into the white act,

The haygold haired, my love asleep, and the rift blue

Eyed, in the haloed house, in her rareness and hilly

High riding, held and blessed and true, and so stilly

Lying the sky

Might cross its planets, the bell weep, night gather her eyes,

The Thief fall on the dead like the willy nilly dew,

Only for the turning of the earth in her holy

Heart! Slyly, slowly, hearing the wound in her side go

Round the sun, he comes to my love like the designed snow,

And truly he

Flows to the strand of flowers like the dew's ruly sea,

And surely he sails like the ship shape clouds. Oh he

Comes designed to my love to steal not her tide raking

Wound, nor her riding high, nor her eyes, nor kindled hair,

But her faith that each vast night and the saga of prayer

He comes to take

Her faith that this last night for his unsacred sake

He comes to leave her in the lawless sun awaking

Naked and forsaken to grieve he will not come.

Ever and ever by all your vows believe and fear

My dear this night he comes and night without end my dear

Since you were born:

And you shall wake, from country sleep, this dawn and each first dawn,

Your faith as deathless as the outcry of the ruled sun.