Five Edward Thomas Songs: Set 2

Early one morning in May I set out,
And nobody I knew was about.
I'm bound away for ever,
Away somewhere, away for ever.

There was no wind to trouble the weathercocks.
I had burnt my letters and darned my socks.

No one knew I was going away,
I thought myself I should come back some day.

I heard the brook through the town gardens run.
O sweet was the mud turned to dust by the sun.

A gate banged in a fence and banged in my head.
'A fine morning, sir', a shepherd said.

I could not return from my liberty,
To my youth and my love and my misery.

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet,
The only sweet thing that is not also fleet.
I'm bound away for ever,
Away somehwere, away for ever.

Bright clouds of May
Shade half the pond.
Beyond,
All but one bay
Of emerald
Tall reeds
Like crisscross bayonets
Where a bird once called,
Lies bright as the sun.
No one heeds.
The light wind frets
And drifts the scum
Of may-blossom.
Till the moorhen calls
Again.
Naught's to be done
By birds or men.
Still the may falls.

Women he liked, did shovel-bearded Bob,
Old Farmer Hayward of the Heath, but he
Loved horses. He himself was like a cob,
And leather-coloured. Also he loved a tree.

For the life in them he loved most living things,
But a tree chiefly. All along the lane
He planted elms where now the stormcock sings
That travellers hear from the slow-climbing train

Till then the track had never had a name
For all its thicket and the nightingales
That should have earned it. No one was to blame.
To name a thing beloved man sometimes fails.

Many years since, Bob Hayward died, and now
None passes there because the mist and the rain
Out of the elms have turned the lane to slough
And gloom, the name alone survives, Bob's Lane.

Rise up, rise up,
And, as the trumpet blowing
[Chases]1 the dreams of men,
As the dawn glowing
The stars that left unlit
The land and water,
Rise up and scatter
The dew that covers
The print of last night's lovers ---
Scatter it, scatter it!
 
While you are listening
To [the]2 clear horn,
Forget, men, everything
On this earth newborn,
[Except]3 that it is lovelier
Than any mysteries.
Open your eyes to the air
That has washed the eyes of the stars
Through all the dewy night:
Up with the light,
To the old wars;
Arise, arise!

Will you come?
[Will you come?]1
Will you ride
So late
At my side?
O, will you come?

[Will you come?
Will you come]1
If the night
Has a moon,
[Full and bright?
O, will you come]1?

[Would you come?]1
Would you come
If the noon
Gave light,
Not the moon?
[Beautiful]2, would you come?

[Would you have come?]1
Would you have come
Without scorning,
Had it been
Still morning?
Beloved, would you have come?

If you come
Haste and come,
Owls have cried;
It grows dark 
To ride.
Beloved, beautiful, come.