Irish Jesuit Province

July of the MeadowsAuthor(s): Michael WalshSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 60, No. 709 (Jul., 1932), pp. 400-404Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20513296 .

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400

JULY OF THE MEADOWS By MICHAEL WALSH.

THERE is something in the moods of July that appeals in a special way to poets. Is it that sumnmer has reached its noonday and has moved

a little towards evening? The leaves lhave lost the fresh ness of May and June; many of the blossom-s have died, and here and there boughs are putting forth their fruit.

Yet July is a month of glamour-glamour of the meadows, the wild rose and the scent of woodbine at dusk. It is of the " Elysian Fields "J of July that an Irish poet of our own days sings:

"So have I turned, 0 lovely meadows; So have I felt your call again;

So have I stood and brooded on you; So have I known a joy half-pain."2

But how much did the meadows mean to the song of Francis Ledwidge, who was killed in Flanders on the last day of July just fifteen years ago?

" Deep in the meadows I would sing a song." And yet, as a poet will yearn, he yearned to roam;

but how much of the joy of coming back was in that desire? When he wrote " After My Last Sonig "-the last poenm in his first volume, "1 Songs of the Fields ' the war lhad not broken out, and I do not think that it

was in foreign battlefields he foresaw the opportunity for travel. Anyhow, he wrote:

"Where I shall sleep when my last song is over The air is smelling like a feast of winle,

And purple breakers of the windy clover Shall roll to cool this burning brow of mine."

"I'm wild for wandering to the far-off places, Since one forsook me wlhom I held most dear;

I want to see new wonders and new faces Beyond east-seas, but I will win back here--"

But he never came back-never came back, at least, to

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JULY OF THE MEADOWS 401

that evening of life, calm and pastoral, which was at the heart of his desire. Many are the rural graveyards of his beloved Meath sleeping in the sun and quiet of a July day-but where is the grave of Francis Ledwidge?

Alice Meynell, who distinguished hierself as an essayist as well as a poet, has an essay entitled " July." In a brief paragraph I will show one aspect of that July essay:

" One has the leisure of July for perceiving all the

differences of the greeni leaves. It is no longer a difference in degrees of maturity, for all the trees have darkened to their final tone, and stand in their difference of character and not of miere date. Almost all the green is grave, not sad anid not dull. It has a darkened and

a daily colour in majestic, but not o'btious, harmony with dark grey slies, and might look to inconstant eyes as prosaic after spring as eleven o'clock looks after the dawn.

" Gravity is the word-not solemnity-as towards evening, nor menace as at night. The daylight trees of July are signs of common beauty, common freshness, and a mystery familiar and abiding as day and night. . . . But if one could go by all thle woods, across all the

old forests that are now meadow laneds set with trees, and could walk a country gathering trees of a single kind in the mind, as one walks a garden collecting flowers of a single kind in the hand, wouild not the har

vest be a harvest of poplars?" Mrs. Meynell has got into her essay the many qualities

essential to July. Now that she reminds me of the poplar trees, I remember them in the fields of youth, their delicate leaves trembling even on a calm day. Theirs is not an aggressive hue-rather is it shy and retiring, anid I can well understand those leaves being a poet's harvest.

" The nmoon-flowers blowing in the meadows free." This line, my own poor attempt, has brought to the

minds of the critics the first days of July. So also has " the deep green meadow-wa-ves when Juine is old." and

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402 THE IRISH MONTHLY

"0 long July browning the meadows for the mowing time. "

One associates those ripe meadows witlh middle July a great sea of grass with wa-ves and billows that chase one another through the sun and shade of the windy noon.

"The children in this shady grass Would lie and watch the swallows pass, With all around thenm waving higl The windy meadows of July."

Yes, it is the month that the swallows are most inI evidence, darting through the air, now high, now low, and perhaps this is one of the reasons, why one writer at least contemplates July a little wistfuilly. They are la symbol of the brevity of life; they stay with uis only a summer, and depart again to warm Southern climes-to Tndia, Burma, and the Malay Peninsula. There is something of the serenity and loneliness of late Juily in that beautiful story which Patrick Pearse wrote about the little boy and the, swallows. iHow he watched then

with his child-eyes set out on their long flight, and won dered when he, too, could fly away after the birds to the " land where it would be sulmmer always."

And the cuckoo, too leaves us in July-another sign that summer is going.

Yet summer reserves for Jufly-her last month-thle fragrance of new-mown hiay "1 when the meadow lies sweet in death," and the scent, of the wild rose:

And sweet the rose floats oni the arching briars, Green fountain, sprayed with delicate frail fires."1

The couplet is Laurence Binyon's. When James Elroy Flecker, slowly, dying of con

sumption at Davos, remembered his home in Gloucester shire, it was of the English Jully he thouight and cried out:

"h Ob, shall I never, never be home againi!

Meadows of England . . . . !t I

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JULY OF THE MEADOWS 403

Similarly England's Catholic poet, Alfred Noyes, in his fine poem, " Exiles ":

"Yet if thou wake in Heaven thou shalt hear MIeadows of England whispering, in thine ear."

That kindly andl holy Irish Jesuit, the late Father Joseph McDounell, regarded the wild rose as surpassingo, all other flowers of the field and hedge in the delicacy of its fragrance. I have often wondered if it was to him a fragrance blown backward from the Promised Land. In the tangled hedges of July one sees this wild rose; its scent blows over the hay-field and brings back to us those "' visionary hours " of which Wordsworth sings.

Hilaire Bielloc goes ouit on a JuLly morning, looks upon his meadow and finds it ripe for the mowing. He re turns to his barn, takes a seytlhe from the wall, sharpens it, and takes off his coat to the day's task. And Belloc can mow and leave (an unforgettable memory of his mowing in one of his delightful essays.

In these days of machinery one recalls the long July day, when the slow mowing with the scythe made the day long. The sturdy toiler, with the perspiration on his forelhead and his back bent to the mowing, made a fine picture of courage and strength and manliness.

There is the memory of dead summers-of long-gone Julys-in Robin Flower's poem, " Joy's Immortality "I:

"These are the trees that saw them pass The happy fields among

When they were only lad and lass That now are dead so long. ...

They saw the summer glories glow And rain of autumn leaves,

Nor wept that earth's own kind should go Where earth's own bosom heaves.

And they are gone! The trees remain, The birds are singing still,

The footsteps of the wind and rain Are silver on the hill."?

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404 THE IRISH MONTELY

As July grows old we feel that the year has passed the glory of its noonday-that summer, too, has a brief life -and that the longest day comes to an end. We think of the ancient Persian occupied with the same thought that is common to hutimanity to-day:

"Alas that spring should vanish with the, rose, That yo-uth's sweet-scented manuseript should close."

May I be pardoned if I quote, in conclusion, from my oWn verses, "' The Passi;ng of July":

"Is it your new-mown fragrance I shiall miss When meadows fall

Sweet from the scythe? Is it the dying rose Upon the wall?

Of all the summer morns, 'tis yours alone, Wild-rose July,

My heart will follow with a strange regret, And know not why....

Is it because of water-lily days I knew of old,

Or those far happy suns in which she came With wand of gold;

Is it because you hold the wild-rose hour That I shall die . .?

Your woodbine-perfumed passing brings regret, I know not why."I

And so with the passing of July the soul of man yearns, like the child in the Pearse story, to fly after the swallows to the land where it is summer always-to the Summer where there is no death.

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