Clear afternoons when I was young,

The enormous arch of heaven hung

So high forever that I knew

The earth turned over slow end true.

Down in the grass and every day,

And secretly, I learned the way

Late shadows filled the hollows in

Where sunlight earlier had been.

Time was that shadow on the ground.

Earth swung my countryside around

From autumn cool to winter cold,

Then round again to summer rolled.

Earth-riding houses faced the north,

And from them men stepped calmly forth

And if they might not shake and fall

For being built, for growing tall.

Between two latitudes' great girth

They walked upon the netted earth.

They strode along my native street

On confident, habitual feet

As if no almost visible line

Marked out direction's stiff design;

Look right, look left, direction said.

Unwavering, they walked ahead

As if, I thought, they walked inside

An endless tunnel shoulder-wide.

I did not know and could not guess

Deliberate seemly singleness:

The eyes look left and right; the will

Remembers destination still.

I trusted walk and wall and hedge;

I travelled area and edge

To find around a corner new

Amazement altering the view;

Rails going somewhere, double, bright;

Wires going somewhere out of sight;

And under trees that arched in files,

Wheels unrolling a reel of miles.

All day outdoors l made believe

That if l tried I could perceive

The boundary lines of schoolroom maps,

And follow one away, perhaps,

Out end around the world I viewed

And home along a latitude.

II

But I climbed a tree so high I weighed

In the wind no more than leaves, and swayed

With the leaves and bark, alone and free,

Riding above geography.

The straight line made the world, I thought,

And some in curves were lightly caught.

I looked from the street beyond my street

To where the sky and highway meet

Where the land rises like a wave in green

And falls away, but falls unseen

On the further side of noon and here.

Then suddenly I looked down sheer

At roof-slope, sidewalk, backyard fence,

Roof, dormer, roof, and their differences;

I aimed the upward lines at heaven,

And counted odd and counted even

The lines that lay on earth and long

And could not in their length be wrong.

I saw the spring here of their flight,

But at their ends and out of sight

London lay east and China west,

Or so the compass in my breast

Reminded me. l never spoke

Of blowing leaves or the blown smoke.

I thought in a language all of signs

For surfaces, and working lines.

Not names of things, but the way they look;

The running wheel, the hinge, the hook

Suddenly printed bright and bare

The color of fire end fine as hair.

Not spoken with the mouth, but drawn

By thought in space, and seen, and gone .

So between ground end sky I dreamed

Of the world the way the great world seemed.

III

Look and come down. The grass received

A child who knew, but now believed.

I walked as if l did not feel

Earth rolling backward under heel..

I lived as if I did not know

That l must bear my part of snow,

My part of darkness, rain, and light,

Like any field or mountain height.

I saw that tower, man, and tree

Rose parallel to gravity,

Although great shapes of windy air

Crowded against then standing there.

It had been true a long time then

That builders were the wisest men.

They knew that every living thing

Had skill of root, or leg, or wing,

And built that secret stone by stone

To make a wall stand up alone.

l sent my mind inside their minds

And found the thing a builder finds

Who watches men heave up a load,

Or lean to the curve along a road,

Or watches birds balance themselves

On lakes of air and airy shelves,

Or watches a tree grip soil and grow,

And guesses the boughs of root below.

The builder knows the sleeping strength

In idle stone and timber-length,

The wings in wood, the solid shoulder

Thrusting up in the buried boulder.

He strips that muscle almost bare

An leaves it looked end tense in air,

As if he gave his building root,

Thick arm, and wrist, and finger-shoot,

That clasp the light ad not the soil,

In motionless and breathless toil.

But most of all the builder knows

That house or bridge or tower grows

By gripping an unseen trellis-frame

Of gravity, miraculous name

And marvelous fact, the core, the heart

Of the builder's great and ancient art.

IV

Using the secret things I found,

I made with my hands upon the ground

Elaborate tunnels, towers, forts,

Houses and harbors, caves, and courts.

In the city of dirt and blocks of wood,

I labored long, and called it good;

Then pulled it down and built it new.

What builders love is what they do,

And the day that sees the work begun,

Not occupants when the house is done.

The mail of blocks is the lonely one

Of all who stand on the world's

And climb its stairs and open its doors.

When I was a child, the voices spoke,

And drifted in air above like smoke.

I heard and knew then all, too well

To remember now, and can only tell

How one, my mother, was always near,

And one, my father, would always hear

My explanation of street and dock

In the commonwealth of building-block.

But most of the people I heard and saw,

Impelled by what might have been a law

Of anger, hope, belief, and love,

Were forces that I knew nothing of.

I thought, if I thought at all, they went

Oblique, erratic, without intent

Across the pattern. Their bodies broke

With moving blot and awkward stroke

The angle, plane, and parallel

In ways I felt but could not tell.

V

The house I lived in was a place

Of warm and lighted blocks of space,

And when my life outdoors was done,

Roof made then all by night seem one.

My father owned - we owned - this air

Between these walls and up the stair.

This was the house. I had no doubt

His doorkey looked the darkness out.

I sprawled upon the floor and read,

But more than book was in my head.

My mood was not then cloud but cave

At the bottom of night. The rolling wave

That floated stars and one white moon

Might flood the house, although not soon.

Not yet, yet, not yet," between the lines

I read in urgent shifting signs.

Here is a hundred-year-old day

In words forever wearing away,

Tall with ships and loud with men,

And over the page the guns again,

And over the page again the words

Looked in the onward flight of birds."

I was that child who turned the page

With a reader's right and hungry rage

To take the meaning and make it his.

There in the book it was and is.

For always reading I looked away

At things a book could never say.

Before bedtime I knew how far

In darkness hung the nearest star;

The nearest house was not so near.

The only light on earth was here .

I felt then how the house must feel

To be a thing built right and real.

At pure full angle wall and door

Were set against the level floor.

The ceiling met wall's upward thrust

With tranquil whiteness, flat and just.

Floor-boards were nailed to been, nailed tight,

And only late on a winter night

When floors cracked in the driven cold,

Did I ever think they might not hold.

By daylight, or in later weather,

They stretched as easily together

As I did in my flesh and bones.

The houseframe timbers on their stones,

Wearing between their ribs the wall

Since I knew anything at all,

Were jointed deep and chosen stout

To keep the wind and darkness out,

And reading there, or lying awake,

I felt the skeleton timbers take

Their proper load on ends and sides,

Where unsupported ceiling rides.

I felt the .whole house concentrate

Its mind and will to stand and wait,

To be within itself, to be,

To be the house by sheltering me.

I knew above this floor another,

And walls that kept the rooms together.

I thought some pride in being there

As they were built, and sheer, and square,

Was what they knew. I know I trusted

Timber unsplit and nails unrusted,

And rock in the old foundation tight

Under the house in the hollow night.