Tree and Leaf Read online

The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,

  green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,

  thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,

  slime crawling up from mud to live and die,

  these each are duly registered and print

  the brain’s contortions with a separate dint.

  Yet trees are not ‘trees’, until so named and seen –

  and never were so named, till those had been

  who speech’s involuted breath unfurled,

  faint echo and dim picture of the world,

  but neither record nor a photograph,

  being divination, judgement, and a laugh,

  response of those that felt astir within

  by deep monition movements that were kin

  to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:

  free captives undermining shadowy bars,

  digging the foreknown from experience

  and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.

  Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves,

  and looking backward they beheld the elves

  that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,

  and light and dark on secret looms entwined.

  He sees no stars who does not see them first

  of living silver made that sudden burst

  to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song,

  whose very echo after-music long

  has since pursued. There is no firmament,

  only a void, unless a jewelled tent

  myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,

  unless the mother’s womb whence all have birth.

  The heart of man is not compound of lies,

  but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,

  and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,

  man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.

  Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,

  and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,

  his world-dominion by creative act:

  not his to worship the great Artefact,

  man, sub-creator, the refracted light

  through whom is splintered from a single White

  to many hues, and endlessly combined

  in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

  Though all the crannies of the world we filled

  with elves and goblins, though we dared to build

  gods and their houses out of dark and light,

  and sow the seed of dragons, ’twas our right

  (used or misused). The right has not decayed.

  We make still by the law in which we’re made.

  Yes! ‘wish-fulfilment dreams’ we spin to cheat

  our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!

  Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,

  or some things fair and others ugly deem?

  All wishes are not idle, nor in vain

  fulfilment we devise – for pain is pain,

  not for itself to be desired, but ill;

  or else to strive or to subdue the will

  alike were graceless; and of Evil this

  alone is dreadly certain: Evil is.

  Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate,

  that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;

  that seek no parley, and in guarded room,

  though small and bare, upon a clumsy loom

  weave tissues gilded by the far-off day

  hoped and believed in under Shadow’s sway.

  Blessed are the men of Noah’s race that build

  their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,

  and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,

  a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.

  Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme

  of things not found within recorded time.

  It is not they that have forgot the Night,

  or bid us flee to organized delight,

  in lotus-isles of economic bliss

  forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss

  (and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,

  bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).

  Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,

  and those that hear them yet may yet beware.

  They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,

  and yet they would not in despair retreat,

  but oft to victory have turned the lyre

  and kindled hearts with legendary fire,

  illuminating Now and dark Hath-been

  with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

  I would that I might with the minstrels sing

  and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.

  I would be with the mariners of the deep

  that cut their slender planks on mountains steep

  and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,

  for some have passed beyond the fabled West.

  I would with the beleaguered fools be told,

  that keep an inner fastness where their gold,

  impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring

  to mint in image blurred of distant king,

  or in fantastic banners weave the sheen

  heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

  I will not walk with your progressive apes,

  erect and sapient. Before them gapes

  the dark abyss to which their progress tends –

  if by God’s mercy progress ever ends,

  and does not ceaselessly revolve the same

  unfruitful course with changing of a name.

  I will not tread your dusty path and flat,

  denoting this and that by this and that,

  your world immutable wherein no part

  the little maker has with maker’s art.

  I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,

  nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.

  In Paradise perchance the eye may stray

  from gazing upon everlasting Day

  to see the day-illumined, and renew

  from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.

  Then looking on the Blessed Land ’twill see

  that all is as it is, and yet made free:

  Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,

  garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.

  Evil it will not see, for evil lies

  not in God’s picture but in crooked eyes,

  not in the source but in malicious choice,

  and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.

  In Paradise they look no more awry;

  and though they make anew, they make no lie.

  Be sure they still will make, not being dead,

  and poets shall have flames upon their head,

  and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:

  there each shall choose for ever from the All.

  LEAF BY NIGGLE

  There was once a little man called Niggle, who had a long journey to make. He did not want to go, indeed the whole idea was distasteful to him; but he could not get out of it. He knew he would have to start some time, but he did not hurry with his preparations.

  Niggle was a painter. Not a very successful one, partly because he had many other things to do. Most of these things he thought were a nuisance; but he did them fairly well, when he could not get out of them: which (in his opinion) was far too often. The laws in his country were rather strict. There were other hindrances, too. For one thing, he was sometimes just idle, and did nothing at all. For another, he was kind-hearted, in a way. You know the sort of kind heart: it made him uncomfortable more often than it made him do anything; and even when he did anything, it did not prevent him from grumbling, losing his temper, and swearing (mostly to himself). All the same, it did land him in a good many odd jobs for his neighbour, Mr Parish, a man with a lame leg. Occasionally he even helped other people from further off, if they came and asked him to. Also, now and agai
n, he remembered his journey, and began to pack a few things in an ineffectual way: at such times he did not paint very much.

  He had a number of pictures on hand; most of them were too large and ambitious for his skill. He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges. Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree, with all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different.

  There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots. Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to. Then all round the Tree, and behind it, through the gaps in the leaves and boughs, a country began to open out; and there were glimpses of a forest marching over the land, and of mountains tipped with snow. Niggle lost interest in his other pictures; or else he took them and tacked them on to the edges of his great picture. Soon the canvas became so large that he had to get a ladder; and he ran up and down it, putting in a touch here, and rubbing out a patch there. When people came to call, he seemed polite enough, though he fiddled a little with the pencils on his desk. He listened to what they said, but underneath he was thinking all the time about his big canvas, in the tall shed that had been built for it out in his garden (on a plot where once he had grown potatoes).

  He could not get rid of his kind heart. ‘I wish I was more strong-minded!’ he sometimes said to himself, meaning that he wished other people’s troubles did not make him feel uncomfortable. But for a long time he was not seriously perturbed. ‘At any rate, I shall get this one picture done, my real picture, before I have to go on that wretched journey,’ he used to say. Yet he was beginning to see that he could not put off his start indefinitely. The picture would have to stop just growing and get finished.

  One day, Niggle stood a little way off from his picture and considered it with unusual attention and detachment. He could not make up his mind what he thought about it, and wished he had some friend who would tell him what to think. Actually it seemed to him wholly unsatisfactory, and yet very lovely, the only really beautiful picture in the world. What he would have liked at that moment would have been to see himself walk in, and slap him on the back, and say (with obvious sincerity): ‘Absolutely magnificent! I see exactly what you are getting at. Do get on with it, and don’t bother about anything else! We will arrange for a public pension, so that you need not.’

  However, there was no public pension. And one thing he could see: it would need some concentration, some work, hard uninterrupted work, to finish the picture, even at its present size. He rolled up his sleeves, and began to concentrate. He tried for several days not to bother about other things. But there came a tremendous crop of interruptions. Things went wrong in his house; he had to go and serve on a jury in the town; a distant friend fell ill; Mr Parish was laid up with lumbago; and visitors kept on coming. It was springtime, and they wanted a free tea in the country: Niggle lived in a pleasant little house, miles away from the town. He cursed them in his heart, but he could not deny that he had invited them himself, away back in the winter, when he had not thought it an ‘interruption’ to visit the shops and have tea with acquaintances in the town. He tried to harden his heart; but it was not a success. There were many things that he had not the face to say no to, whether he thought them duties or not; and there were some things he was compelled to do, whatever he thought. Some of his visitors hinted that his garden was rather neglected, and that he might get a visit from an Inspector. Very few of them knew about his picture, of course; but if they had known, it would not have made much difference. I doubt if they would have thought that it mattered much. I dare say it was not really a very good picture, though it may have had some good passages. The Tree, at any rate, was curious. Quite unique in its way. So was Niggle; though he was also a very ordinary and rather silly little man.

  At length Niggle’s time became really precious. His acquaintances in the distant town began to remember that the little man had got to make a troublesome journey, and some began to calculate how long at the latest he could put off starting. They wondered who would take his house, and if the garden would be better kept.

  The autumn came, very wet and windy. The little painter was in his shed. He was up on the ladder, trying to catch the gleam of the westering sun on the peak of a snow-mountain, which he had glimpsed just to the left of the leafy tip of one of the Tree’s branches. He knew that he would have to be leaving soon: perhaps early next year. He could only just get the picture finished, and only so so, at that: there were some corners where he would not have time now to do more than hint at what he wanted.

  There was a knock on the door. ‘Come in!’ he said sharply, and climbed down the ladder. He stood on the floor twiddling his brush. It was his neighbour, Parish: his only real neighbour, all other folk lived a long way off. Still, he did not like the man very much: partly because he was so often in trouble and in need of help; and also because he did not care about painting, but was very critical about gardening. When Parish looked at Niggle’s garden (which was often) he saw mostly weeds; and when he looked at Niggle’s pictures (which was seldom) he saw only green and grey patches and black lines, which seemed to him nonsensical. He did not mind mentioning the weeds (a neighbourly duty), but he refrained from giving any opinion of the pictures. He thought this was very kind, and he did not realize that, even if it was kind, it was not kind enough. Help with the weeds (and perhaps praise for the pictures) would have been better.

  ‘Well, Parish, what is it?’ said Niggle.

  ‘I oughtn’t to interrupt you, I know,’ said Parish (without a glance at the picture). ‘You are very busy, I’m sure.’

  Niggle had meant to say something like that himself, but he had missed his chance. All he said was: ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I have no one else to turn to,’ said Parish.

  ‘Quite so,’ said Niggle with a sigh: one of those sighs that are a private comment, but which are not made quite inaudible. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘My wife has been ill for some days, and I am getting worried,’ said Parish. ‘And the wind has blown half the tiles off my roof, and water is pouring into the bedroom. I think I ought to get the doctor. And the builders, too, only they take so long to come. I was wondering if you had any wood and canvas you could spare, just to patch me up and see me through for a day or two.’ Now he did look at the picture.

  ‘Dear, dear!’ said Niggle. ‘You are unlucky. I hope it is no more than a cold that your wife has got. I’ll come round presently, and help you move the patient downstairs.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Parish, rather coolly. ‘But it is not a cold, it is a fever. I should not have bothered you for a cold. And my wife is in bed downstairs already. I can’t get up and down with trays, not with my leg. But I see you are busy. Sorry to have troubled you. I had rather hoped you might have been able to spare the time to go for the doctor, seeing how I’m placed; and the builder too, if you really have no canvas you can spare.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Niggle; though other words were in his heart, which at the moment was merely soft without feeling at all kind. ‘I could go. I’ll go, if you are really worried.’

  ‘I am worried, very worried. I wish I was not lame,’ said Parish.

  So Niggle went. You see, it was awkward. Parish was his neighbour, and everyone else a long way off. Niggle had a bicycle, and Parish had not, and could not ride one. Parish had a lame leg, a genuine lame leg which gave him a good deal of pain: that had to be remembered, as well as his sour expression and whining voice. Of course, Niggle had a picture and barely time to finish it. But it seemed that this was a thing that Parish had to reckon with and not Niggle. Parish, however, did not reckon with pictures; and Niggle could not alter that. ‘Curse it!’ he said to himself, as he got out his bicycle.


  It was wet and windy, and daylight was waning. ‘No more work for me today!’ thought Niggle, and all the time that he was riding, he was either swearing to himself, or imagining the strokes of his brush on the mountain, and on the spray of leaves beside it, that he had first imagined in the spring. His fingers twitched on the handlebars. Now he was out of the shed, he saw exactly the way in which to treat that shining spray which framed the distant vision of the mountain. But he had a sinking feeling in his heart, a sort of fear that he would never now get a chance to try it out.

  Niggle found the doctor, and he left a note at the builder’s. The office was shut, and the builder had gone home to his fireside. Niggle got soaked to the skin, and caught a chill himself. The doctor did not set out as promptly as Niggle had done. He arrived next day, which was quite convenient for him, as by that time there were two patients to deal with, in neighbouring houses. Niggle was in bed, with a high temperature, and marvellous patterns of leaves and involved branches forming in his head and on the ceiling. It did not comfort him to learn that Mrs Parish had only had a cold, and was getting up. He turned his face to the wall and buried himself in leaves.

  He remained in bed some time. The wind went on blowing. It took away a good many more of Parish’s tiles, and some of Niggle’s as well: his own roof began to leak. The builder did not come. Niggle did not care; not for a day or two. Then he crawled out to look for some food (Niggle had no wife). Parish did not come round: the rain had got into his leg and made it ache; and his wife was busy mopping up water, and wondering if ‘that Mr Niggle’ had forgotten to call at the builder’s. Had she seen any chance of borrowing anything useful, she would have sent Parish round, leg or no leg; but she did not, so Niggle was left to himself.

  At the end of a week or so Niggle tottered out to his shed again. He tried to climb the ladder, but it made his head giddy. He sat and looked at the picture, but there were no patterns of leaves or visions of mountains in his mind that day. He could have painted a far-off view of a sandy desert, but he had not the energy.

  Next day he felt a good deal better. He climbed the ladder, and began to paint. He had just begun to get into it again, when there came a knock on the door.