OLD SAUL

I cannot think of any word

To make it plain to you,

How white a thing the hawthorn bush

 That delicately blew

Within a crook of Tinges Lane; 

Each May Day there it stood; 

And lit a flame of loveliness 

For the small neighborhood.

So fragile-white a thing it was,

 I cannot make it plain.

Or the sweet fumbling of the bees,

 Like the break in a rain.

Old Saul lived near. And this his life:

 To cobble for his bread;

To mourn a tall son lost at sea;

A daughter worse than dead.

And so, in place of all his lack,

He set the hawthorn-tree;

Made it his wealth, his mirth, his god,

 His Zion to touch and see.

Born English he. Down Tinges Lane 

His lad's years came and went,

He saw out there behind his thorn, 

A hundred thorns of Kent.

At lovers slipping through the dusk,

He shook a lover's head;

Grudged them each flower. 

It was too white For any but the dead.

Once on a blurred, wet, silver day,

He said to two or three:

"Folks, when I go, pluck yonder bloom, 

That I may take with me."

But it was winter when he went,

 The road wind-wrenched and torn; 

They laid upon his coffin lid

A wreath made all of thorn