from
The Book of the Green Man
by Ronald Johnson
Part 4: Autumn
Creation sometimes pours into the spiritual eye the radiance of Heaven: the green
mountains that glimmer in a summer gloaming from the dusky yet bloomy east; the moon
opening her golden eye, or walking in brightness among innumerable islands of light, not
only thrill the optic nerve, but shed a mild, a grateful, an unearthly luster into the inmost
spirits, and seem the interchanging twilight of that peaceful country, where there is no
sorrow and no night.
Samuel Palmer
1
A chryselephantine sky. The round earth
on flat paper. 'The clouds which drop fatness
upon our fields & pastures'.
Islands - eye-lands-& piled mountains
of light. A circumambient voyage into the visible.
I saw that at Shoreham.
I saw hybernacula move
like clouds, & the turtle's eyes red
within.
I saw a badger root among soft
yellow plums of moonlight, & at dawn, a sheep
shade the dews
from its coat, in coronae.
I saw 'vegetable gold'
- the light of suns fold in upon itself,
as leaves
of a cabbage -
I watched the elder grow first
green, then white,
then a lustrous black.
'Thoughts on RISING
MOON with raving-mad splendour
of orange twilight glow on
landscape. I was that at Shoreham'.
Shoreham - the ripeness
- proliferation. 'Excess more abundantly
excessive'. Its whale-shaped
hills, above the valleys of the hops
& apples. Its shepherds of the many-colored sheep.
I saw ascensions, transformations
& flights 'from a leaf
of kale, across the disc of a planet'.
I saw a world of Leviathan
& the thousand repetitions of spore & insect
intermixed.
Shoreham. Autumnal, mercurial.
A world where the skies
dome above, almost so high as to hold
both rising, meridian & setting suns, with moons large
as barn doors.
A land, perpetually coming
to harvest. The light come out of earth,
a heavy hay—& piled up in stooks
beneath the budding, leafing, flowering chestnut.
I saw that at Shoreham.
I saw all that at Shoreham
& more - the 'cherub-turtles' - the Shining
Ones, where they commonly walk. . .
2
Most Rich, Most Glittering, Most Strange
The Beetle, of a coppery green & blue.
Feathers of Peacock & Pheasant.
The live flashing Mackerel,
its thin, transparent colors laid
over silver & gold. Its back, blue
& around its gills, greens which take on
casts of blue. Silvery
belly & eyes a hard, jet black.
The white Owls (inhabiting a shell-room
of a Folly in Wiltshire)
their feathers flecked & barred with
colors of straw & dun. Their
silky eyes blinking in the half-
light of pearled Conch, Cowrie & Coral
spray. The Moth, the Mantis,
Dragon-fly. A Snail's path seen shining
in sunlight. Pope's grotto built
at Twickensham, with its Marble of diverse
colors. And between each course of
Marble, many kinds of Ores, such as Tin
Ore, purpled Copper Ores & Wild Lead
intermixed with large clumps of
Cornish Diamonds. Rich,
White Spars interlaced with Cockle
& Spars shot with prisms of
different degrees of waters. Fossils
interspersed with Grains of Mundic:
some yellow, some purple & some deep blue
inclining to black. Crystal from
Germany, Gold from Peru, Silvers from
Spain & Mexico. Gold Clift
from Gloucestershire, Egyptian Pebbles.
Petrified Wood & Moss. Blood-
stones, clumps of Amethyst, 'Isicles'.
Curious stones from everywhere & several
Humming-birds, with nests.
Those opalescent clouds in the form
of scales of fish: striped, undulating,
cirrus-like - with spectral 'eyes'
of a bright, metallic luster.
Fog-bow & Moon-bow. Haloes observed
around the sun, with Mock Suns, upon days
of peculiar, milky light. Green
'Rays', or Flames, seen to
shoot up, high, above the setting sun.
Multiple Crescents of the moon.
Mirage & iridescence of oil-spots & suns
'Drawing Water'. Moonglade,
Touch-wood. That luminescence,
phosphorescence, fluorescence, to be seen
in plant, animal & stone. Rabbits'
eyes, Will-o'-the-Wisp,
the shimmering hand dipped in warm
waters. The ancient trees
whose every leaf is a streak of
pale flame, the glow of whose roots can
be traced upon earth. The legend
of electrical hail-stones, 'Hercynian'
birds like plumed lamps
lighting the forests at night
& the vine said to entangle the cattle's
hooves & horns in networks
of fiery tendril. All things 'most rich,
most glittering, most strange'.
3
Of Certaine White Nights Wherein the
Darkes Doe Seem to Gette Up
& Walk & How Wee Saw Divers Wonders in Bothe
Earth & Element
As we descended to this valley,
where Samuel Palmer had used to walk - bareheaded
under the moon -
the passing clouds above
'did marvellously supple the ground'.
And there were seen many blackbirds to settle
as shapes of water on the land.
Out of the warm hills at our backs
a nebulous lightning
pulsed & flickered, a false
Aurora Borealis, enfolding us as we came.
Wee had observed
these glows to collect as solid
as stones, at the sides of our eies -
& the hollows,
each, to appear to rise out
of its owne darkeness.
We also came upon one tree,
out of those that abound here, whose leaves
seemed brought into curious relief
by the twilight being reflected upon one
side, & a waxing moon,
on the other -
it is thus our nights, everywhere,
continued
but dusks of daies.
4
William Stukeley made his own Stonehenge,
a Druid Temple 'formed out of an old ort-
chard'. 'Tis thus', he writes - 'there is
a circle of tall filberd trees in the nat-
ure of a hedg, which is 70 foot diameter
& round it a walk 15 foot broad, circular
too, so that the whole is 100 foot diame-
ter. The walk from one high point slopes
each way, gradually, till you come to the
lowest point opposite, there is the en-
trance to a temple, to which the walk may
be es-teemed as porticoe. When one enters
into this innermost circle or temple, one
sees, in the center, an antient appletree
oregrown with sacred mistletoe. Round it
is another concentric circle of a 50 foot
diameter made all of pyramidal greens, at
an equal interval, that appear as verdant
when fruit trees have dropt their leaves.
The pyramidals are in imitation of Stone-
henge's inner circles. The whole of this
is included within a square wall on every
side, except the grand avenue to the por-
ticoe, which is an appletree avenue. The
angles are filled in fruit trees, plumbs,
pears, & walnuts, & such are likewise in-
terspersed in the filberd hedg & borders,
with some sort of irregularity to prevent any
stiffness in its appearance & make it
look more easy & natural. At that point,
where is an entrance from the porticoe to
the temple, is a tumulus, but I must take
it for a cairn, or celtic barrow. I have
sketched you out the whole thing as it is
formed. These are some of the amusements
of country folk, instead of conversation'.
Alexander Pope: 'I have some-
times had the idea of planting
an old gothic cathedral. Good
large poplars with their white
stems (cleared of their boughs
to a proper height) w'ld serve
well for columns, & might form
the aisles or the peristiliums
by their different distances &
heights. These w'ld look very
well near, & a dome rising all
in a proper tuft in the middle
w'ld look well at a distance'.
This is the man whose parodies
of topiary were inimitable, who deplored the
fantastical & wished for 'unadorned
Nature'. But the 'Gothick' was in fashion & has
since been destroyed as
the formal topiary before it - to serpen-
tinize brooks, to make vistas.
Now, the obelisks are toppled,
labyrinth & maze are uprooted to pasture
& ivies hide the Folly.
The giantesque animals, lop-sided arches & cones
& pyramids, have been allowed, now,
to grow into ghosts of shapes they once had.
'A laurestine bear in blossom, with a
juniper hunter in berries. A pair of
giants, stunted. A lavender pig with
sage growing in his belly. The Tower
of Babel. St. George in box, his arm
scarce long enough, but able to stick
the dragon by next April ... the dragon,
also of box, with ground-ivy tail. A
pair of maiden-heads in fir, in great
forwardness. A quickset hog, shot up
to a to a porcupine, by its being forgot
a week in rainy weather. Noah's ark in
holly, Adam & Eve in yew - the serpent
flourishing. Edward the Black Prince in
cypress, an old maid in wormwood'.
5
The Balancings Of The Clouds - their breeze
& darknesses. Wheaten emanations
of earth. A man come piping
over the hills - an interpenetration of
moth-wing & seed-case & burr, of tremulous grasses
& ripening apples.
I saw that at Shoreham.
In the 'yellow spot' of clear vision,
the apples grew & reddened -
the trunk of their tree come suddenly out
of a slope, as Arcimboldo's lemons from a throat.
'Unless the eye
contained the substance of the sun'...
Unless the ears are shaped
of song, out nose is of air, our skin, of the thistle,
& our tongue, of apples & water:
'The Apple-Tree, the Singing & the Gold...'
It is here
was Hesperides, Paradisi in Sole
Paradisus Terrestris.
I held a yellow twilight in my head.
I saw the glow if its after-
image, green & blue, circle the globes of apple.
I walked upon the clods
of cumulus, & saw a 'glory' moving always before me
on the grass. And melody came, in openings
of the air. All
eyes. In Shoreham's Albion. A Paradys
Erthely.
6
At 5º altitude of the sun, on a clear
day, the horizon has become warm
yellow, a faintly yellow horizontal stripe
becomes visible below the sun,
& concentrically above is a luminous
white arc. The eastern counter-twilight
is a transition of orange,
yellow, green & blue. At altitude
0º, in the west, the horizontal stripe
becomes white-yellow, yellow
& green. The arching, white transparency
is encircled by brown tones.
In the east, the shadow of earth rises.
It is bluish-grey, shifting to
purple. Above, the counter-twilight
becomes more vivid, & higher still
there is a bright reflection of the light
in the west - a widespread
illumination. At -1º the color
from the earth upwards is brown-orange
fading to gold. The eastern shadow
rises higher & is darker.
The counter-twilight develops a
border of colors shading from violet to
crimson, orange, yellow, green
& blue. And above that - brightness.
At -3º the colors in the east are
at their most vivid & in the west, a rose-
red spot appears above the
white arc. It grows larger & more
diffuse, the color of salmon.
At -5º this has changed to a radiant
purple. Trunks of trees & soil
take on its warm tint & the east becomes
an after-glow of dull reds.
This purple light fades, apparently
mingling with the horizontal striping,
& the boundary of earth-shadow
disappears in the east. Landscape
illumination fails so rapidly it becomes
difficult to see. Imperceptibly
all colors vanish & there is darkness.
THE WHITE CLOUD. There is a sound of thunder
from the sea, over the slate-blue
Kentish hills. Overhead, the blue sky
intensifies its blue & the wheat radiates yellow.
Upper slopes of the cloud-bank
reflect the rays of the sun. It is a massive
ridge, its underside a misty black
reaching to the horizon.
A dull booming rolls in from
the south, as if through
solid sunlight.
A warm haze settles over the wheat.
The air is sibilant with
insect wings. In the distance,
several reapers bend
to scythe grain
& all is quickened
with hidden electricity.
The field, with its broken fence,
slopes down to where a thatched barn is half
hidden among beeches.
This is a plain structure, shaped like
a hill. Its roof sags, encrusted
with that emerald-green moss, Tortula ruralis:
smooth, rounded clumps -
now, in the dryness of harvest,
partly shrunken, & of a yellow-stained
olive. Three large rooks move slowly above the ripe
stalks unperturbed
by the reapers. A white owl
leaves the barn - whiter still against the dark
valley.
The beeches tremble imperceptibly.
An old, gnarled oak, blasted in the past by
lightning, turns yellow.
The reapers working
against the low rumble
at their backs.
The white cloud still, haze
suspended,
dust from stubble
hanging in the heavy
air, & far
behind the barn a brook
audible.
The dry wheat,
straw warm to the
touch, earth
hot beneath the
foot.
Insect wings. Light feet of squirrels
in the beeches. Rustling of dry leaves on the oak.
Waters. The sunlight in rippling spots as it
plays on the ground. Hues of the swaying wheat
from palest yellows to ruddy gold.
Sheen on the blackbirds. Undertone of thunder.
Dry scrape of grasshoppers. Quick
patter of squirrels. Wind in the oak leaf
& water on stone. A maze of sun dappled over earth.
The straw whispering as it is scythed.
Wings of blackbirds glistening as they settle.
The thunder barely to be heard.
At our backs, surrounding the picture,
is the whole world.
Sun caps the tops of clouds
with silver. Bells in the churches
begin to ring from distant hills.
The moon, rising over a hill, casts long shadows
from a clump
of horse-chestnuts.
A YELLOW MOON, A YELLOW MOON, A YELLOW MOON.
Scents of newly-cut wheat
billow on the night air. An owl
calls. . . echoes & reverberates around us.
Dimness & brilliance meet.
Large stars.
I walked up to the CLOUD,
'a country
where there is no
night'
but of moons
& with heads of fish
in the furrow,
& on each
ear, beneath a husk
of twilight
were as many suns as
kernels,
& fields were far
as the eye
could reach.
Then dipping their silver oars,
the eyes
shed characters of fire
in the grain,
its sheaves as if mackerel
shone on the waves
of air.
I walked up to the CLOUD
& the white light
opened
like flowers -
dog violet,
& asphodel, celandine,
red clover.
I walked up to the CLOUD
& peal after peal
rang out of earth.
First, stones
underfoot
in a sound like muffled
sheep-bells.
Then the roots of the trees
clanged:
rooks, rooks, blackbirds. Cuckoos awoke
in the tubers
- earth-worm & mole & turtle -
all danced to the thunder,
the peal & thunder.
A bellow & clamor
came out
of the hills:
in diapason. . . a dissonance
& musical order.
ROOKS, ROOKS, BLACK-
BIRDS, CUCKOOS.
EARTH-WORM & MOLE
& TURTLE.