Water and fire shall rot The marred foundations we forgot, Of sanctuary and choir. Water and fire deride The sacrifice that we denied. Water and fire succeed The town, the pasture and the weed. The parched eviscerate soil Gapes at the vanity of toil, Laughs without mirth. There are flood and drouth Over the eyes and in the mouth, Dead water and dead sand Contending for the upper hand. There are other places Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws, Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city- But this is the nearest, in place and time, Now and in England. Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment.

And what you thought you came for Is only a shell, a husk of meaning From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled If at all. It would be the same at the end of the journey, If you came at night like a broken king, If you came by day not knowing what you came for, It would be the same, when you leave the rough road And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade And the tombstone. Where is the summer, the unimaginable Zero summer? If you came this way, Taking the route you would be likely to take From the place you would be likely to come from, If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.

Now the hedgerow Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom Of snow, a bloom more sudden Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading, Not in the scheme of generation.

This is the spring time But not in time's covenant. There is no earth smell Or smell of living thing.

Between melting and freezing The soul's sap quivers. And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier, Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire In the dark time of the year. When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire, The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches, In windless cold that is the heart's heat, Reflecting in a watery mirror A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon. I Midwinter spring is its own season Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.

Fruit of the yew lyrics