Dartside
I cannot tell what you say green leaves,
I cannot tell what you say,
But I know that there is a spirit in you,
And a word in you this day.
I cannot tell what you say, rosy rocks,
I cannot tell what you say,
But I know that there is a spirit in you,
And a word in you this day.
I cannot tell what you say, brown streams,
I cannot tell what you say,
But I know that in you too a spirit doth live,
And a word doth speak this day.
Oh green is the color of faith and truth,
And rose the color of love and youth,
And brown of the fruitful clay.
Sweet Earth is faithful, and fruitful, and young,
And her bridal day shall come ere long,
And you shall know what the rocks and the streams
And the whispering woodlands say.
So often we turn to nature to find peace—and turn away perplexed. Gazing at leaf and tree, rock and stream, we are comforted by their stark lyrical beauty, while baffled and even menaced by their mute intransigence. If they could speak, what would they say?
Answering this question, Kingsley takes his inspiration from Dartside, a quiet spot in southwest England, located at the mouth of the river Dart as it flows down into the sea. But looking at the "green leaves," the most familiar sight in all creation, he admits he's stumped. What are they saying? "I cannot tell" echoes through the poem like a credo of despair.
Alongside this blankness and anxiety, however, Kingsley surprises us with a statement of sweeping conviction: He knows the leaves contain "a spirit" and "a word." This spirit could be God or an impersonal life force that pulses through each leaf and flower—whatever it is that drives the green shoot to poke up through the soil every spring. If this spirit can become a word then reality can be shown to us, even through the clumsy vehicle of language.
Kingsley repeats the form of this opening stanza as he turns to the rocks and streams. The "rosy rocks" remind us of blood, suggesting the elemental extremes of birth and death beyond the cozy designs of the seaside resort. This coloring may strike us as fanciful, but it faithfully describes the red rock so distinctive of the Devonshire and Cornish landscape. I remember it vividly from family holidays to Dawlish, up the coast from where Kingsley is standing.
The threefold repetition of the stanza, which may appear somewhat tedious on the page, takes on the hypnotic quality of an incantation when we say the poem aloud. By the time we get to the final refrain of "this day," it's as if a dryad were about to step out of the shadow of the nearest tree.
Kingsley's mature combination of self-doubt and rousing faith is a good one to emulate, not only when we turn to nature for some kind of illumination, but when reading a poem too. So often it can seem alarmingly opaque on first glance and, frustrated in our desire to understand, we are tempted to put it away. Instead, we would do well to repeat to ourselves, "I cannot tell what you say/ But I know that there is a spirit in you,/ And a word in you this day" and return to the poem with the belief that its meaning will become clear, as long as we are patient.
In the final stanza, the mood suddenly changes. It's as if that third repetition of "this day" has done the trick. Something gives. Negation and defeat turn to joyful affirmation. We hear this in the sprightly change in rhythm, with the breathless "Oh" pitching us into lines propelled forward by the rolling repetition of "and." This is the sound of a man receiving a vision and clutching at words to capture it before it disappears into the wind.
The leaves, rocks and flowing waters, evoked by painterly smudges of green, rose and brown, reveal their secrets: Faith and truth, love and youth and fruitful fertility. How different to our fashionable desire to impose nihilist chaos on the delicate, highly ordered, inter-dependent eco-systems of the natural world—a world that reveals the need for co-operation as much as a crude, popularized Darwinism of red-toothed, selfish competition.
If this "sweet earth" is a bride, then who is the groom? Is it God? Is it humanity? Could it be you? The image of marriage hints at a moment of future consummation where ignorance turns to knowledge, desolation to fulfillment, and personal isolation to universal communion. In the final line, the harrowing silences of nature become still small whispers of hope.
Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) was an English novelist, most famous for his children's book, The Water Babies.
Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.
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