Dowsing-Rod and work
1938
Before long a man will come here with a divining-rod because, somewhere under the rocky soil of this patch of ground, there would seem to be water.
We who dwell here will walk behind him in suspense until he stands still where the rod indicates the spot. Later, sitting together in the house, we hear without heeding the slow and heavy toiling of the team of workers, who break the ground where that quiet sign was given. Then, when they have gone, it is silent again, and we go and look at the water which has come.
Why do those who say they love poetry, not read a poem in the way we go to look at the water which, has come, the more deeply surprised as the work of the labourers became heavier? Or do I ask too much, seeing they were not present when that other rod gave the sign, and so do not know how briefly and silently it was given? Once I walked alongside the river near Oxford with a young woman who talked, enraptured, about Shelley. I took her with me to the Bodleian Library and brought her to where a manuscript of his lies under glass. It was one of his loveliest and most impetuous pages; the handwriting was nigh unreadable because of the redraftings, crossed-out words and fitful or pensive try-outs. My deep-felt awe was scarcely greater than her disappointment at what to her now seemed to be work made to order. And I recall another, who was an admirer of Perk, and how disillusioned she was because, on the manuscript of one of his sonnets, to the right above the first line, he had noted a small row of possible rhymes. And yet one would expect of women that experience would have taught how, imperilled as it is by time and the world, the conservation of beauty needs attention and devotion to service.
It may surprise tradesmen and bankers that a poet is both water-diviner and worker, for their gain is a difference in two countings, and for them nothing is possible without ad-
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