Echorus Songtext
von Edna Michell

White fog lifting and falling on mountain brow
Trees moving in rivers of wind
The clouds arise as on a wave
Gigantic eddy lifting mist above teeming ferns
Exquisitely swayed along a green crag
Glimpsed through mullioned glass in valley rain

Bardic o self visitazione
Tell naught but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion
Of the folk whose physical sciences end in ecology
The wisdom of earthly relations
Of mouths and eyes interknit ten centuries visible
Orchards of mind language manifest human
Of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
Flowering above sister grass daisies pink
Tiny bloomlets angelic as light bulbs


All the valley quivered
One extended motion
Wind undulating on mossy hills
A giant wash that sank white fog
Delicately down red runnels on the mountainside
Whose leaf branch tendrils moved asway
In granitic undertow down

And lifted the floating nebulas upward
And lifted the arms of the trees
And lifted the grasses an instant in balance
And lifted the lambs to hold still
And lifted the green of the hill in one solemn wave

A solid mass of heaven
Mists infused ebbs through the vale
A wavelet of immensity
Lapping gigantic through lanthany valley
The length of all England
Valley upon valley under heaven′s ocean
Tonned with cloud hang
Heaven balanced on a grass blade


Roar of the mountain wind, slow
Sigh of the body
One being on the mountainside stirring gently
Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance
One motion through the cloudy sky floor
Shifting on the million feet of daisies
One majesty the motion that stirred wet grass
Quivering to the furthest tendril of white fog
Poured down through shivering flowers on the mountain's head
No imperfection in the budded mountain

Valleys breathe
Heaven and earth move together
Daisies push inches of yellow air
Vegetables tremble
Grass shimmers green
Sheep speckle the mountainside
Revolving their jaws with empty eyes
Horses dance in warm rain
Tree-lined canals network live farmland
Blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorned hills

Pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern

Out, out on the hillside
Into the ocean sound
Into delicate gusts of wet air
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass
Each flower Buddha eye
Repeating the story, myriad form

Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds
Mauve bells drooped double down the stem
Trembling antennae
And look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
Breathing stock-still under dripping hawthorn
One being so balanced, so vast
That its softest breath moves every flower

In the stillness on the valley floor
Trembles lamb hair hung gossamer
Rain beaded in the grass
Lifts trees on their roots
Birds in the great draft hiding their strength in the rain
Bearing same weight
Groan through breast and neck

A great, "Ahhhh" to earth heart
Calling our presence together
The great secret is no secret
Senses fit the winds
Visible is visible

Rain mist curtains wave through the bearded vale
Gray atoms wets the wind′s cabala
Cross-legged on a rock in dusk rain
Rubber booted in soft grass
Mind moveless
Breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside

The vision of the Great One is myriad
The night, still wet and moody black heaven starless
Upward in motion with wet wind