A Reading of Life, and Other Poems | Page 7

her in the Seasons through that year;
That one glad year and the
fair opening month.
Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!

War with her, gentle war with her, each day
Her sons and daughters
urged; at eve were flung,
On the morrow stood to challenge; in their
strength
Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won,
From hourly
wrestlings up to shut of lids,
Her ready secret: the abounding life

Returned for valiant labour: she and they
Defeated and victorious turn
by turn;
By loss enriched, by overthrow restored.
Exchange of
powers of this conflict came;
Defacement none, nor ever squandered
force.
Is battle nature's mandate, here it reigned,
As music unto the
hand that smote the strings;
And she the rosier from their showery
brows,
They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast.
Back
to the primal rational of those
Who suck the teats of milky earth, and
clasp
Stability in hatred of the insane,
Man stepped; with wits less
fearful to pronounce
The mortal mind's concept of earth's divorced

Above; those beautiful, those masterful,

Those lawless. High they sit,
and if descend,
Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just?
Earth in her
happy children asked that word,
Whereto within their breast was her
reply.
Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless,
Enjoy the life
prolonged, outleap the years;
Yet they ('twas the Great Mother's voice
inspired
The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust,
Outleap
not her; disrooted from her soar,
To meet the certain fate of earth's
divorced,
And clap lame wings across a wintry haze,
Up to the

farthest bourne: immortal still,
Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than
when ruled
The Tyranny. This her voice within them told,
When
softly the Great Mother chid her sons
Not of the giant brood, who did
create
Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain
Set moving
by an abject blood, that waked
To wanton under elements more
benign,
And planted aliens on Olympian heights; -
Imagination's
cradle poesy
Become a monstrous pressure upon men; -
Foes of
good Gaea; until dispossessed
By light from her, born of the love of
her,
Their lordship the illumined brain rejects
For earth's beneficent,
the sons of Law,
Her other name. So spake she in their heart,

Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath
Young vine-leaves
pushing timid fingers forth,
Confidently to cling. And when brown
corn
Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song,
With gold
necks bent for any zephyr's kiss;
When vine-roots daily down a
rubble soil
Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape;
When
swelled the grape, and in it held a ray,
Rich issue of the embrace of
heaven and earth;
The very eye of passion drowsed by excess,
And
yet a burning lion for the spring;
Then in that time of general
cherishment,
Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side,

He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged,
Then did good Gaea's
children gratefully
Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for
peace,
Delightful Peace, that answers Reason's call
Harmoniously
and images her Law;
Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives,

In memories made present on the brain
By natural yearnings, all
the happy scenes;
The picture of an earth allied to heaven;
Between
them the known smile behind black masks;
Rightly their various
moods interpreted;
And frolic because toilful children borne
With
larger comprehension of Earth's aim
At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by
their aid.
Poem: The Night-Walk
Awakes for me and leaps from shroud
All radiantly the moon's own

night
Of folded showers in streamer cloud;
Our shadows down the
highway white
Or deep in woodland woven-boughed,
With yon and
yon a stem alight.
I see marauder runagates
Across us shoot their dusky wink;
I hear
the parliament of chats
In haws beside the river's brink;
And drops
the vole off alder-banks,
To push his arrow through the stream.

These busy people had our thanks
For tickling sight and sound, but
theme
They were not more than breath we drew
Delighted with our
world's embrace:
The moss-root smell where beeches grew,
And
watered grass in breezy space;
The silken heights, of ghostly bloom

Among their folds, by distance draped.
'Twas Youth, rapacious to
consume,
That cried to have its chaos shaped:
Absorbing, little
noting, still
Enriched, and thinking it bestowed;
With wistful looks
on each far hill
For something hidden, something owed.
Unto his
mantled sister, Day
Had given the secret things we sought
And she
was grave and saintly gay;
At times she fluttered, spoke her thought;

She flew on it, then folded wings,
In meditation passing lone,
To
breathe around the secret things,
Which have no word, and yet are
known;
Of thirst for them are known, as air
Is health in blood: we
gained enough
By this to feel it honest fare;
Impalpable, not barren,
stuff.
A pride of legs in motion kept
Our spirits to their task meanwhile,

And what was deepest dreaming slept:
The posts that named the
swallowed mile;
Beside the straight canal the hut
Abandoned; near
the river's source

Its infant chirp; the shortest cut;
The roadway
missed; were our discourse;
At times dear poets, whom some view

Transcendent or subdued evoked
To speak the memorable, the true,

The luminous as a moon uncloaked;
For proof that there, among
earth's dumb,
A soul had passed and said our best.
Or it might be
we chimed on some
Historic favourite's astral crest,
With part to
reverence in its gleam,
And part to rivalry the shout:
So royal,

unuttered, is youth's dream
Of power within to strike without.
But
most the silences were sweet,
Like mothers'