Georgian Poetry 1918-19 | Page 4

chambers I essayed?My spirit sank, dismayed,?Waking in fear to find the new-born vision fled.
Once indeed--but then my spirit bloomed in leafy rapture--?I loved; and once I looked death in the eyes:?So, suddenly made wise,?Spoke of such beauty as I may never recapture....
Whither, O, divine mistress, must I then follow thee??Is it only in love ... say, is it only in death?That the spirit blossometh,?And words that may match my vision shall come to me?
PROTHALAMION
When the evening came my love said to me:?Let us go into the garden now that the sky is cool;?The garden of black hellebore and rosemary,?Where wild woodruff spills in a milky pool.
Low we passed in the twilight, for the wavering heat?Of day had waned; and round that shaded plot?Of secret beauty the thickets clustered sweet:?Here is heaven, our hearts whispered, but our lips spake not.
Between that old garden and seas of lazy foam?Gloomy and beautiful alleys of trees arise?With spire of cypress and dreamy beechen dome,?So dark that our enchanted sight knew nothing but the skies:
Veiled with a soft air, drench'd in the roses' musk?Or the dusky, dark carnation's breath of clove:?No stars burned in their deeps, but through the dusk?I saw my love's eyes, and they were brimmed with love.
No star their secret ravished, no wasting moon?Mocked the sad transience of those eternal hours:?Only the soft, unseeing heaven of June,?The ghosts of great trees, and the sleeping flowers.
For doves that crooned in the leafy noonday now?Were silent; the night-jar sought his secret covers,?Nor even a mild sea-whisper moved a creaking bough--?Was ever a silence deeper made for lovers?
Was ever a moment meeter made for love??Beautiful are your closed lips beneath my kiss;?And all your yielding sweetness beautiful--?Oh, never in all the world was such a night as this!
FEBRUARY
The robin on my lawn?He was the first to tell?How, in the frozen dawn,?This miracle befell,?Waking the meadows white?With hoar, the iron road?Agleam with splintered light,?And ice where water flowed:?Till, when the low sun drank?Those milky mists that cloak?Hanger and hollied bank,?The winter world awoke?To hear the feeble bleat?Of lambs on downland farms:?A blackbird whistled sweet;?Old beeches moved their arms?Into a mellow haze?Aerial, newly-born:?And I, alone, agaze,?Stood waiting for the thorn?To break in blossom white,?Or burst in a green flame....?So, in a single night,?Fair February came,?Bidding my lips to sing?Or whisper their surprise,?With all the joy of spring?And morning in her eyes.
LOCHANILAUN
This is the image of my last content:?My soul shall be a little lonely lake,?So hidden that no shadow of man may break?The folding of its mountain battlement;?Only the beautiful and innocent?Whiteness of sea-born cloud drooping to shake?Cool rain upon the reed-beds, or the wake?Of churn'd cloud in a howling wind's descent.?For there shall be no terror in the night?When stars that I have loved are born in me,?And cloudy darkness I will hold most fair;?But this shall be the end of my delight:?That you, my lovely one, may stoop and see?Your image in the mirrored beauty there.
LETTERMORE
These winter days on Lettermore?The brown west wind it sweeps the bay,?And icy rain beats on the bare?Unhomely fields that perish there:?The stony fields of Lettermore?That drink the white Atlantic spray.
And men who starve on Lettermore,?Cursing the haggard, hungry surf,?Will souse the autumn's bruiséd grains?To light dark fires within their brains?And fight with stones on Lettermore?Or sprawl beside the smoky turf.
When spring blows over Lettermore?To bloom the ragged furze with gold,?The lovely south wind's living breath?Is laden with the smell of death:?For fever breeds on Lettermore?To waste the eyes of young and old.
A black van comes to Lettermore;?The horses stumble on the stones,?The drivers curse,--for it is hard?To cross the hills from Oughterard?And cart the sick from Lettermore:?A stinking load of rags and bones.
But you will go to Lettermore?When white sea-trout are on the run,?When purple glows between the rocks?About Lord Dudley's fishing box?Adown the road to Lettermore,?And wide seas tarnish in the sun.
And so you'll think of Lettermore?As a lost island of the blest:?With peasant lovers in a blue?Dim dusk, with heather drench'd in dew,?And the sweet peace of Lettermore?Remote and dreaming in the West.
SONG
Why have you stolen my delight?In all the golden shows of Spring?When every cherry-tree is white?And in the limes the thrushes sing,
O fickler than the April day,?O brighter than the golden broom,?O blither than the thrushes' lay,?O whiter than the cherry-bloom,
O sweeter than all things that blow ...?Why have you only left for me?The broom, the cherry's crown of snow,?And thrushes in the linden-tree?
THE LEANING ELM
Before my window, in days of winter hoar?Huddled a mournful wood:?Smooth pillars of beech, domed chestnut, sycamore,?In stony sleep they stood:?But you, unhappy elm, the angry west?Had chosen from the rest,?Flung broken on your brothers' branches bare,?And left you leaning there?So dead that when the breath of winter cast?Wild snow upon the blast,?The other living branches, downward bowed,?Shook free their