Georgian Poetry 1918-19 | Page 5

crystal shroud?And shed upon your blackened trunk beneath?Their livery of death....
On windless nights between the beechen bars?I watched cold stars?Throb whitely in the sky, and dreamily?Wondered if any life lay locked in thee:?If still the hidden sap secretly moved?As water in the icy winterbourne?Floweth unheard:?And half I pitied you your trance forlorn:?You could not hear, I thought, the voice of any bird,?The shadowy cries of bats in dim twilight?Or cool voices of owls crying by night ...?Hunting by night under the hornéd moon:?Yet half I envied you your wintry swoon,?Till, on this morning mild, the sun, new-risen?Steals from his misty prison;?The frozen fallows glow, the black trees shaken?In a clear flood of sunlight vibrating awaken:?And lo, your ravaged bole, beyond belief?Slenderly fledged anew with tender leaf?As pale as those twin vanes that break at last?In a tiny fan above the black beech-mast?Where no blade springeth green?But pallid bells of the shy helleborine.?What is this ecstasy that overwhelms?The dreaming earth? See, the embrownéd elms?Crowding purple distances warm the depths of the wood:?A new-born wind tosses their tassels brown,?His white clouds dapple the down:?Into a green flame bursting the hedgerows stand.?Soon, with banners flying, Spring will walk the land....
There is no day for thee, my soul, like this,?No spring of lovely words. Nay, even the kiss?Of mortal love that maketh man divine?This light cannot outshine:?Nay, even poets, they whose frail hands catch?The shadow of vanishing beauty, may not match?This leafy ecstasy. Sweet words may cull?Such magical beauty as time may not destroy;?But we, alas, are not more beautiful:?We cannot flower in beauty as in joy.?We sing, our muséd words are sped, and then?Poets are only men?Who age, and toil, and sicken.... This maim'd tree?May stand in leaf when I have ceased to be.

WILLIAM H. DAVIES
LOVELY DAMES
Few are my books, but my small few have told?Of many a lovely dame that lived of old;?And they have made me see those fatal charms?Of Helen, which brought Troy so many harms;?And lovely Venus, when she stood so white?Close to her husband's forge in its red light.?I have seen Dian's beauty in my dreams,?When she had trained her looks in all the streams?She crossed to Latmos and Endymion;?And Cleopatra's eyes, that hour they shone?The brighter for a pearl she drank to prove?How poor it was compared to her rich love:?But when I look on thee, love, thou dost give?Substance to those fine ghosts, and make them live.
WHEN YON FULL MOON
When yon full moon's with her white fleet of stars,?And but one bird makes music in the grove;?When you and I are breathing side by side,?Where our two bodies make one shadow, love;
Not for her beauty will I praise the moon,?But that she lights thy purer face and throat;?The only praise I'll give the nightingale?Is that she draws from thee a richer note.
For, blinded with thy beauty, I am filled,?Like Saul of Tarsus, with a greater light;?When he had heard that warning voice in Heaven,?And lost his eyes to find a deeper sight.
Come, let us sit in that deep silence then,?Launched on love's rapids, with our passions proud?That makes all music hollow--though the lark?Raves in his windy heights above a cloud.
ON HEARING MRS. WOODHOUSE PLAY THE HARPSICHORD
We poets pride ourselves on what?We feel, and not what we achieve;?The world may call our children fools,?Enough for us that we conceive.?A little wren that loves the grass?Can be as proud as any lark?That tumbles in a cloudless sky,?Up near the sun, till he becomes?The apple of that shining eye.
So, lady, I would never dare?To hear your music ev'ry day;?With those great bursts that send my nerves?In waves to pound my heart away;?And those small notes that run like mice?Bewitched by light; else on those keys--?My tombs of song--you should engrave:?'My music, stronger than his own,?Has made this poet my dumb slave.'
BIRDS
When our two souls have left this mortal clay?And, seeking mine, you think that mine is lost--?Look for me first in that Elysian glade?Where Lesbia is, for whom the birds sing most.
What happy hearts those feathered mortals have,?That sing so sweet when they're wet through in spring!?For in that month of May when leaves are young,?Birds dream of song, and in their sleep they sing.
And when the spring has gone and they are dumb,?Is it not fine to watch them at their play:?Is it not fine to see a bird that tries?To stand upon the end of every spray?
See how they tilt their pretty heads aside:?When women make that move they always please.?What cosy homes birds make in leafy walls?That Nature's love has ruined--and the trees.
Oft have I seen in fields the little birds?Go in between a bullock's legs to eat;?But what gives me most joy is when I see?Snow on my doorstep, printed by their feet.
OH, SWEET CONTENT!
Oh, sweet content, that turns the labourer's sweat?To tears of joy,