Georgian Poetry 1918-19 | Page 4

this land had in those first eyes:
In that regard the works of
later men
Fall in and sink like lime when it is slaked,
Staid,
youthful queen and weavers are unborn,
And the new crags the
Northmen saw are set
About an earth that has not been misused.

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG
INVOCATION
Whither, O, my sweet mistress, must I follow thee?
For when I hear
thy distant footfall nearing,
And wait on thy appearing,
Lo! my lips
are silent: no words come to me.
Once I waylaid thee in green forest covers,
Hoping that spring might
free my lips with gentle fingers; Alas! her presence lingers
No longer
than on the plain the shadow of brown kestrel hovers.
Through windless ways of the night my spirit followed after; Cold and
remote were they, and there, possessed
By a strange unworldly rest,

Awaiting thy still voice heard only starry laughter.
The pillared halls of sleep echoed my ghostly tread.
Yet when their
secret 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