Georgian Poetry 1920-22 Part 12

Some catch themselves to every mound, Then lingeringly and slowly move As if they knew the precious ground Were opening for their fertile love: They almost try to dig, they need So much to plant their thistle-seed.

REAL PROPERTY

'Tell me about that harvest field.'

Oh! Fifty acres of living bread.

The colour has painted itself in my heart; The form is patterned in my head.

So now I take it everywhere, See it whenever I look round; Hear it growing through every sound, Know exactly the sound it makes-- Remembering, as one must all day, Under the pavement the live earth aches.

Trees are at the farther end, Limes all full of the mumbling bee: So there must be a harvest field Whenever one thinks of a linden tree.

A hedge is about it, very tall, Hazy and cool, and breathing sweet.

Round paradise is such a wall, And all the day, in such a way, In paradise the wild birds call.

You only need to close your eyes And go within your secret mind, And you'll be into paradise: I've learnt quite easily to find Some linden trees and drowsy bees, A tall sweet hedge with the corn behind.

I will not have that harvest mown: I'll keep the corn and leave the bread.

I've bought that field; it's now my own: I've fifty acres in my head.

I take it as a dream to bed.

I carry it about all day....

Sometimes when I have found a friend I give a blade of corn away.

UNKNOWN COUNTRY

Here, in this other world, they come and go With easy dream-like movements to and fro.

They stare through lovely eyes, yet do not seek An answering gaze, or that a man should speak.

Had I a load of gold, and should I come Bribing their friends.h.i.+p, and to buy a home, They would stare harder and would slightly frown: I am a stranger from the distant town.

Oh, with what patience I have tried to win The favour of the hostess of the Inn!

Have I not offered toast on frothing toast Looking toward the melancholy host; Praised the old wall-eyed mare to please the groom; Laughed to the laughing maid and fetched her broom; Stood in the background not to interfere When the cool ancients frolicked at their beer; Talked only in my turn, and made no claim For recognition or by voice or name, Content to listen, and to watch the blue Or grey of eyes, or what good hands can do?

Sun-freckled lads, who at the dusk of day Stroll through the village with a scent of hay Clinging about you from the windy hill, Why do you keep your secret from me still?

You loiter at the corner of the street; I in the distance silently entreat.

I know too well I'm city-soiled, but then So are today ten million other men.

My heart is true: I've neither will nor charms To lure away your maidens from your arms.

Trust me a little. Must I always stand Lonely, a stranger from an unknown land?

There is a riddle here. Though I'm more wise Than you, I cannot read your simple eyes.

I find the meaning of their gentle look More difficult than any learned book.

I pa.s.s: perhaps a moment you may chaff My walk, and so dismiss me with a laugh.

I come: you all, most grave and most polite, Stand silent first, then wish me calm Good-Night.

When I go back to town some one will say: 'I think that stranger must have gone away.'

And 'Surely!' some one else will then reply.

Meanwhile, within the dark of London, I Shall, with my forehead resting on my hand, Not cease remembering your distant land; Endeavouring to reconstruct aright How some treed hill has looked in evening light; Or be imagining the blue of skies Now as in heaven, now as in your eyes; Or in my mind confusing looks or words Of yours with dawnlight, or the song of birds: Not able to resist, not even keep Myself from hovering near you in my sleep: You still as callous to my thought and me As flowers to the purpose of the bee.

ROBERT NICHOLS

NIGHT RHAPSODY

How beautiful it is to wake at night, When over all there reigns the ultimate spell Of complete silence, darkness absolute, To feel the world, tilted on axle-tree, In slow gyration, with no sensible sound, Unless to ears of unimagined beings, Resident incorporeal or stretched In vigilance of ecstasy among Ethereal paths and the celestial maze.

The rumour of our onward course now brings A steady rustle, as of some strange s.h.i.+p Darkling with soundless sail all set and amply filled By volume of an ever-constant air, At fullest night, through seas for ever calm, Swept lovely and unknown for ever on.

How beautiful it is to wake at night, Embalmed in darkness watchful, sweet, and still, As is the brain's mood flattered by the swim Of currents circ.u.mvolvent in the void, To lie quite still and to become aware Of the dim light cast by nocturnal skies On a dim earth beyond the window-ledge, So, isolate from the friendly company Of the huge universe which turns without, To brood apart in calm and joy awhile Until the spirit sinks and scarcely knows Whether self is, or if self only is, For ever....

How beautiful to wake at night, Within the room grown strange, and still, and sweet, And live a century while in the dark The dripping wheel of silence slowly turns; To watch the window open on the night, A dewy silent deep where nothing stirs, And, lying thus, to feel dilate within The press, the conflict, and the heavy pulse Of incommunicable sad ecstasy, Growing until the body seems outstretched In perfect crucifixion on the arms Of a cross pointing from last void to void, While the heart dies to a mere midway spark.

All happiness thou holdest, happy night, For such as lie awake and feel dissolved The peaceful spice of darkness and the cool Breath hither blown from the ethereal flowers That mist thy fields! O happy, happy wounds, Conditioned by existence in humanity, That have such powers to heal them! slow sweet sighs Torn from the bosom, silent wails, the birth Of such long-treasured tears as pain his eyes, Who, waking, hears the divine solicitudes Of midnight with ineffable purport charged.

How beautiful it is to wake at night, Another night, in darkness yet more still, Save when the myriad leaves on full-fledged boughs, Filled rather by the perfume's wandering flood Than by dispansion of the still sweet air, Shall from the furthest utter silences In glimmering secrecy have gathered up An host of whisperings and scattered sighs, To loose at last a sound as of the plunge And lapsing seethe of some Pacific wave, Which, risen from the star-thronged outer troughs, Rolls in to wreathe with circling foam away The flutter of the golden moths that haunt The star's one glimmer daggered on wet sands.

So beautiful it is to wake at night!

Imagination, loudening with the surf Of the midsummer wind among the boughs, Gathers my spirit from the haunts remote Of faintest silence and the shades of sleep, To bear me on the summit of her wave Beyond known sh.o.r.es, beyond the mortal edge Of thought terrestrial, to hold me poised Above the frontiers of infinity, To which in the full reflux of the wave Come soon I must, bubble of solving foam, Borne to those other sh.o.r.es--now never mine Save for a hovering instant, short as this Which now sustains me ere I be drawn back-- To learn again, and wholly learn, I trust, How beautiful it is to wake at night.

NOVEMBER

As I walk the misty hill All is languid, fogged, and still; Not a note of any bird Nor any motion's hint is heard, Save from soaking thickets round Trickle or water's rus.h.i.+ng sound, And from ghostly trees the drip Of runnel dews or whispering slip Of leaves, which in a body launch Listlessly from the stagnant branch To strew the marl, already strown, With litter sodden as its own,

A rheum, like blight, hangs on the briars, And from the clammy ground suspires A sweet frail sick autumnal scent Of stale frost furring weeds long spent; And wafted on, like one who sleeps, A feeble vapour hangs or creeps, Exhaling on the fungus mould A breath of age, fatigue, and cold.

Oozed from the bracken's desolate track, By dark rains havocked and drenched black.

A fog about the coppice drifts, Or slowly thickens up and lifts Into the moist, despondent air.

Mist, grief, and stillness everywhere....

And in me, too, there is no sound Save welling as of tears profound, Where in me cloud, grief, stillness reign, And an intolerable pain Begins.

Rolled on as in a flood there come Memories of childhood, boyhood, home, And that which, sudden, pangs me most, Thought of the first-belov'd, long lost, Too easy lost! My cold lips frame Tremulously the familiar name, Unheard of her upon my breath: 'Elizabeth. Elizabeth.'

No voice answers on the hill, All is shrouded, sad, and still ...

Stillness, fogged brakes, and fog on high.