Georgian Poetry 1918-19 Part 12

Through the haze Of summers long ago Love's entrancements flow, A blue-green pageant of earth, A green-blue pageant of sky, As a stream, Flooding back with lovely delta to my heart.

Lo the petalled leaf.a.ge is finer, under the feet The coa.r.s.e soil with a rainbow's worth Of delicate colours lies enamelled, Translucently glowing, shining.

Each balmy breath of the hours From eastern gleam to westward gloam Is meaning-full as the falling flowers: It is a crystal syllable For love's defining, It is love alone can spell---- Yea, Love remains: after this drift of days Love is here, Love is not dumb.

The touch of a silken hand, comradely, untrammelled Is in the sunlight, a bright glance On every ripple of yonder waterways, A whisper in the dance Of green shadows; Nor shall the sunlight be shut out even from the dark.

Beyond the garden heavy oaks are buoyant on the meadows, Their rugged bark No longer rough, But chastened and refined in the glowing eyes of Love.

Around us the petals fulfil Their measure and fall, precious the petals are still.

For Love they once were gathered, they are gathered for Love again, Whose glance is on the water, Whose whisper is in the green shadows.

In the same comrade-hand whose touch is in the sunlight, They are lying again.

Here Love is ... Love only of all things outstays The drift of petals, the drift of days, Petals of hours, Of white-leafed flowers, Petalled wings of the b.u.t.terfly, Drifting, quietly drifting by As a breath, a sigh....

'TRULY HE HATH A SWEET BED'

Brown earth, sun-soaked, Beneath his head And over the quiet limbs....

Through time unreckoned Lay this brown earth for him. Now is he come.

Truly he hath a sweet bed.

The perfume shed From invisible gardens is chaliced by kindly airs And carried for welcome to the stranger.

Long seasons ere he came, this wilderness They habited.

They, and the mist of stars Down-spread About him as a hush of vespering birds.

They, and the sun, the moon: Naught now denies him the moon's coming, Nor the morning trail of gold, The luminous print of evening, red At the sun's tread.

The brown earth holds him.

The stars and little winds, the friendly moon And sun attend in turn his rest.

They linger above him, softly moving. They are gracious, And gently-wise: as though remembering how his hunger, His kinship, knew them once but blindly In thoughts unsaid, As a dream that fled.

So is he theirs a.s.suredly as the seasons.

So is his sleep by them for ever companioned.

...And, perchance, by the voices of bright children playing And knowing not: by the echo of young laughter When their dancing is sped.

Truly he hath a sweet bed.

LOVERS' LANE

This cool quiet of trees In the grey dusk of the north, In the green half-dusk of the west, Where fires still glow; These glimmering fantasies Of foliage branching forth And drooping into rest; Ye lovers, know That in your wanderings Beneath this arching brake Ye must attune your love To hushed words.

For here is the dreaming wisdom of The unmovable things...

And more:--walk softly, lest ye wake A thousand sleeping birds.

ROBERT NICHOLS

THE SPRIG OF LIME

He lay, and those who watched him were amazed To see unheralded beneath the lids Twin tears, new-gathered at the price of pain, Start and at once run crookedly athwart Cheeks channelled long by pain, never by tears.

So desolate too the sigh next uttered They had wept also, but his great lips moved, And bending down one heard, 'A sprig of lime; Bring me a sprig of lime.' Whereat she stole With dumb signs forth to pluck the thing he craved.

So lay he till a lime-twig had been snapped From some still branch that swept the outer gra.s.s Far from the silver pillar of the bole Which mounting past the house's crusted roof Split into ma.s.sy limbs, crossed boughs, a maze Of close-compacted intercontorted staffs Bowered in foliage wherethrough the sun Shot sudden showers of light or crystal spars Or wavered in a green and vitreous flood.

And all the while in faint and fainter tones Scarce audible on deepened evening's hush He framed his curious and last request For 'lime, a sprig of lime.' Her trembling hand Closed his loose fingers on the awkward stem Covered above with gentle heart-shaped leaves And under dangling, pale as honey-wax, Square cl.u.s.ters of sweet-scented starry flowers.

She laid his bent arm back upon his breast, Then watched above white knuckles clenched in prayer.

He never moved. Only at last his eyes Opened, then brightened in such avid gaze She feared the coma mastered him again ...

But no; strange sobs rose chuckling in his throat, A stranger ecstasy suffused the flesh Of that just mask so sun-dried, gouged and old Which few--too few!--had loved, too many feared.

'Father!' she cried; 'Father!'

He did not hear.

She knelt and kneeling drank the scent of limes, Blown round the slow blind by a vesperal gust, Till the room swam. So the lime-incense blew Into her life as once it had in his, Though how and when and with what ageless charge Of sorrow and deep joy how could she know?

Sweet lime that often at the height of noon Diffusing dizzy fragrance from your boughs, Ta.s.selled with blossoms more innumerable Than the black bees, the uproar of whose toil Filled your green vaults, winning such metheglyn As clouds their sappy cells, distil, as once Ye used, your sunniest emanations Toward the window where a woman kneels-- She who within that room in childish hours Lay through the lasting murmur of blanch'd noon Behind the sultry blind, now full now flat, Drinking anew of every odorous breath, Supremely happy in her ignorance Of Time that hastens hourly and of Death Who need not haste. Scatter your fumes, O lime, Loose from each hispid star of citron bloom, Tangled beneath the labyrinthine boughs, Cloud on such stinging cloud of exhalations As reek of youth, fierce life and summer's prime, Though hardly now shall he in that dusk room Savour your sweetness, since the very sprig, Profuse of blossom and of essences, He smells not, who in a paltering hand Clasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming face Propped in the pillow. Breathe silent, lofty lime, Your curfew secrets out in fervid scent To the attendant shadows! Tinge the air Of the midsummer night that now begins, At an owl's oaring flight from dusk to dusk And downward caper of the giddy bat Hawking against the l.u.s.tre of bare skies, With something of th' unfathomable bliss He, who lies dying there, knew once of old In the serene trance of a summer night When with th' abundance of his young bride's hair Loosed on his breast he lay and dared not sleep, Listening for the scarce motion of your boughs, Which sighed with bliss as she with blissful sleep, And drinking desperately each honied wave Of perfume wafted past the ghostly blind Knew first th' implacable and bitter sense Of Time that hastes and Death who need not haste.

Shed your last sweetness, limes!

But now no more.

She, fruit of that night's love, she heeds you not, Who bent, compa.s.sionate, to the dim floor Takes up the sprig of lime and presses it In pain against the stumbling of her heart, Knowing, untold, he cannot need it now.

SEVENTEEN

For Anne.

All the loud winds were in the garden wood, All shadows joyfuller than lissom hounds Doubled in chasing, all exultant clouds That ever flung fierce mist and eddying fire Across heavens deeper than blue polar seas Fled over the sceptre-spikes of the chestnuts, Over the speckle of the wych-elms' green.

She shouted; then stood still, hushed and abashed To hear her voice so shrill in that gay roar, And suddenly her eyelashes were dimmed, Caught in tense tears of spiritual joy; For there were daffodils which sprightly shook Ten thousand ruffling heads throughout the wood, And every flower of those delighting flowers Laughed, nodding to her, till she clapped her hands Crying 'O daffies, could you only speak!'

But there was more. A jay with skyblue shaft Set in blunt wing, skimmed screaming on ahead.

She followed him. A murrey squirrel eyed Her warily, c.o.c.ked upon tail-plumed haunch, Then, skipping the whirligig of last-year leaves, Whisked himself out of sight and reappeared Leering about the hole of a young beech; And every time she thought to corner him He scrambled round on little scratchy hands To peek at her about the other side.

She lost him, bolting branch to branch, at last-- The impudent brat! But still high overhead Flight on exuberant flight of opal scud, Or of dissolving mist, florid as flame.

Scattered in ecstasy over the blue. And she Followed, first walking, giving her bright locks To the cold fervour of the springtime gale, Whose rush bore the cloud shadow past the cloud Over the irised wastes of emerald turf.

And still the huge wind volleyed. Save the gulls, Goldenly in the sunny blast careering Or on blue-shadowed underwing at plunge, None shared with her who now could not but run The splendour and tumult of th' onrushing spring.

And now she ran no more: the gale gave plumes.

One with the shadows whirled along the gra.s.s, One with the onward smother of veering gulls, One with the pursuit of cloud after cloud, Swept she. Pure speed coursed in immortal limbs; Nostrils drank as from wells of unknown air; Ears received the smooth silence of racing floods; Light as of gla.s.sy suns froze in her eyes; s.p.a.ce was given her and she ruled all s.p.a.ce.

Spring, author of twifold loveliness, Who flittest in the mirth of the wild folk, Profferest greeting in the faces of flowers, Blowest in the firmamental glory, Renewest in the heart of the sad human All faiths, guard thou the innocent spirit Into whose unknowing hands this noontide Thou pourest treasure, yet scarce recognised, That unashamed before man's glib wisdom, Unabashed beneath the wrath of chance, She accept in simplicity of homage The hidden holiness, the created emblem To be in her, until death shall take her, The source and secret of eternal spring.