Georgian Poetry 1920-22 Part 15

PETER QUENNELL

PROCNE (A FRAGMENT)

So she became a bird, and bird-like danced On a long sloe-bough, treading the silver blossom With a bird's lovely feet; And shaken blossoms fell into the hands Of Sunlight. And he held them for a moment And let them drop.

And in the autumn Procne came again And leapt upon the crooked sloe-bough singing, And the dark berries winked like earth-dimmed beads, As the branch swung beneath her dancing feet.

A MAN TO A SUNFLOWER

See, I have bent thee by thy saffron hair --O most strange masker-- Towards my face, thy face so full of eyes --O almost legendary monster-- Thee of the saffron, circling hair I bend, Bend by my fingers knotted in thy hair --Hair like broad flames.

So, shall I swear by beech-husk, spindleberry, To break thee, saffron hair and peering eye, --To have the mastery?

PERCEPTION

While I have vision, while the glowing-bodied, Drunken with light, untroubled clouds, with all this cold sphered sky, Are flushed above trees where the dew falls secretly, Where no man goes, where beasts move silently, As gently as light feathered winds that fall Chill among hollows filled with sighing gra.s.s; While I have vision, while my mind is borne A finger's length above reality, Like that small plaining bird that drifts and drops Among these soft lapped hollows; Robed G.o.ds, whose pa.s.sing fills calm nights with sudden wind, Whose spears still bar our twilight, bend and fill Wind-shaken, troubled s.p.a.ces with some peace, With clear untroubled beauty; That I may rise not chill and shrilling through perpetual day, Remote, amazed, larklike, but may hold The hours as firm, warm fruit, This finger's length above reality.

PURSUIT

As wind-drowned scents that bring to other hills Disquieting memories of silences, Broad silences beyond the memory; As feathered swaying seeds, as wings of birds Dappling the sky with honey-coloured gold; Faint murmurs, clear, keen-winged of swift ideas Break my small silences; And I must hunt and come to tire of hunting Strange laughing thoughts that roister through my mind, Hopelessly swift to flit; and so I hunt And come to tire of hunting.

V. SACKVILLE-WEST

A SAXON SONG

Tools with the comely names, Mattock and scythe and spade, Couth and bitter as flames, Clean, and bowed in the blade,-- A man and his tools make a man and his trade.

Breadth of the English shires, Hummock and kame and mead, Tang of the reeking byres, Land of the English breed,-- A man and his land make a man and his creed.

Leisurely flocks and herds, Cool-eyed cattle that come Mildly to wonted words, Swine that in orchards roam,-- A man and his beasts make a man and his home.

Children st.u.r.dy and flaxen Shouting in brotherly strife, Like the land they are Saxon, Sons of a man and his wife,-- For a man and his loves make a man and his life.

MARIANA IN THE NORTH

All her youth is gone, her beautiful youth outworn, Daughter of tarn and tor, the moors that were once her home No longer know her step on the upland tracks forlorn Where she was wont to roam.

All her hounds are dead, her beautiful hounds are dead, That paced beside the hoofs of her high and nimble horse, Or streaked in lean pursuit of the tawny hare that fled Out of the yellow gorse.

All her lovers have pa.s.sed, her beautiful lovers have pa.s.sed, The young and eager men that fought for her arrogant hand, And the only voice which endures to mourn for her at the last Is the voice of the lonely land.

FULL MOON

She was wearing the coral taffeta trousers Someone had brought her from Ispahan, And the little gold coat with pomegranate blossoms, And the coral-hafted feather fan; But she ran down a Kentish lane in the moonlight, And skipped in the pool of the moon as she ran.

She cared not a rap for all the big planets, For Betelgeuse or Aldebaran, And all the big planets cared nothing for her, That small impertinent charlatan; But she climbed on a Kentish stile in the moonlight, And laughed at the sky through the sticks of her fan.

SAILING SHIPS

Lying on Downs above the wrinkling bay I with the kestrels shared the cleanly day, The candid day; wind-shaven, brindled turf; Tall cliffs; and long sea-line of marbled surf From Cornish Lizard to the Kentish Nore Lipping the bulwarks of the English sh.o.r.e, While many a lovely ship below sailed by On unknown errand, kempt and leisurely; And after each, oh, after each, my heart Fled forth, as, watching from the Downs apart, I shared with ships good joys and fortunes wide That might befall their beauty and their pride;

Shared first with them the blessed void repose Of oily days at sea, when only rose The porpoise's slow wheel to break the sheen Of satin water indolently green, When for'ard the crew, caps tilted over eyes, Lay heaped on deck; slept; mumbled; smoked; threw dice; The sleepy summer days; the summer nights (The coast p.r.i.c.ked out with rings of harbour-lights), The motionless nights, the vaulted nights of June When high in the cordage drifts the entangled moon, And blocks go knocking, and the sheets go slapping, And lazy swells against the sides come lapping; And summer mornings off red Devon rocks, Faint inland bells at dawn and crowing c.o.c.ks;

Shared swifter days, when headlands into ken Trod grandly; threatened; and were lost again, Old fangs along the battlemented coast; And followed still my ship, when winds were most Night-purified, and, lying steeply over, She fled the wind as flees a girl her lover, Quickened by that pursuit for which she fretted, Her temper by the contest proved and whetted.

Wild stars swept overhead; her lofty spars Reared to a ragged heaven sown with stars As leaping out from narrow English ease She faced the roll of long Atlantic seas.

Her captain then was I, I was her crew, The mind that laid her course, the wake she drew, The waves that rose against her bows, the gales,-- Nay, I was more: I was her very sails Rounded before the wind, her eager keel, Her straining mast-heads, her responsive wheel, Her pennon stiffened like a swallow's wing; Yes, I was all her slope and speed and swing, Whether by yellow lemons and blue sea She dawdled through the isles off Thessaly, Or saw the palms like sheaves of scimitars On desert's verge below the sunset bars, Or pa.s.sed the girdle of the planet where The Southern Cross looks over to the Bear, And strayed, cool Northerner beneath strange skies, Flouting the lure of tropic estuaries, Down that long coast, and saw Magellan's Clouds arise.

And some that beat up Channel homeward-bound I watched, and wondered what they might have found, What alien ports enriched their teeming hold With crates of fruit or bars of unwrought gold?

And thought how London clerks with paper-clips Had filed the bills of lading of those ships, Clerks that had never seen the embattled sea, But wrote down jettison and barratry, Perils, Adventures, and the Act of G.o.d, Having no vision of such wrath flung broad; Wrote down with weary and accustomed pen The cla.s.sic dangers of sea-faring men; And wrote 'Restraint of Princes,' and 'the Acts Of the King's Enemies,' as vacant facts, Blind to the ambushed seas, the encircling roar Of angry nations foaming into war.

TRIO

So well she knew them both! yet as she came Into the room, and heard their speech Of tragic meshes knotted with her name, And saw them, foes, but meeting each with each Closer than friends, souls bared through enmity, Beneath their startled gaze she thought that she Broke as the stranger on their conference, And stole abashed from thence.

BITTERNESS