star

Ten miles down Reedy River
A pool of water lies,
And all the year it mirrors
The changes in the skies,
And in that pool's broad bosom
Is room for all the stars;
Its bed of sand has drifted
O'er countless rocky bars.

Around the lower edges
There waves a bed of reeds,
Where water rats are hidden
And where the wild duck breeds;
And grassy slopes rise gently
To ridges long and low,
Where groves of wattle flourish
And native bluebells grow.

Beneath the granite ridges

Not under foreign skies
Nor under foreign wings protected -
I shared all this with my own people
There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
[1961]

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in
her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor

Ye British Asses, who expect to hear
Ever some new thing,
I’ve nothing new to tell, but what, I fear,
May be a true thing.
For Taft comes with his plummet and his line,
Quick to detect your
Old bosh new dressed in what you call a fine
Popular lecture.

Whence comes that most peculiar smattering,
Heard in our section?
Pure nonsense, to a scientific swing
Drilled to perfection?
That small word "Force," they make a barber’s block,
Ready to put on
Meanings most strange and various, fit to shock

But may a Rural Pen try to set forth
Such a Great Fathers Ancient Grace and worth
I undertake a no less Arduous Theme
Then the Old Sages found the Chaldae Dream
'Tis more then Tythes of a profound respect
That must be paid such a Melchizedeck
Oxford this light with tongues and Arts doth trim
And then his Northern Town doth Challeng him
His Time and Strength he Center'd there in this
To do good works, and be what now he is.
His fulgent Virtues there and learned Strains
Tall comely Presence, Life unsoil'd with Stains

Not to the swift, the race:
Not to the strong, the fight:
Not to the righteous, perfect grace:
Not to the wise, the light.

But often faltering feet
Come surest to the goal;
And they who walk in darkness meet
The sunrise of the soul.

A thousand times by night
The Syrian hosts have died;
A thousand times the vanquished right
Hath risen, glorified.

The truth the wise men sought
Was spoken by a child;
The alabaster box was brought
In trembling hands defiled.

To my friend George Fleming author of 'The Nile Novel' and
'Mirage')


I.


A year ago I breathed the Italian air, -
And yet, methinks this northern Spring is fair,-
These fields made golden with the flower of March,
The throstle singing on the feathered larch,
The cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by,
The little clouds that race across the sky;
And fair the violet's gentle drooping head,
The primrose, pale for love uncomforted,
The rose that burgeons on the climbing briar,

From earth I seem to wing my flight,
And sun myself in Heaven's pure light,
When thy sweet gaze meets mine
I dream I quaff ethereal dew,
When my own form I mirrored view
In those blue eyes divine!

Blest notes from Paradise afar,
Or strains from some benignant star
Enchant my ravished ear:
My Muse feels then the shepherd's hour
When silvery tones of magic power
Escape those lips so dear!

Young Loves around thee fan their wings--
Behind, the maddened fir-tree springs,

Here at the roots of the mountains,
Between the sombre legions of cedars and tamaracks,
The rapids charge the ravine:
A little light, cast by foam under starlight,
Wavers about the shimmering stems of the birches:
Here rise up the clangorous sounds of battle,
Immense and mournful.
Far above curves the great dome of darkness
Drawn with the limitless lines of the stars and the planets.
Deep at the core of the tumult,
Deeper than all the voices that cry at the surface,
Dwells one fathomless sound,

Blest be the dawn, the luminous blue-slate,
the arch transfused by the glorious sun,
and blackbirds chanting hymnals in prickly bushes,
and rooks high over fields coughing up love.

Blest be the winds about the furrowed brow,
and the joyful whispers of dying leaves,
the maples staggered blissfully behind barbed fences
above the tombs of the newly redeemed.

Blest be pain that comes like a stark beggar,
the thorn-tree that has its roots in a star,
the sweet massacred gourds tethered to the rusting gate,

All my life's short years had been stern and sterile --
   I stood like one whom the blasts blow back --
As with shipmen whirled through the straits of Peril,
   So fierce foes menaced my every track.

But I steeled my soul to a strong endeavour,
   I bared my brow as the sharp strokes fell,
And I said to my heart -- "Hope on! Hope ever:
   Have Courage -- Courage, and all is well."

Then, bright as the blood in my heart's rich chalice,
   O Blossom, Blossom! -- you came from far;