Georgian Poetry 1918-19 Part 18

EPITAPH IN OLD MODE

The leaves fall gently on the gra.s.s, And all the willow trees and poplar trees and elder trees That bend above her where she sleeps, O all the willow trees, the willow trees Breathe sighs above her tomb.

O pause and pity as you pa.s.s.

She loved so tenderly, so quietly, so hopelessly; And sometimes comes one here and weeps-- She loved so tenderly, so tenderly, And never told them whom.

SONNET

There was an Indian, who had known no change, Who strayed content along a sunlit beach Gathering sh.e.l.ls. He heard a sudden strange Commingled noise: looked up; and gasped for speech.

For in the bay, where nothing was before, Moved on the sea, by magic, huge canoes, With bellying cloths on poles, and not one oar, And fluttering coloured signs and clambering crews.

And he, in fear, this naked man alone, His fallen hands forgetting all their sh.e.l.ls, His lips gone pale, knelt low behind a stone, And stared, and saw, and did not understand, Columbus's doom-burdened caravels Slant to the sh.o.r.e, and all their seamen land.

THE BIRDS

Within mankind's duration, so they say, Khephren and Ninus lived but yesterday.

Asia had no name till man was old And long had learned the use of iron and gold; And aeons had pa.s.sed, when the first corn was planted, Since first the use of syllables was granted.

Men were on earth while climates slowly swung, Fanning wide zones to heat and cold, and long Subsidence turned great continents to sea, And seas dried up, dried up interminably, Age after age; enormous seas were dried Amid wastes of land. And the last monsters died.

Earth wore another face. O since that prime Man with how many works has sprinkled time!

Hammering, hewing, digging tunnels, roads; Building s.h.i.+ps, temples, multiform abodes.

How, for his body's appet.i.tes, his toils Have conquered all earth's products, all her soils; And in what thousand thousand shapes of art He has tried to find a language for his heart!

Never at rest, never content or tired: Insatiate wanderer, marvellously fired, Most grandly piling and piling into the air Stones that will topple or arch he knows not where.

And yet did I, this spring, think it more strange, More grand, more full of awe, than all that change, And lovely and sweet and touching unto tears, That through man's chronicled and unchronicled years, And even into that unguessable beyond The water-hen has nested by a pond, Weaving dry flags, into a beaten floor, The one sure product of her only lore.

Low on a ledge above the shadowed water Then, when she heard no men, as nature taught her, Plas.h.i.+ng around with busy scarlet bill She built that nest, her nest, and builds it still.

O let your strong imagination turn The great wheel backward, until Troy unburn, And then unbuild, and seven Troys below Rise out of death, and dwindle, and outflow, Till all have pa.s.sed, and none has yet been there: Back, ever back. Our birds still crossed the air; Beyond our myriad changing generations Still built, unchanged, their known inhabitations.

A million years before Atlantis was Our lark sprang from some hollow in the gra.s.s, Some old soft hoof-print in a tussock's shade; And the wood-pigeon's smooth snow-white eggs were laid, High, amid green pines' sunset-coloured shafts, And rooks their villages of twiggy rafts Set on the tops of elms, where elms grew then, And still the thumbling t.i.t and perky wren Popped through the tiny doors of cosy b.a.l.l.s And the blackbird lined with moss his high-built walls; A round mud cottage held the thrush's young, And straws from the untidy sparrow's hung.

And, skimming forktailed in the evening air, When man first was were not the martens there?

Did not those birds some human shelter crave, And stow beneath the cornice of his cave Their dry tight cups of clay? And from each door Peeped on a morning wiseheads three or four.

Yes, daw and owl, curlew and crested hern, Kingfisher, mallard, water-rail and tern, Chaffinch and greenfinch, warbler, stonechat, ruff, Pied wagtail, robin, fly-catcher and chough, Missel-thrush, magpie, sparrow-hawk, and jay, Built, those far ages gone, in this year's way.

And the first man who walked the cliffs of Rame, As I this year, looked down and saw the same Blotches of rusty red on ledge and cleft With grey-green spots on them, while right and left A dizzying tangle of gulls were floating and flying, Wheeling and crossing and darting, crying and crying, Circling and crying, over and over and over, Crying with swoop and hover and fall and recover.

And below on a rock against the grey sea fretted, Pipe-necked and stationary and silhouetted, Cormorants stood in a wise, black, equal row Above the nests and long blue eggs we know.

O delicate chain over all the ages stretched, O dumb tradition from what far darkness fetched: Each little architect with its one design Perpetual, fixed and right in stuff and line, Each little ministrant who knows one thing, One learned rite to celebrate the spring.

Whatever alters else on sea or sh.o.r.e, These are unchanging: man must still explore.

W. J. TURNER

SILENCE

It was bright day and all the trees were still In the deep valley, and the dim Sun glowed; The clay in hard-baked fire along the hill Leapt through dark trunks to apples green and gold, Smooth, hard and cold, they shone like lamps of stone:

They were bright bubbles bursting from the trees, Swollen and still among the dark green boughs; On their bright skins the shadows of the leaves Seemed the faint ghosts of summers long since gone, Faint ghosts of ghosts, the dreams of ghostly eyes.

There was no sound between those breathless hills.

Only the dim Sun hung there, nothing moved; The thronged, ma.s.sed, crowded mult.i.tude of leaves Hung like dumb tongues that loll and gasp for air: The gra.s.s was thick and still, between the trees.

There were big apples lying on the ground, s.h.i.+ning, quite still, as though they had been stunned By some great violent spirit stalking through, Leaving a deep and supernatural calm Round a dead beetle upturned in a furrow.

A valley filled with dark, quiet, leaf-thick trees, Loaded with green, cold, faintly s.h.i.+ning suns; And in the sky a great dim burning disc!-- Madness it is to watch these twisted trunks And to see nothing move and hear no sound!

Let's make a noise, Hey!... Hey!... Hullo! Hullo!

KENT IN WAR

The pebbly brook is cold to-night, Its water soft as air, A clear, cold, crystal-bodied wind Shadowless and bare, Leaping and running in this world Where dark-horned cattle stare:

Where dark-horned cattle stare, hoof-firm On the dark pavements of the sky, And trees are mummies swathed in sleep And small dark hills crowd wearily; Soft mult.i.tudes of snow-grey clouds Without a sound march by.

Down at the bottom of the road I smell the woody damp Of that cold spirit in the gra.s.s, And leave my hill-top camp-- Its long gun pointing in the sky-- And take the Moon for lamp.

I stop beside the bright cold glint Of that thin spirit in the gra.s.s, So gay it is, so innocent!

I watch its sparkling footsteps pa.s.s Lightly from smooth round stone to stone, Hid in the dew-hung gra.s.s.

My lamp s.h.i.+nes in the globes of dew, And leaps into that crystal wind Running along the shaken gra.s.s To each dark hole that it can find-- The crystal wind, the Moon my lamp, Have vanished in a wood that's blind.

High lies my small, my shadowy camp, Crowded about by small dark hills; With sudden small white flowers the sky Above the woods' dark greenness fills; And hosts of dark-browed, muttering trees In trance the white Moon stills.

I move among their tall grey forms, A thin moon-glimmering, wandering Ghost, Who takes his lantern through the world In search of life that he has lost, While watching by that long lean gun Up on his small hill post.

TALKING WITH SOLDIERS

The mind of the people is like mud, From which arise strange and beautiful things, But mud is none the less mud, Though it bear orchids and prophesying Kings, Dreams, trees, and water's bright babblings.