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Kowhai Gold
[O. N. Gillespie]
The Sheep-Stealer
Walled by the silver dusted night
The hill sat hunched, a troglodyte
Giant and grim, whose frown was bent
Where laughs of summer lightning went.
The blackness held no moving thing,
Nor lightest sound of whispering:
No colour showed except the far
Gleam of a homestead's window-star.
It paled at last, winked once and died,
Drowned in the eerie, lightless tide.
…Suddenly, in the clotted dark
Awoke an impish, moving spark.
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It swayed and halted, swerved and tacked,
A quick red sprite by mischief racked,
But climbing all the time with zest,
Until it reached the hooded crest.
Here two white rocks stared in surprise:.
They were by day the hill's two eyes,
Forbidding, cold, insatiate.
The valley feared their stony hate
That made the height a shape of dread—
Some vast Jurassic monster's head,
And waveringly, beneath those eyes
Went talk of crops and market lies.
The red spark fluttered to one rock,
While rang an impudent, soft knock—
Then the man stooped,—refilled his pipe,
Scored a thin, phosphorescent stripe
With a sly match, and cupped the flame
In clever hands: as in a frame
There showed a lean and merry face
Whose wrinkles wore an outlaw grace.
"Laddie," he whispered to the ground,
And with swift feet that made no sound
A legged and jointed thing loped past;
It seemed a flake the night had cast
That snapped into the further dark,
Stifling a low, exultant bark.
Soon near the man began to creep
The misty forms of huddled sheep
Like rounded drifts of silent snow;
And though they shuddered to and fro,
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Crazed by that unseen, grim pursuit,
Their idiot faces all were mute.
One more swift flame, a stealthy rush,
Brought back the hill's accustomed hush:
Like unreal things, half seen in sleep,
Faded the man and dog and sheep.
Forbidding, cold, the hill's two eyes
Stared at the faintly smiling skies.
The Singer
Slow wings of giant birds of white,
The gliding planes of morning light,
Drove up the valley, mile on mile,
Till, like a ghostly silver pile,
The hill-top glowed against the sky
Of pearl and misted lazuli.
This is the hour of quietness;
It softly cancels all the stress
Of riot-life in leaf and limb;
The fire of blossom-flame is dim
And no beast stirs: even the grass
Is motionless as graven glass.
This is the lustral hour: a pool
Of healing moments, clear and cool.
This is the hour of mystery:
The spinning world seems dreamingly
To swim in pale enchantment, when
From day-time's drone of busy men,
To secret night's scarce-whispered calls,
This strange white bridge of silence falls.
Now the slip-rails of faery drop,
And from the shadowy grey hill-top,
Wind flocks of snow-white thoughts that glow
In the pale radiance, they go
Softly from sight and show again,
Dream sheep that walk a magic lane
Where only follow those who long
To change this charmed hour for a song.
Steeped in the wonder of it all,
The singer passed the shadow wall,
And, face towards the spreading light,
Steadily climbed the silver height.
There two white rocks stared in surprise:
They were by day the hill's two eyes,
Insatiate, forbidding, cold,
But now they seemed to smile, cajoled
As one light finger of the sun
Melted their gloom in soft, sly fun.
The singer rested by one rock
And then there rang a tiny knock,
As, lazily, he cleared a splash
Of random, grey tobacco ash.
Turning to watch the far—far gold
That on the moving waters rolled,
He saw, in distant, jewelled spray,
The sea-birth of the singing day:
And ringing to his lips, a wave
Of rapture bore this little stave:
When lights of Port o' Morning gleam
And high clouds laugh to coloured foam,
My shining songs, my flocks of dream
Go down the sunways home.
Evensong
Sing a song of washing-up—shining clean plates
Chattering together like a crowd of old mates:
Buxom cups and saucers, and little white bowls
Purely and demurely bright like little girl-souls.
Hear the hymn to cosiness
The tinkling dishes chime,
Ringing in the doziness
Of evening time.
Mollie-of-the-wise-eyes leaves her hard sums,
In important apron she has swept the crumbs.
All of us are washing up: big and small folks
Sharing and comparing all the home-sweet jokes.
Hear the speech to cosiness
The doting kettle speaks,
Babbling of the rosiness
Of maiden cheeks.
Lamplight on the busy hands that fold the teacloths
Magically turns them into flitting gold moths.
Round me all the comfortable gods of home things
Flick away the uses of the day with blithe wings.
Ring the chimes for cosiness
And sweetly humdrum times,
Passing bells for prosiness
And high-flown rhymes.
Transmutation
The gleaming shuttle of the white moon flies
With cord aglow to slyly sew
About the world a silver net of lies.
The moonthreads through the night air spill
And magically float and spin,
They change the bulging, massy hill
To one black sheet, upright and thin,
Of painted tin.
A ribbon of the moonstuff lies
Against the rata's shadowed feet,
And black its scarlet flowers rise,
While on the hill the yellow wheat
Sways, white as sleet.
And there is knit a sorcery
Of relics in the picnic place,
A gleaming jam jar dons with glee
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A cozen-gown of jewelled lace
With tricksy grace.
I walk with Maud in ecstasy.
Her love-drenched eyes are lustral wells
That purely shine with modesty,
I seem to hear the tinkling swells
Of sanctus bells.
The creekstones ring like little gongs
Tapped softly by the fishes' fins,
And trees lilt airs of greenwood songs—
The purl of pixie mandolins
Far off begins.
And then I light a cigarette!—
The match flame is a searing spark.
It burns away the moonlight net
And Maud's a drab—the park's a park!
Lord—where's the dark?
The Reformer
The harbour was a dreaming lake
Of quiet water brimming,
Where, all alone, a kittiwake
Was delicately swimming.
Her quick feet made a double fret,
Dark threads upon a coverlet,
Whose level blue was overset
With points of silver trimming.
The blue eyes of the sleepy sea
Smiled lazily.
The kittiwake swum here and there
With purposeful endeavour;
Her dainty consequential air
Showed pride in being clever;
Her breast, she knew without a doubt,
Had rubbed the ocean wrinkles out,
And all the waters round about
Would now be smooth for ever.
The grey eyes of the watching sea
Smiled thoughtfully.
The hurrying dawn was pale with pain.
Wind-furies, harshly crying,
Tossed on the pier a draggled skein
Of feathers, slackly lying.
Like a street hag whose hideous sleep
Marks the drear end that high days reap,
The kittiwake lay still—a heap
Of brave dreams, drably dying.
The green eyes of the wanton sea
Smiled carelessly.
Colour
Black is the master of the crowded hall
Where all the colours meet; he is the Head,
For mauve is tame, magenta badly bred,
Purple and brown to languid vapours fall,
And pink and meretricious yellow brawl;
Sly blue and lissom green and lazy red
Are only friends in some chance flower-bed;
Grey, but the toneless echo of them all.
Black is the regal, universal friend,
Who softly brings to humankind his store
Of quiet amity and comfort deep;
Who kisses mother night and makes her lend
The sable fabric from her wardrobe door
To veil the sweet half-death that men call sleep.
The Court of Arches
As a tree splintered on the heath
A Somme lagoon rocked underneath
The roaring ceiling of the world,
And noises hurled
About the air, set up a quaking,
Tilting the banks, till dried ooze flaking
Spattered the swaying pool all over
And drove the gauzy flies to cover.
A sedgy corner thus far quiet
From work of that corroding riot
Held frogs in council, earnest, rapt:
Portly and calm, their leader mapped
The course of their enquiry on
The "Whence" and "Why," the pro and con,
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Whence came the noise, unequalled by
The imagined croak of all frogs? Why
The marshroof's turbulence?
Could He in truth be praised or blamed?
An underfed and thin one claimed
The mystery brought punishment,
And all should speedily repent
Desertion of the old lagoon.
His croak of warning ceased, and soon
Another showed the obvious good,
The bounteous insect crop of food
That strewed the surface of the pool;
And one said "Fool,
This is the last that may befall;
This is the end, the end of all,
Rich slime and waterweed and logs,
All ended … even frogs."
And thus and thus they wrought,
Weighing each word, counting each thought;
When down the feeding rivulet,
By turn and deep and fret,
Slow tiny clots of red came drifting
Dissolving, spraying, rifting,
To scarlet filaments that laced
And writhed and broke in spectral haste.
Without surcease, the flocculent
And delicate masses glowed; and spent
Till all that smooth green water-lawn
Was tinted like a rosy dawn.
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And joyously the Council saw
That wonder-change; and hushed in awe!
Their answer had evolved!
Enigma solved!
Forever, now, their soft green sides
Would lave in gracious, soft pink tides.
Their loud, full-throated anthem rang;
"Oh, Great Suffuser! Hail!" they sang;
"Blessings Alway
Are Thine… Non Nobis Domine.'"