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Kowhai Gold
[J. C. Beaglehole]
Molecular Theory
Noiseless, unnursed, the country rose
Is born, and quietly it goes:
The unheard bright anemone
Blooms for the eye alone to see.
Never a sigh, never a groan
Utters this unmarked casual stone,
There breaks no breath from this dull wood
To hear, I know, nor ever should.
Yet do I know that stone, wood, flower
Travail and sicken every hour—
Deep, deep about the hidden core
A thousand systems meet at war.
A thousand suns are brought to birth
And shattered in the very earth
Beneath my feet; without a sound
Pulses the long-tormented ground.
And yet, I think, could I but hear
Once, suddenly, with quickened ear,
Might I not start, as saw my eye
A petal fall, to catch a cry?
Discovered in the early morning dancing on a dewdrop
Poised delicately
Upon your crystal-shimmering world:
What whim or chance
Makes you to dance this young and sweet-breathing morn,
Wings furled—
Sporting there,
Limbs lightly tossing in the lucent air
In happy scorn
Of all earth's bitter troubles, trouble born?
We are sunk deep,
Deep in despondencies, and even in sleep
Troubled, we toss—
Count o'er the petty gain, the mighty loss
Of all we dearest hold, love hardliest.…
You simple one,
Look on the world and weep,
See all the things men do—
None,
None, but maketh the rest
Of all God's creatures shun
Them for their greater shame.
But you
Having no name, nor fame,
Nor trouble, nor sad thought
Wearily to think on, leap,
Higher you leap
Into the morning-sweet air, and fall
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Back to the shining globe of your dancing-stage.
Ah! do you wage
Desolate war in your land? Do you call
Desolation peace?
Answerless? Mute?…
Well, do you dance,
Having the better part—
Dance to the flute
Of the wind, as it breathes without cease:
Dance delicately tip-toed, dance—
Toss each limb
Airily, to the whim
That lightly takes your happy, happy heart…
Then leap, cling
To a bee's wing
Float on his 'broidered back to a purple flower—
Enter and sing
The sweet-scented hour.…
Now delicately, daintily,
Dance!
The Climber
Striving, breast to the wind, on the desolate hill,
This, do I think, is the end and the summit of life—
Ever to strive with the fateful implacable will
Of the Invisible: strive, nor lose heart in the strife.
Blow, wind of heaven! buffeting, cleansing and strong-
Steep and more steep, O hill, do you rise in your might!
Never the blast nor the steepness shall stagger me long,
Turn me from quest of the uttermost, starriest height.
Blow, wind, O blow! be your strength as the strength of a giant
Yet face I you; nor all your strength wielded and thrown
At my body shall batter it back: for ever defiant
I make the ascent, till I stand on the summit alone.
Despondency
Ah! would to God that I were lying
Alone in some lonely place,
With only the wind blowing and the clouds flying,
And the rain in my face.
Ah! would to God that I should never
Hear sound of voice again,
But only the wind in clashing tree-tops ever,
Ever the plashing rain.
And the noise of distant sea-waves slowly breaking
On passive shore—
These only hear, these feel, and while earth's making
Hear, feel no more.
The Cathedral
Then suddenly we came into a gloom…
I think the jubilant stars in heaven sang
Indeed when those strong lovely columns sprang
Up and forever up and made a room
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Infinity; I think the flaming choir
Folded their wings and trembled with the sense
Of men who borrowed God's omnipotence
Of beauty and made seen their great desire.
For here arch rose on arch, arched over all
The roof that lifted up the troubled heart
Of centuries; here light and darkness grown
Divine shed mystery from wall to wall—
Aisle lost in aisle were passion-moulded art
Of men no more; here stood the Word made stone.
British Museum
These laughing and chattering children among the old dead!
Smirched faces and grubby knees sidle and mock, this dull day,
At the still marble emperors, those who threw world upon world.
Or sunk in a grave quietude, they go hand in hand
Among the portentous great gods of the sources of time,
The casual river which washed them up here and passed on.
The gods brood abandoned and Hadrian's empire is shrunk
To a pedestal carved with his name; but the children go yet
Like sunlight and dawn in the midst of the ages of man.
In the Cotswolds
Yes, it is beautiful, this old, old land:
These houses root their being in the earth,
These walls, these stones, share in a larger birth
With strong-set trees and painted blades that stand
About the slopes, the russet furrows, and
Join in the deep impulse that through the girth
Of hill and valley's limit, moulds its worth—
So meet for love, to hold within the hand!
I tread these roads, and know once more the race
Of blood, the tissue's balance with the bones;
A wind strikes—and my opened eyes are blind
With gazing on an unseen distant place;
My deaf ears hear Orongo-rongo's stones—
Bloom bursts on wind-swept hills within my mind.