Georgian Poetry 1916-17 by Anonymous

Author:Anonymous
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-12-01T14:00:50.403583+00:00

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JOHN MASEFIELD

SEVEN POEMS

[POEM NO.] I

Here in the self is all that man can know

Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power,

All the unearthly colour, all the glow,

Here in the self which withers like a flower;

Here in the self which fades as hours pass,

And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten

Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass

In which it sees its glory still unrotten.

Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind,

Swift in the blood and throbbing on the bone,

Beauty herself, the universal mind,

Eternal April wandering alone;

The God, the holy Ghost, the atoning Lord,

Here in the flesh, the never yet explored.

[POEM NO.] II

What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt

Held in cohesion by unresting cells

Which work they know not why, which never halt,

Myself unwitting where their master dwells.

I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin;

A world which uses me as I use them,

Nor do I know which end or which begin,

Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn.

So, like a marvel in a marvel set,

I answer to the vast, as wave by wave

The sea of air goes over, dry or wet,

Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave,

Or the great sun comes north, this myriad I

Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why.

[POEM NO.] III

If I could get within this changing I,

This ever altering thing which yet persists,

Keeping the features it is reckoned by,

While each component atom breaks or twists;

If, wandering past strange groups of shifting forms,

Cells at their hidden marvels hard at work,

Pale from much toil, or red from sudden storms,

I might attain to where the Rulers lurk;

If, pressing past the guards in those grey gates,

The brain's most folded, intertwisted shell,

I might attain to that which alters fates,

The King, the supreme self, the Master Cell;

Then, on Man's earthly peak, I might behold

The unearthly self beyond, unguessed, untold.

[POEM NO.] IV

Ah, we are neither heaven nor earth, but men;

Something that uses and despises both,

That takes its earth's contentment in the pen,

Then sees the world's injustice and is wroth,

And flinging off youth's happy promise, flies

Up to some breach, despising earthly things,

And, in contempt of hell and heaven, dies

Rather than bear some yoke of priests or kings.

Our joys are not of heaven nor earth, but man's,

A woman's beauty, or a child's delight,

The trembling blood when the discoverer scans

The sought-for world, the guessed-at satellite;

The ringing scene, the stone at point to blush

For unborn men to look at and say 'Hush.'

[POEM NO.] V

Roses are beauty, but I never see

Those blood drops from the burning heart of June

Glowing like thought upon the living tree

Without a pity that they die so soon,

Die into petals, like those roses old,

Those women, who were summer in men's hearts

Before the smile upon the Sphinx was cold

Or sand had hid the Syrian and his arts.

O myriad dust of beauty that lies thick

Under our feet that not a single grain

But stirred and moved in beauty and was quick

For one brief moon and died nor lived again;

But when the moon rose lay upon the grass

Pasture to living beauty, life that was.

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