Obsolete Spells by Justin Hopper

Author:Justin Hopper [Hopper, Justin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2022-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

The Ballad of Lyonesse

They were living, laughing, loving,

But they all got laved;

Some of them were roving,

And they got saved.

Was it a mantis,

Rebeck at his breast,

Singing of Atlantis

Lost in the West?

When the skies darken

Out on Western-meer,

Then, when you hearken,

What do you hear?

Hear the bells tolling?

There were lost six-score;

Hear the cries rolling

In to the shore?

And they heard it nearing

As they lay at ease

With their women, fleering

At anger of the seas.

Surge-boom! Urge-boom!

The hill-waves go

Crashing on to man’s doom,

Urging hugest woe.

Living, loving,

What is man’s distress?

Green Death is roving

Where once was Lyonesse.

Loving, living

With women and with ease,

There is no forgiving

Of anger of the seas.

Cockrows incessant,

Kine that low and stumble,

Wide-eyed, whitening peasant,

Hear ye the rumble?

Yea! See the herdsmen

Rivalling the cows;

Only god-drunk wordsmen

Look with easy brows.

Waiting, waiting;

What is it to fly?

See Venus rise in hating,

Hiding all the sky!

Men bore their treasures

In hot brown hands;

There lie their pleasures

With them in the sands.

Women bore their treasures

Tugging at the breast;

Now they take their leisures

Far in the West.

Some lay in child-birth;

There they lie to-day:

Oh, ‘twas a wild birth

Of the sea-spray.

Venus for anger

Of her lost rites

Rose from her languor

In the lack of lights.

Nay! Men shall fear me,

Witness of the foam;

They shall know me, they shall hear me,

Ere the gods go home.

– Paul Pentreath

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