Читать книгу Poems, 1908-1919 - Drinkwater John - Страница 30

Time gathers to my name;

Along the ways wheredown my feet have passed

I see the years with little triumph crowned,

Exulting not for perils dared, downcast

And weary-eyed and desolate for shame

Of having been unstirred of all the sound

Of the deep music of the men that move

Through the world’s days in suffering and love.

Poor barren years that brooded over-much

On your own burden, pale and stricken years —

Go down to your oblivion, we part

With no reproach or ceremonial tears.

Henceforth my hands are lifted to the touch

Of hands that labour with me, and my heart

Hereafter to the world’s heart shall be set

And its own pain forget.

Time gathers to my name —

Days dead are dark; the days to be, a flame

Of wonder and of promise, and great cries

Of travelling people reach me – I must rise.

Was I not man? Could I not rise alone

Above the shifting of the things that be,

Rise to the crest of all the stars and see

The ways of all the world as from a throne?

Was I not man, with proud imperial will

To cancel all the secrets of high heaven?

Should not my sole unbridled purpose fill

All hidden paths with light when once was riven

God’s veil by my indomitable will?

So dreamt I, little man of little vision,

Great only in unconsecrated pride;

Man’s pity grew from pity to derision,

And still I thought, “Albeit they deride,

Yet is it mine uncharted ways to dare

Unknown to these,

And they shall stumble darkly, unaware

Of solemn mysteries

Whereof the key is mine alone to bear.”

So I forgot my God, and I forgot

The holy sweet communion of men,

And moved in desolate places, where are not

Meek hands held out with patient healing when

The hours are heavy with uncharitable pain;

No company but vain

And arrogant thoughts were with me at my side.

And ever to myself I lied.

Saying “Apart from all men thus I go

To know the things that they may never know.”

Then a great change befell;

Long time I stood

In witless hardihood

With eyes on one sole changeless vision set —

The deep disturbèd fret

Of men who made brief tarrying in hell

On their earth travelling.

It was as though the lives of men should be

See circle-wise, whereof one little span

Through which all passed was blackened with the wing

Of perilous evil, bateless misery.

But all beyond, making the whole complete

O’er which the travelling feet

Of every man

Made way or ever he might come to death,

Was odorous with the breath

Of honey-laden flowers, and alive

With sacrificial ministrations sweet

Of man to man, and swift and holy loves,

And large heroic hopes, whereby should thrive

Man’s spirit as he moves

From dawn of life to the great dawn of death.

It was as though mine eyes were set alone

Upon that woeful passage of despair,

Until I held that life had never known

Dominion but in this most troubled place

Where many a ruined grace

And many a friendless care

Ran to and fro in sorrowful unrest.

Still in my hand I pressed

Hope’s fragile chalice, whence I drew deep draughts

That heartened me that even yet should grow

Out of this dread confusion, as of broken crafts

Driven along ungovernable seas,

Prosperous order, and that I should know

After long vigil all the mysteries

Of human wonder and of human fate.

O fool, O only great

In pride unhallowed, O most blind of heart!

Confusion but more dark confusion bred,

Grief nurtured grief, I cried aloud and said,

“Through trackless ways the soul of man is hurled,

No sign upon the forehead of the skies,

No beacon, and no chart

Are given to him, and the inscrutable world

But mocks his scars and fills his mouth with dust.”

And lies bore lies

And lust bore lust,

And the world was heavy with flowerless rods,

And pride outran

The strength of a man

Who had set himself in the place of gods.

Soon was I then to gather bitter shame

Of spirit; I had been most wildly proud —

Yet in my pride had been

Some little courage, formless as a cloud,

Unpiloted save by a vagrant wind,

But still an earnest of the bonds that tame

The legionary hates, of sacred loves that lean

From the high soul of man towards his kind.

And all my grief

Had been for those I watched go to and fro

In uncompassioned woe

Along that little span my unbelief

Had fashioned in my vision as all life.

Now even this so little virtue waned,

For I became caught up into the strife

That I had pitied, and my soul was stained

At last by that most venomous despair,

Self-pity.

I no longer was aware

Of any will to heal the world’s unrest,

I suffered as it suffered, and I grew

Troubled in all my daily trafficking,

Not with the large heroic trouble known

By proud adventurous men who would atone

With their own passionate pity for the sting

And anguish of a world of peril and snares,

It was the trouble of a soul in thrall

To mean despairs,

Driven about a waste where neither fall

Of words from lips of love, nor consolation

Of grave eyes comforting, nor ministration

Of hand or heart could pierce the deadly wall

Of self – of self, – I was a living shame —

A broken purpose. I had stood apart

With pride rebellious and defiant heart,

And now my pride had perished in the flame.

I cried for succour as a little child

Might supplicate whose days are undefiled, —

For tutored pride and innocence are one.

To the gloom has won

A gleam of the sun

And into the barren desolate ways

A scent is blown

As of meadows mown

By cooling rivers in clover days.

I turned me from that place in humble wise,

And fingers soft were laid upon mine eyes,

And I beheld the fruitful earth, with store

Of odorous treasure, full and golden grain,

Ripe orchard bounty, slender stalks that bore

Their flowered beauty with a meek content,

The prosperous leaves that loved the sun and rain,

Shy creatures unreproved that came and went

In garrulous joy among the fostering green.

And, over all, the changes of the day

And ordered year their mutable glory laid —

Expectant winter soberly arrayed,

The prudent diligent spring whose eyes have seen

The beauty of the roses uncreate,

Imperial June, magnificent, elate

Beholding all the ripening loves that stray

Among her blossoms, and the golden time

Of the full ear and bounty of the boughs, —

And the great hills and solemn chanting seas

And prodigal meadows, answering to the chime

Of God’s good year, and bearing on their brows

The glory of processional mysteries

From dawn to dawn, the woven leaves and light

Of the high noon, the twilight secrecies,

And the inscrutable wonder of the stars

Flung out along the reaches of the night.