Читать книгу Poems, 1908-1919 - Drinkwater John - Страница 8

Sometimes, when walls and occupation seem

A prison merely, a dark barrier

Between me everywhere

And life, or the larger province of the mind,

As dreams confined,

As the trouble of a dream,

I seek to make again a life long gone,

To be

My mind’s approach and consolation,

To give it form’s lucidity,

Resilient form, as porcelain pieces thrown

In buried China by a wrist unknown,

Or mirrored brigs upon Fowey sea.

Then to my memory comes nothing great

Of purpose, or debate,

Or perfect end,

Pomp, nor love’s rapture, nor heroic hours to spend —

But most, and strangely, for long and so much have I seen,

Comes back an afternoon

Of a June

Sunday at Elsfield, that is up on a green

Hill, and there,

Through a little farm parlour door,

A floor

Of red tiles and blue,

And the air

Sweet with the hot June sun cascading through

The vine-leaves under the glass, and a scarlet fume

Of geranium flower, and soft and yellow bloom

Of musk, and stains of scarlet and yellow glass.

Such are the things remain

Quietly, and for ever, in the brain,

And the things that they choose for history-making pass.