Читать книгу Poems New and Old - John Freeman - Страница 10

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Unconscious on thy lap I lay,

A spiritual thing,

Stirless until the yet unlooked-for day

Of human birth

Should call me from thy starry twilight, Earth.

And did thy bosom rock and clear voice sing?

I know not—now no more a spiritual thing.

Nor then thy breathed Adieu

I rightly knew.

—Until those human kind arms caught

And nursed my head

Upon her breast who from the twilight brought

This stranger me.

Mother, it were yet happiness to be

Within your arms; but now that you are dead

Your memory sleeps in mine; so mine is comforted,

Though I breathed dear Adieu

Unheard by you.

And I have gathered to my breast

Wife, mistress, child,

Affections insecure but tenderest

Of all that clutch

Man's heart with their "Too little!" and "Too much!"

O, what anxieties, what passions wild

Bind and unbind me, what storms never to be stilled

Until Adieu, Adieu

Breathe the night through.

O, when all last farewells are said

To these most dear;

O, when within my purged heart peace is shed;

When these old sweet

Humanities move out on hushing feet,

And all is hush; then in that silence clear

Who is it comes again—near and near and near,

Even while the sighed Adieu

Fades the hush through?

O, is it on thy breast I fall,

A spiritual thing

Once more, and hear with ear insensual

The voice of primal Earth

Breathed gently as on Eden faint airs forth;

And so contented to thy bosom cling,

Though all those loves are gone nor faithful echoes ring,

Nor fond Adieu, Adieu

My parted spirit pursue?

—So hidden in green darkness deep,

Feel when I wake

The tides of night and day upon thee sweep,

And know thy forehead bared before the East,

And hear thy forests hushing in the West

And in thy bosom, Earth, the slow heart shake:

But hear no more the infinite forest murmurs break

Into Adieu, Adieu,

No more Adieu!