a reading of life-第5章
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Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!
Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him;
Knew him the famine; pestilence and waste;
A desolating fire to blind the sight
With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes;
The gory chariot…wheel on cries for justice;
Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice;
Heard from the babe as from the broken crone。
Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased;
And tumbled down the cave。 But rather look …
Ah; that the woman tattler had not sought;
Of all the Gods to let her secret fly;
Hermes; after the thirteen songful months!
Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts;
And shatter earth's delirious holiday;
Then first; as where the fountain runs a stream;
Resolving to composure on its throbs。
But see her in the Seasons through that year;
That one glad year and the fair opening month。
Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!
War with her; gentle war with her; each day
Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung;
On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength
Renewed; indomitable; whereof they won;
From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids;
Her ready secret: the abounding life
Returned for valiant labour: she and they
Defeated and victorious turn by turn;
By loss enriched; by overthrow restored。
Exchange of powers of this conflict came;
Defacement none; nor ever squandered force。
Is battle nature's mandate; here it reigned;
As music unto the hand that smote the strings;
And she the rosier from their showery brows;
They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast。
Back to the primal rational of those
Who suck the teats of milky earth; and clasp
Stability in hatred of the insane;
Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce
The mortal mind's concept of earth's divorced
Above; those beautiful; those masterful;
Those lawless。 High they sit; and if descend;
Descend to reap; not sowing。 Is it just?
Earth in her happy children asked that word;
Whereto within their breast was her reply。
Those beautiful; those masterful; those lawless;
Enjoy the life prolonged; outleap the years;
Yet they ('twas the Great Mother's voice inspired
The audacious thought); they; glorious over dust;
Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar;
To meet the certain fate of earth's divorced;
And clap lame wings across a wintry haze;
Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still;
Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled
The Tyranny。 This her voice within them told;
When softly the Great Mother chid her sons
Not of the giant brood; who did create
Those lawless Gods; first offspring of our brain
Set moving by an abject blood; that waked
To wanton under elements more benign;
And planted aliens on Olympian heights; …
Imagination's cradle poesy
Become a monstrous pressure upon men; …
Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed
By light from her; born of the love of her;
Their lordship the illumined brain rejects
For earth's beneficent; the sons of Law;
Her other name。 So spake she in their heart;
Among the wheat…blades proud of stalk; beneath
Young vine…leaves pushing timid fingers forth;
Confidently to cling。 And when brown corn
Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song;
With gold necks bent for any zephyr's kiss;
When vine…roots daily down a rubble soil
Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape;
When swelled the grape; and in it held a ray;
Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth;
The very eye of passion drowsed by excess;
And yet a burning lion for the spring;
Then in that time of general cherishment;
Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood…side;
He the harsh rouser of ire being absent; caged;
Then did good Gaea's children gratefully
Lift hymns to Gods they judged; but praised for peace;
Delightful Peace; that answers Reason's call
Harmoniously and images her Law;
Reflects; and though short…lived as then; revives;
In memories made present on the brain
By natural yearnings; all the happy scenes;
The picture of an earth allied to heaven;
Between them the known smile behind black masks;
Rightly their various moods interpreted;
And frolic because toilful children borne
With larger comprehension of Earth's aim
At loftier; clearer; sweeter; by their aid。
Poem: The Night…Walk
Awakes for me and leaps from shroud
All radiantly the moon's own night
Of folded showers in streamer cloud;
Our shadows down the highway white
Or deep in woodland woven…boughed;
With yon and yon a stem alight。
I see marauder runagates
Across us shoot their dusky wink;
I hear the parliament of chats
In haws beside the river's brink;
And drops the vole off alder…banks;
To push his arrow through the stream。
These busy people had our thanks
For tickling sight and sound; but theme
They were not more than breath we drew
Delighted with our world's embrace:
The moss…root smell where beeches grew;
And watered grass in breezy space;
The silken heights; of ghostly bloom
Among their folds; by distance draped。
'Twas Youth; rapacious to consume;
That cried to have its chaos shaped:
Absorbing; little noting; still
Enriched; and thinking it bestowed;
With wistful looks on each far hill
For something hidden; something owed。
Unto his mantled sister; Day
Had given the secret things we sought
And she was grave and saintly gay;
At times she fluttered; spoke her thought;
She flew on it; then folded wings;
In meditation passing lone;
To breathe around the secret things;
Which have no word; and yet are known;
Of thirst for them are known; as air
Is health in blood: we gained enough
By this to feel it honest fare;
Impalpable; not barren; stuff。
A pride of legs in motion kept
Our spirits to their task meanwhile;
And what was deepest dreaming slept:
The posts that named the swallowed mile;
Beside the straight canal the hut
Abandoned; near the river's source
Its infant chirp; the shortest cut;
The roadway missed; were our discourse;
At times dear poets; whom some view
Transcendent or subdued evoked
To speak the memorable; the true;
The luminous as a moon uncloaked;
For proof that there; among earth's dumb;
A soul had passed and said our best。
Or it might be we chimed on some
Historic favourite's astral crest;
With part to reverence in its gleam;
And part to rivalry the shout:
So royal; unuttered; is youth's dream
Of power within to strike without。
But most the silences were sweet;
Like mothers' breasts; to bid it feel
It lived in such divine conceit
As envies aught we stamp for real。
To either then an untold tale
Was Life; and author; hero; we。
The chapters holding peaks to scale;
Or depths to fathom; made our glee;
For we were armed of inner fires;
Unbled in us the ripe desires;
And passion rolled a quiet sea;
Whereon was Love the phantom sail。
Poem: The Hueless Love
Unto that love must we through fire attain;
Which those two held as breath of common air;
The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere;
Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain。
Midway the road of our life's term they met;
And one another knew without surprise;
Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;
Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret。
To them it was revealed how they had found
The kindred nature and the needed mind;
The mate by long conspiracy designed;
The flower to plant in sanctuary ground。
Avowed in vigilant solicitude
For either; what most lived within each breast
They let be seen: yet every human test
Demanding righteousness approved them good。
She leaned on a strong arm; and little feared
Abandonment to help if heaved or sank
Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank;
Life rosier were she but less revered。
An arm that never shook did not obscure
Her woman's intuition of the bliss …
Their tempter's moment o'er the black abyss;