Poems New and Old - John Freeman

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deep.

      And I will take celandine, nettle and parsley, white

       In its own green light,

       Or milkwort and sorrel, thyme, harebell and meadowsweet

       Lifting at your feet,

       And ivy blossom beloved of soft bees; I will take

       The loveliest—

       The seeding grasses that bend with the winds, and shake

       Though the winds are at rest.

      "For me?" you will ask. "Yes! surely they wave for you

       Their smell and hue,

       And you away all that is rare were so much less

       By your missed happiness."

       Yet I know grass and weed, ivy and apple and thorn

       Their whole sweet would keep

       Though in Eden no human spirit on a shining morn

       Had awaked from sleep.

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      In those old days you were called beautiful,

       But I have worn the beauty from your face;

       The flowerlike bloom has withered on your cheek

       With the harsh years, and the fire in your eyes

       Burns darker now and deeper, feeding on

       Beauty and the remembrance of things gone.

       Even your voice is altered when you speak,

       Or is grown mute with old anxiety

       For me.

      Even as a fire leaps into flame and burns

       Leaping and laughing in its lovely flight,

       And then under the flame a glowing dome

       Deepens slowly into blood-like light:—

       So did you flame and in flame take delight,

       So are you hollow'd now with aching fire.

       But I still warm me and make there my home,

       Still beauty and youth burn there invisibly

       For me.

      Now my lips falling on your silver'd skull,

       My fingers in the valleys of your cheeks,

       Or my hands in your thin strong hands fast caught,

       Your body clutched to mine, mine bent to yours:

       Now love undying feeds on love beautiful,

       Now, now I am but thought kissing your thought …

       —And can it be in your heart's music speaks

       A deeper rhythm hearing mine: can it be

       Indeed for me?

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      The undecaying yew has shed his flowers

       Long since in golden showers.

       The elm has robed her height

       In green, and hangs maternal o'er the bright

       Starred meadows, and her full-contented breast

       Lifts and sinks to rest.

       Shades drowsing in the grass

       Beneath the hedge move but as the hours pass.

       Beech, oak and beam have all put beauty on

       In the eye of the sun.

       Because the hawthorn's sweet

       All the earth is sweet and the air, and the wind's feet.

       In the wood's green hollows the earth is sweet and wet,

       For scarce one shaft may get

       The sudden green between:

       Only that warm sweet creeps between the green;

       Or in the clearing the bluebells lifting high

       Make another azure sky.

      All's leaf and flower except

       The sluggish ash that all night long has slept,

       And all the morning of this lingering spring.

       Every tree else may sing,

       Every bough laugh and shake;

       But the ash like an old man does not wake

       Even though draws near the season's poise and noon

       Of heavy-poppied swoon …

       Still the ash is asleep,

       Or from his lower upraised palms now creep

       First green leaves, promising that even those gaunt

       Tossed boughs shall be the haunt

       Of Autumn starlings shrill

       Mid his full-leaved high branches never still.

      If to any tree,

       'Tis to the ash that I might likened be—

       Masculine, unamenable, delaying,

       With palms uplifted praying

       For another life and Spring

       Yet unforeshadowed; but content to swing

       Stiff branches chill and bare

       In this fine-quivering air

       That others' love makes sweetness everywhere.

       Table of Contents

      To make a fairer,

       A kinder, a more constant world than this;

       To make time longer

       And love a little stronger,

      To give to blossoms

       And trees and fruits more beauty than they bear,

       Adding to sweetness

       The aye-wanted completeness,

      To say to sorrow,

       "Ease now thy bosom of its snaky burden";

       (And sorrow brightened,

       No more stung and frightened),

      To cry to death,

       "Stay a little, O proud Shade, thy stony hand";

       (And death removing

       Left us amazed loving);—

      For this and this,

       O inward Spirit, arm thyself with power;

       Be it thy duty

       To give a body to beauty.

      Thine to remake

       The world in thy hid likeness, and renew

       The fading vision

       In spite of time's derision.

      Be it thine, O spirit,

       The world of sense and thought to exalt with light;

       Purge away blindness,

       Terror and all unkindness.

      Shine, shine

       From within, on the confused grey world without

      

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