Poems of To-Day: an Anthology. Various

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        Too soothe and mild your lowland airs

          For one whose hope is gone:

        I'm thinking of a little tarn,

          Brown, very lone.

        Would now the tall swift mists could lay

          Their wet grasp on my hair,

        And the great natures of the hills

          Round me friendly were.

        In vain!—For taking hills your plains

          Have spoilt my soul, I think,

        But would my feet were going down

          Towards the brown tarn's brink.

        Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,

          Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,

        Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,

          My heart remembers how!

        Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,

          Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,

        Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanished races,

          And winds, austere and pure:

        Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,

          Hills of home! and to hear again the call;

        Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,

          And hear no more at all.

        Through the sunny garden

          The humming bees are still;

        The fir climbs the heather,

          The heather climbs the hill.

        The low clouds have riven

          A little rift through.

        The hill climbs to heaven,

          Far away and blue.

        O the high valley, the little low hill,

          And the cornfield over the sea,

        The wind that rages and then lies still,

          And the clouds that rest and flee!

        O the gray island in the rainbow haze,

          And the long thin spits of land,

        The roughening pastures and the stony ways,

          And the golden flash of the sand!

        O the red heather on the moss-wrought rock,

          And the fir-tree stiff and straight,

        The shaggy old sheep-dog barking at the flock,

          And the rotten old five-barred gate!

        O the brown bracken, the blackberry bough,

          The scent of the gorse in the air!

        I shall love them ever as I love them now,

          I shall weary in Heaven to be there!

        Strike, Life, a happy hour, and let me live

          But in that grace!

        I shall have gathered all the world can give,

          Unending Time and Space!

        Bring light and air—the thin and shining air

          Of the North land,

        The light that falls on tower and garden there,

          Close to the gold sea-sand.

        Bring flowers, the latest colours of the earth,

          Ere nun-like frost

        Lay her hard hand upon this rainbow mirth,

          With twinkling emerald crossed.

        The white star of the traveller's joy, the deep

          Empurpled rays that hide the smoky stone,

        The dahlia rooted in Egyptian sleep,

          The last frail rose alone.

        Let music whisper from a casement set

          By them of old,

        Where the light smell of lavender may yet

          Rise from the soft loose mould.

        Then shall I know, with eyes and ears awake,

          Not in bright gleams,

        The joy my Heavenly Father joys to make

          For men who grieve, in dreams!

        God gave all men all earth to love,

          But since our hearts are small,

        Ordained for each one spot should prove

          Beloved over all;

        That as He watched Creation's birth

          So we, in godlike mood,

        May of our love create our earth

          And see that it is good.

        So one shall Baltic pines content,

          As one some Surrey glade,

        Or one the palm-grove's droned lament

          Before Levuka's trade.

        Each to his choice, and СКАЧАТЬ