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Time and Place
Spring
Spring
Willows in the Valley
In a secluded valley, at a spring noontide,
New September sunlight subdued by fugitive rains,
We saw the ghosts of willow-trees waiting embodiment,
Assembled in a pasture’s emerald bay.
These were not trees we saw, these were tree-spirits
In the still noonday shown us, and a waking dream;
Thoughts of young willows not imprisoned yet,
Impalpable boughs and incorporeal green.
They stood, those delicate spheres (a distillation
Of purest green and golden mist and rosy haze
Their fabric) motionless; they were poised airily,
As they had danced thither, and might dance away.
The small bird riro-riro a secret rivulet
Of song made warble there; the musical shade
Of bird-to-be, fluting in ghostly willow-wood
Happy-sad lullaby for spirits soon to wake.
Or were these phantom willows from beyond the waves
Of time’s deep ocean, trees upon whose branches
Aliens hung up their harps, fair maid her garland
By fatal stream, or shading tyrants’ graves?
And the small bird-trill, fluttering echo faint
Of oaten pipe that once by legendary shepherd
Was played in far green European meadow,
Telling old sylvan pleasures, pastoral complaint?
It was a vision of willows in magical young green…
Spring-time is vision; come, gone, imperishable;
Spring is dim cloudland of new bliss, impenetrable;
Spring is a sunbreathed veil on what shall be, has been,
A bright stuff spun of the seen and the unseen.
Spring Storm
All night in the darkness the Furies, the Furies
Shrieked on the southwind and wailed in the rain,
Inciting to tumult gales pelting sharp hail
From mighty catapult;
But deep in obscurity earth slept the surer.
At daybreak the storm stayed. Had the dark ones, weary
Of ruthless pursuit, their harsh screaming hushed?
Or nightwards, hard on their quarry, outrun our dusk?
Piercing through mist,
One kiss of the fierce sun waked young Primavera.
She arose; with a hand-twist wrung out her tresses,
Her long yellow tresses; flung naked her young limbs,
Her willowy, white limbs, merrily running
And tripping light;
Her burnished hair, tossing, dressed and undressed her.
She laughed as she crossed the wide lowlands over,
Scattering rainbows stolen from swift rains;
They lay, starry prisms, strown on the vast plain
And mountains afar;
We saw them this spring day; for so is October.
Anniversary
It was a day of young October; wakened
To breathe an urgent air of summer heat in spring,
Summoned abroad, I saw the season hasten,
And the bare boughs quicken their burgeoning.
To jettison September’s golden cargoes
The freighted wattles bowed, and lilacs now upbore
Their perfumed burden, and in all the gardens
Pink muslin frocks, or white, the cherries wore.
The lime-tree’s tender fans I saw unfolding,
The birch, bright green besprinkled, parti-leaved,
And saw the sycamores and chestnuts robing —
It was as if Spring were spinning while Summer weaved.
Beyond those trees, the morning’s opened gateway
And the great ocean’s sharp, responsive blue
I saw, and new snow-silvered ranges
And snowy Tapuaenuku..…
Time importunes our vision with such favours
As it revolves, and may therewith devise
A jot of quiet, the regale to savour —
But oh, that we distil from each new spring’s surprise
Imperishable essence, intellectual labour
Storing the elexir in mind’s treasuries
Against the ultimate hour a blinding darkness lies
On these, by its very turning, ever time-menaced eyes.
The Long Harbour
There are three valleys where the warm sun lingers,
gathered to a green hill girt-about anchorage,
and gently, gently, at the cobbled margin
of fire-formed, time-smoothed, ocean-moulded curvature,
a spent tide fingers the graven boulders,
the black, sea-bevelled stones.
The fugitive hours, in those sun-loved valleys,
implacable hours, their golden-wheeled chariots’
inaudible passage check, and slacken
their restless teams’ perpetual galloping;
and browsing, peaceable sheep and cattle
gaze as they pause by the way.
Grass springs sweet where once thick forest
gripped vales by fire and axe freed to pasturage;
but flame and blade have spared the folding gullies,
and there, still, the shade-flitting, honey-sipping lutanists
copy the dropping of tree-cool waters
dripping from stone to stone.
White hawthorn hedge from old, remembered England,
and orchard white, and whiter bridal clematis
the bush-bequeathed, conspire to strew the valleys
in tender spring, and blackbird, happy colonist,
and blacker, sweeter-fluter tui echo
either the other’s song.
From far, palm-feathery, ocean-spattered islands
there rowed hither dark and daring voyagers;
and Norseman, Gaul, the Briton and the German
sailed hither singing; all these hardy venturers
they desired a home, and have taken their rest there,
and their songs are lost on the wind.
I have walked here with my love in the early spring-time,
and under the summer-dark walnut-avenues,
and played with the children, and waited with the aged
by the quayside, and listened alone where manukas
sighing, windswept, and sea-answering pine-groves
garrison the burial-ground.
It should be very easy to lie down and sleep there
in that sequestered hillside ossuary,
underneath a billowy, sun-caressed grass-knoll,
beside those dauntless, tempest-braving ancestresses
who pillowed there so gladly, gnarled hands folded,
their tired, afore-translated bones.
It would not be a hard thing to wake up one morning
to the sound of bird-song in scarce-stirring willow-trees,
waves lapping, oars plashing, chains running slowly,
and faint voices calling across the harbour;
to embark at dawn, following the old forefathers,
to put forth at daybreak for some lovelier,
still undiscovered shore.
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