Mest leste ▸
Ivor Gurney
How slow you move, old Time;
Walk a bit faster!
Old fool, I’m not your slave....
Beauty’s my master!
You hold me for a space....
What are you, Time?
A ghost, a thing of thought,
An easy rhyme.
Some day I shall again,
For all your scheming,
See Severn valley clouds
Like banners streaming.
And walk in Cranham lanes,
By Maisemore go....
But, fool, decrepit Fool,
You are SO SLOW!!!
bright April clouds
bits of snow left beneath
the mountain pine
But the march to Life . . .
Break song to sing the new song!
Clouds leap, flowers bloom.
Bits of song . . . what else?
I, a rider of the stream,
Lone between the clouds.
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor angry crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.
Yet the back-yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree--
I could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.
The little clouds are all in white
To-day :
They kneel at God's high blue altar
To receive the moon.
The clouds go by and by,
The heron sings in the blue--
And I lie dreaming, dreaming
Ever of you.
The stag on the hill is free,
And the wind is blowing sweet--
But I lie bound a prisoner
At your feet.
The clouds pass
Over the polished mirror of the sky:
The clouds pass, puffs of grey,
There is no star.
The clouds pass slowly:
Suddenly a disengaged star flashes.
The night is cold and the clouds
Roll slowly over the sky.
I am a river flowing round your hill,
Holding your image in my lingering water,
With imaged white clouds rising round your head;
And I am happy to bear your image still.
Though a loud ruffling wind may break and scatter
That happiness, I know it is not fled.
But when the wind is gone or gentled so
That only the least quivering quivers on,
Your image recomposes in my breast
With those high clouds, quiet and white as snow--
Spiritual company; and when day's gone
And those white clouds have stepped into the west;
And the dark blue filling the heavens deep
Is bright with stars that sing above your head,
Their light lies in the deep of my dark eyes
With your dark shape, a shadow of your sleep ...
Nobody passes on the street.
The day is set, like a stage, for feet.
With a ridge of white clouds painted high
Across the canvas of the sky;
With pavement gleaming and too clean ;
A shimmer of grass that seems too green,
And houses alert on every side
Showing a stiff and conscious pride.
The day is a stage, and life is a play —
But nobody passes down this way.
Why do I lie upon the ground
And listen to the silver sound
Of water flowing from a spring?
It sings a song I cannot sing.
Why am I gazing at the sky
To watch the clouds go trailing by?
--Pearl ships upon a sapphire sea--
They seek a land unknown to me.
Why do I listen to the song
Of pine-boughs singing all day long?
The secret that their songs unfold
Ten thousand bards have left untold.