Poems

by Edward Shanks

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

Ode on Beauty.

Infinite peace is hanging in the air,
Infinite peace is resting on mine eyes,
That just an hour ago learnt how to bear
Seeing your body's flaming harmonies.
The grey clouds flecked with orange are and gold,
Birds unto rest are falling, falling, falling,
And all the earth goes slowly into night,
Steadily turning from the harshly bright
Sunset. And now the wind is growing cold
And in my heart a hidden voice is calling.

Say, is our sense of beauty mixed with earth
When lip on lip and breast on breast we cling,
When ecstasy brings short bright sobs to birth
And all our pulses, both our bodies sing?
When through the haze that gathers on my sight
I see your eyelids, know the eyes behind
See me and half not see me, when our blood
Goes roaring like a deep tremendous flood,
Calm and terrific in unhasty might,
Is then our inner sight sealed up and blind?

Or could it be that when our blood was colder
And side by side we sat with lips disparted
I saw the perfect line of your resting shoulder,
Your mouth, your peaceful throat with fuller-hearted,
More splendid joy? Ah poignant joys all these!
And rest can stab the heart as well as passion.
Yea, I have known sobs choke my heart to see
Your honey-coloured hair move languorously,
Ruffled, not by my hands, but by the breeze,
And I have prayed the rough air for compassion.

Yea, I have knelt to the unpiteous air
And knelt to gods I knew not, to remove
The viewless hands whose sight I could not bear
Out of the wind-blown head of her I love.
Ecstasy enters me and cannot speak,
Seizes my hands and smites my fainting eyes
And sends through all my veins a dim despair
Of never apprehending all so fair
And I have stood, unnerved and numb and weak,
Watching your breathing bosom fall and rise.

Ah no! This joy is empty, incomplete,
And sullied with a sense of too much longing,
Where thoughts and fancies, sweet and bitter-sweet,
And old regrets and new-born hopes come thronging.
Man can see beauty for a moment's space
And live, having seen her with an unfilmed eye,
If all his body and all his soul in one
Instant are tuned by passion to unison
And I can image in your kissing face
The eternal meaning of the earth and sky.

Song in Time of Waiting.

Because the days are long for you and me,
I make this song to lighten their slow time,
So that the weary waiting fruitful be
Or blossomed only by my limping rhyme.
The days are very long
And may not shortened be by any chime
Of measured words or any fleeting song.
Yet let us gather blossoms while we wait
And sing brave tunes against the face of fate.

Day after day goes by: the exquisite
Procession of the variable year,
Summer, a sheaf with flowers bound up in it,
And autumn, tender till the frosts appear
And dry the humid skies;
And winter following on, aloof, austere,
Clad in the garments of a frore sunrise;
And spring again. May not too many a spring
Make both our voices tremble as we sing!

The days are empty, empty, and the nights
Are cold and void; there is no single gleam
Across the space unpeopled of delights,
Save only now and then some thin-blood dream,
Some stray of summer weather;
The tedious hours like slow-foot laggarts seem,
When you and I, my love, are not together
And when I hold you in my arms at last
The minutes go like April cloudlets past.

And yet no hidden charm, no desperate spell
Can make these minutes longer, those less long:
No force there is that yearning can impel
Against the callous years which do us wrong.
No words, no whispered rune,
No witchery and no Thessalian song
Can make that far-off, misty day more soon.
The bravest tune, the most courageous rhyme
Fall broken from the bastions of time.

A long and dusty road it is to tread;
Few are the wayside flowers and far apart
And are no sooner plucked than withered,
When yearning heart is torn from yearning heart.
A weary road it is
And yet far off I see clear waters start
And clean sweet grass and tangled traceries
Of whispering leaves, that laugh to see us come,
And there one day ... one day shall be our home.

The day will come. O dearest, do not doubt!
It is not born as yet but I shall see
Some day the fearless sunrise flashing out
And know the night will give you up to me.
O heart, my heart, be glad,
Because the time will come at last when we
Shall leave all grief and unlearn all things sad
And know the joy than which none sweeter is
And I shall sing a happier song than this.

Sonnets on Separation.

I.

The time shall be, old Wisdom says, when you
Shall grow awrinkled and I, indifferent,
Shall no more follow the light steps I knew
Or trace you, finding out the way you went,
By swinging branches and the displaced flowers
Among the thickets. I no more shall stand,
With careful pencil through the adoring hours
Scratching your grace on paper. My still hand
No more shall tremble at the touch of yours
And I'll write no more songs and you'll not sing.
But this is all a lie, for love endures
And we shall closer kiss, remembering
How budding trees turned barren in the sun
Through this long week, whereof one day's now done.

II.

The time is all so short. One week is much
To be without your deep and peaceful eyes,
Your soft and all-contenting cheek, the touch
Of well-caressing hands. O were we wise
We would not love too strongly, would not bind
Life into life so inextricably,
That the dumb body suffers with the mind
In a sad partnership this agony.
For death will come and swallow up us two,
You there, I here, and we shall lie apart,
Out of the houses and the woods we knew.
Then in the lonely grave, my dust-choked heart
Out of the dust will raise, if it can speak,
A threnody for this lost, lovely week.

III.

Is there no prophylactic against love?
Can I with drugs not dull the ache one night?
The rain is heavy and the low clouds move
Over the empty home of our delight
And find me in it weeping. You are far
And you are now asleep. The night's so thick,
Not even one stooping and compassionate star
Shines on us both disparted. O be quick,
Torturing days and heavy, turn your hours
To minutes, melt yourselves into one day!
... The cold rain falls in swift assailing showers,
Darkness is round me and light far away.
I'm in our well-known room and you're shut in
By strange unfriendly walls I've never seen.

IV.

Lovers that drug themselves for ecstasy
Seek love too closely in an overdose,
When the sweet spasm turns to agony
And the quick limbs are still and the eyes close.
I too, a fool, desired—to make love strong—
Absence and parting but the measure's brimmed,
The dose is over-poured, the time's too long
Already, though two nights have hardly dimmed
My lonely eyes with the elusive sleep.
O I'll remember, I'll not wish again
To go with ardent limbs into this deep
Sea of dejection, this dull mere of pain:
We'll love our safer loves upon the shore
And quest for inexperienced joys no more.

V.

Through the closed curtains comes the early sun,
First a pale finger, preluding the hand.
Outside more certainly the day's begun,
Where bright and brighter still the chestnuts stand,
Broad candles lighting up at the first fire.
I stir and turn in my uneasy sleep
But in my sorrow sleep's my whole desire.
About the still room small lights move and creep
Silently, stealthily on wall and chair,
Till to strong rays and shining lights they grow,
Which with their magic change the waiting air
And all its sleeping motes to gold and throw
A golden radiance on your empty bed,
Which wakes me with vain likeness to your head.

VI.

To-morrow I shall see you come again
Between the pale trees, through the sullen gate,
Out of the dark and secret house of pain
Where lie the unhappy and unfortunate.
To-morrow you will live with me and love me,
Spring will go on again, I'll see the flowers
And little things, ridiculous things, shall move me
To smiles or tears or verse. The world is ours
To-morrow. Open heaths, tall trees, great skies,
With massive clouds that fly and come again,
Sweet fields, delicious rivers and the rise
And fall of swelling land from the swift train
We'll see together, knowing that all this
Is one great room wherein we two may kiss.

VII.

We're at the world's top now. The hills around
Stand proud in order with the valleys deep,
The hills with pastures drest, with tall trees crowned,
And the low valleys dipt in sunny sleep.
A sound brims all the country up, a noise
Of wheels upon the road and labouring bees
And trodden heather, mixing with the voice
Of small lost winds that die among the trees.
And we are prone beneath the flooding sun,
So drenched, so soaked in the unceasing light,
That colours, sounds and your close presence are one,
A texture woven up of all delight,
Whose shining threads my hands may not undo,
Yet one thread runs the whole bright garment through.

The Morning Sun.

Perhaps you sleep now, fifty miles to the south,
While I sit here and dream of you by night.
The thick soft blankets drawn about your mouth
Have made for you a nest of warm delight;
Your short crisp hair is thrown abroad and spilled
Upon the pillow's whiteness and your eyes
Are quiet and the round soft lids are filled
With sleep.

But I shall watch until sunrise
Creeps into chilly clouds and heavy air,
Across the lands where you sleep and I wake,
And I shall know the sun has seen you there,
Unmoving though the winter morning break.
Next, you will lift your hands and rub your eyes
And turn to sleep again but wake and start
And feel, half dreaming, with a dear surprise,
My hand in the sunbeam touching at your heart.