Preludes 1921-1922

By John Drinkwater

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of love,
And feed his sacred flame.
COLERIDGE.

FOR DAVID

CONTENTS

I. [PRELUDE]
II. [DAVID AND JONATHAN]
III. [THE MAID OF NAAMAN'S WIFE]
IV. [LAKE WINTER]
V. [GOLD]
VI. [BURNING BUSH]
VII. [TO MY SON]
VIII. [INTERLUDE]

NOTE.—This book is really one poem, and is a
development of my sonnet sequence, Persuasion.

PRELUDE

Though black the night, I know upon the sky,
A little paler now, if clouds were none,
The stars would be. Husht now the thickets lie,
And now the birds are moving one by one,—
A note—and now from bush to bush it goes—
A prelude—now victorious light along
The west will come till every bramble glows
With wash of sunlit dew shaken in song.
Shaken in song; O heart, be ready now,
Cold in your night, be ready now to sing.
Dawn as it wakes the sleeping bird on bough
Shall summon you to instant reckoning,—
She is your dawn, O heart,—sing, till the night
Of death shall come, the gospel of her light.