On hills too harsh for firs to climb,
Where eagle dare not hatch her brood,
Upon the peak of solitude,
With anvils of black granite crude
I forge austerities of rhyme.
Such godlike stuff my spirit drinks
I make grand odes of tempests there.
The steel-winged eagle, if he dare
To cleave these tracts of frozen air,
Hearing such music, swoops and sinks.
Stark clangours of forgotten wars,
Tumults of primal love and hate,
Through crags of song reverberate.
Held by the Singer of High State,
Battalions of the midnight pause.
On hills uplift from Space and Time,
Upon the peak of Solitude,
With stars to give my furnace food,
On anvils of black granite crude
I forge austerities of rhyme.
[Gerald Gould]
Freedoms
Eight Sonnets
| 1 | Those were our freedoms, and we come to this: The climbing road that lures the climbing feet Is lost: there lies no mist above the wheat, Where-thro' to glimpse the silver precipice, Far off, about whose base the white seas hiss In spray; the world grows narrow and complete; We have lost our perils in the certain sweet; We have sold our great horizon for a kiss. To every hill there is a lowly slope, But some have heights beyond all height — so high They make new worlds for the adventuring eye. We for achievement have forgone our hope, And shall not see another morning ope, Nor the new moon come into the new sky. |
| 2 | Where is our freedom sought, and where to seek? The voices of the various world agree The future's ours: to hope is to be free: Only to doubt, to fear, is to be weak. Have you not felt upon your calm clear cheek The kiss of the bright wind of liberty? What more is there to ask, what more to be? Peace, peace, my soul, and let the silence speak! To hope is to be free? Nay, hope's a slave To every chance; hope is the same as fear; Hope trembles at the wind, the star, the wave, The voice, the mood, the music; hope stands near The chilly threshold of the waiting grave, And when the silence speaks, hope does not hear. |