SHEPHERD, to yon tall poplars tune your flute:
Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill,
The slow blue rumour of the hill;
Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold,
And the great sky be mute.
Then hearken how the poplar trees unfold
Their buds, yet close and gummed and blind,
In airy leafage of the mind,
Rustling in silvery whispers the twin-hued scales
That fade not nor grow old.
“Poplars and fountains and you cypress spires
Springing in dark and rusty flame,
Seek you aught that hath a name?
Or say, say: Are you all an upward agony
Of undefined desires?
“Say, are you happy in the golden march
Of sunlight all across the day?
Or do you watch the uncertain way
That leads the withering moon on cloudy stairs
Over the heaven’s wide arch?
“Is it towards sorrow or towards joy you lift
The sharpness of your trembling spears?
Or do you seek, through the grey tears
That blur the sky, in the heart of the triumphing blur,
A deeper, calmer rift?”
So; I have tuned my music to the trees,
And there were voices, dim below
Their shrillness, voices swelling slow
In the blue murmur of hills, and a golden cry
And then vast silences.
C. R. JURY
(MAGDALEN)
A SONNET TO A FRIEND
YOUNG bright-plumed eagle, prince of pure heaven’s fire,
Inhabitant of glory clothed in light,
Exalt me to this new triumphant pyre
That burns the shades and monsters of our night,
Vouchsafe thy spirit; touch me with the power
So to desire, and so maintain my voice
As thou, who in thy fair ascending hour
Hawk’st in the top of morning at thy joys;
O mortal splendour in immortal beams,
Or deathless ghost, who buildest out of dust
An edifice of temporal flame which seems
Beyond the movement of our change and rust,
Though it must die; O sheer delight above me,
Fountain of undescended love, I love thee.