Orchard and Vineyard

by V. Sackville-West

I am the swift omnipotent magician;
All bounty’s in my gift, all songs unsung,
All slumbering chords, all undiscovered crafts
Baffling their premature interpreters;
No law’s beyond my searching; I’ll condemn
No vice, despise no sorrow, scorn no joy,
Deride no virtue, throw no stone at Pilate,
But sweep my mantle round humanity
And round the pomp of nature; naught I’ll find
Too mean, too great, too little, or too spacious;
Mine be the secrets both of hearts and stars,
(Small, measureless hearts; great, measurable stars;)
And love’s old barbarous reiteration
I’ll tolerate, and the great self-less peace
Like the deep sea’s perpetual repose.

I’ll not be parsimonious of my wealth.
I’ll fill your heaven with many coloured moons
And hang such variable tides upon them
As strew the astonished fish along the shores.
I’ll bring the planets nearer: I’ll attract
Saturn within his hoop of shining rings;
I’ll summon a great conclave of the comets
Which hitherto were strangers to each other,
And man, at nightfall standing on the crest
Of a familiar hill, shall marvelling stare
Into an unfamiliar firmament.
I’ll show you Jupiter’s rebel satellite
That on the outer fringe of measured space
Backwards revolves, striving against the law
That chains her anger to an irksome orbit.

I’ll dry the seas and bring the unknown lands
To light, that on unchristened continents
Man stray dry-foot from Africa to Asia.
Oh, what new rivers then, what deep, deep lakes,
What caverns and what cliffs, what strange ravines,
What deserts, what denuded leagues of plain,
Should offer to his swarming multitude!
Peaks shall be islands, islands shall be peaks,
When I reverse the ordering and make
A mountainous Pacific continent,
A Himalayan archipelago.

And all the daily and the lovely things,
—The fawn’s late bed of bracken, newly warmed,
The nets of fishermen through water sinking,
Drawn up all hoar with flake of silver scales
And round clear drops that tremble from the mesh,—
These little things, these nimble shy delights,
With the quick magic of significance
I’ll not despise to startle into being.

SONGS OF FANCY

SONGS OF FANCY: I

YOUR caravel was loosely moored,
—So lightly moored, so slightly moored,—
It ranged with every passing swell,
Your gipsy-hearted caravel
That only silken ropes secured.

I dreamt that you might slip away,
—Might slide away, might glide away,—
When I was absent, on a breeze
Enticing you to other seas
With whispers of a lovelier day.

The sirens underneath the stars,
—The flaunting stars, the haunting stars,—
Would cast adrift your mooring-rope
(Farewell, my heart! farewell, my hope!)
And stretch the sails upon your spars,