Excerpt
1. ALL THAT'S PAST
Very old are the woods; And the buds that break Out of the briar's boughs, When March winds wake, So old with their beauty are— Oh, no man knows Through what wild centuries Roves back the rose.
Very old are the brooks; And the rills that rise Where snow sleeps cold beneath The azure skies Sing such a history Of come and gone, Their every drop is as wise As Solomon.
Very old are we men; Our dreams are tales Told in dim Eden By Eve's nightingales;
{2}
We wake and whisper awhile, But, the day gone by, Silence and sleep like fields Of amaranth lie.
Walter de la Mare.
2. PRE-EXISTEHCEI laid me down upon the shore And dreamed a little space; I heard the great waves break and roar; The sun was on my face.
My idle hands and fingers brown Played with the pebbles grey; The waves came up, the waves went down, Most thundering and gay.
The pebbles, they were smooth and round And warm upon my hands, Like little people I had found Sitting among the sands.
The grains of sands so shining-small Soft through my fingers ran; The sun shone down upon it all, And so my dream began:
How all of this had been before; How ages far away I lay on some forgotten shore As here I lie to-day.
{3}
The waves came shining up the sands, As here to-day they shine; And in my pre-pelasgian hands The sand was warm and fine.
I have forgotten whence I came, Or what my home might be, Or by what strange and savage name I called that thundering sea.
I only know the sun shone down As still it shines to-day, And in my fingers long and brown The little pebbles lay.
Frances Cornford.
3. FRAGMENTSTroy Town is covered up with weeds, The rabbits and the pismires brood On broken gold, and shards, and beads Where Priam's ancient palace stood.
The floors of many a gallant house Are matted with the roots of grass; The glow-worm and the nimble mouse Among her ruins flit and pass.
And there, in orts of blackened bone, The widowed Trojan beauties lie, And Simois babbles over stone And waps and gurgles to the sky.
{4}
Once there were merry days in Troy, Her chimneys smoked with cooking meals, The passing chariots did annoy The sunning housewives at their wheels.
And many a lovely Trojan maid Set Trojan lads to lovely things; The game of life was nobly played, They played the game like Queens and Kings.
So that, when Troy had greatly passed In one red roaring fiery coal, The courts the Grecians overcast Became a city in the soul.
In some green island of the sea, Where now the shadowy coral grows In pride and pomp and empery The courts of old Atlantis rose....