John Le Gay Brereton: Verses about Love

The doom is imminent of unholy hate.
Hail to the light that glimmers where the leaves
Are shaken by winds of dawning, and the sheaves
Of hemlock swirl and scatter in the spate!
Love, that has learned in faith to sorrow and wait,
Sings loud his glorious charm and subtly weaves
The spell subduing madness that receives
The madman at his own mad estimate.

Ah, but the ponderous horror! Nay, not yet
The cloud of sorrow leeward growls and rolls;
The eyes that meet the morn are heavy and wet.
The loss the military mind enscrolls,
Spilt blood and battered bones, we may forget,
But not the wastage of beloved souls

And can you tell me Love is blind
Because your faults he will not find,
Because the image that he sees
Is one of splendid mysteries?
And if he lack the power to look
On what he will, as on a book,
And read therein the heart of it,
Why are his ways with wonder lit?
Why think you he should bind his eyes
And hide the many-tinted skies,
But that he sees too well to trust
The shadows on an orb of dust?
For he hath vision keener far
Than poring Thought's and Fancy's are
An inward vision, full and clear
When night has flung her mantle sheer
Across the world we stumble through
In search of Truth's evasive clue.
He looks, and straight there fall away
The flutt'ring rags of your array,
The far-fet gem, th' indecent drape,
The pads that mar the perfect shape,
And naked to his reverent view
Is beauty's self, essential you.

OUR little queen of dreams,
Our image of delight,
Which whitens east and gleams
And beckons from the height,
Takes on her human form—is here in mortal sight.

We two have loved her long,
Have known her eyes for years;
We worshipped her with song
The spirit only hears,
And now she comes to us new-washed with blood and tears.

Her radiant self she veils
With vesture meet for earth,
And, knowing all, inhales
The lethal air of birth,
And wakes to restless dreams of misery and mirth.

The fogs of learning rise
And hide the light above,
But in her steadfast eyes
Will shine the light of love,
Which many a gloomy dale may know the gladness of.

What gift is ours to give,
What truth is ours to teach
That she may learn to live
With joy within her reach?
We can but let her learn the sound of human speech.

By custom-fettered fools
Her freedom will be blamed,
Because by sleepy rules
Her soul shall be untamed,
And she will front the sun brown-skinned and unashamed.

Her kinship she will know
With beast and rock and tree,
Wherever she may go
The sky her home will be,
The winds will be her mates,
her crooning nurse the sea.

While to the clarion blown by Marlowe's breath
Tall Tragedy tramped by in hues of death,
And Shakespeare yet was tuning string by string,
With English hawthorn crowned, in that glad spring
When bright clouds melted in a sky serene,
Romance moved lightly to the pipe of Greene.
As fresh as buds half-open, pure as dew,
Two damsels came in forefront of her crew,
One native to the hedgerows and the meads,
The keeper's lass, in simple country weeds,
Her firm white arms, as delicate as silk,
Below her smock-sleeve shining wet with milk;
No marvel the young noble learnt to woo
A maid so merry and frank and homely true.
The other with sad mien, though yet a bride,
Clad in man's raiment softly stole aside
And grieved that he who should have been her stay
Would privily have done her life away,
For still his crime with bloodshot eyeballs grim
And dripping fangs turned back and hunted him.
Cast off, contemned and hated, stabbed, discrowned,
Still in her heart wide realm for him she found,
When earth and love and joy seemed to his hand,
Gripped madly, a waning measure of slipping sand.
Though lust and murder made of him a slave,
Her love set free, her purity forgave.
Humbled and hopeless, all his sins confessed,
By miracle his contrite soul was blessed,
And heavy tolling of those haunted days
Was turned to golden peals of joyous praise.
Ah, but this woeful lady, lily-pale,
Is no mere vision drifting through a tale;
The sad sweet picture of the patient Queen
Betrays the rebel heart of Robert Greene.

Grant me a moment of peace,
Let me but open mine eyes,
Forgetting the empire of lies
And warfare's majestic increase
Of national folly and hate;
Ere I return to my fate,
Grant me a moment of peace.

To what is I would turn from what seems
From a world where men fall and adore
The god that Fear shuddering bore
To Greed in the desert of dreams,
Unholy, inhuman, impure;
From the State to the loves that endure,
To what is I would turn from what seems.

No man has been richer than I,
Though he staggered with infinite gold
And bought of whatever is sold
Of the beauty that money can buy.
In the wealth that is lost in the mart
And is stored in the innermost heart
No man has been richer than I.

Humbly, a pilgrim, I stood,
Weary and hungry and lame,
And out of the multitude came
Friends who were better than good,
Friends who would not be denied
Where by the palpitant tide
Humbly, a pilgrim, I stood.

Now to my army of friends
A handful of petals I fling,
Strays of perennial spring,
Weeds, but the lover who sends
Bled that each blossom might live.
This is myself that I give
Now to my army of friends.

Comrade in exile, to you
Chiefly the gift should belong,
You who will hear in my song
Echoes of days that we knew
Blue and deep-droning and clear
Far in the hills that are dear,
Comrade in exile, to you.

Pause and remember them now,
Plunge, as you dived in the stream,
To the sweet cool depth of your dream.
The drooping, sheltering bough,
The brown rock lettered above,
The still interfusion of love,
Pause and remember them now.

There as we lay in the cave
And saw, as an eye of the dark,
The camp-fire's slumbering spark,
And heard the cataract rave,
Your soul and my soul were as one;
Our life in one channel has run
There as we lay in the cave.

Forth to the task of a man!
Youth and the valour of youth,
Force and the ardour of truth
Give you a place in the van,
Love keeping step at your side
Chanting aloud as you stride
Forth to the task of a man.

What of these tender feet
   That have never toddled yet?
   What dances shall they beat,
   With what red vintage wet?
In what wild way will they march or stray, by what sly paynims met?

   The toil of it none may share;
   By yourself must the way be won
   Through fervid or frozen air
   Till the overland journey's done;
And I would not take, for your own dear sake, one thorn from your track,
   my son.

   Go forth to your hill and dale,
   Yet take in your hand from me
   A staff when your footsteps fail,
   A weapon if need there be;
'Twill hum in your ear when the foeman's near, athirst for the victory.

   In the desert of dusty death
   It will point to the hidden spring;
   Should you weary and fail for breath,
   It will burgeon and branch and swing
Till you sink to sleep in its shadow deep to the sound of its murmuring.

   You must face the general foe --
   A phantom pale and grim.
   If you flinch at his glare, he'll grow
   And gather your strength to him;
But your power will rise if you laugh in his eyes and away in a mist
   he'll swim.

   To your freeborn soul be true --
   Fling parchment in the fire;
   Men's laws are null for you,
   For a word of Love is higher,
And can you do aught, when He rules your thought, but follow your own desire?

   You will dread no pinching dearth
   In the home where you love to lie,
   For your floor will be good brown earth
   And your roof the open sky.
There'll be room for all at your festival when the heart-red wine runs high.

   Joy to you, joy and strife
   And a golden East before,
   And the sound of the sea of life
   In your ears when you reach the shore,
And a hope that still with as good a will you may fight as you fought of yore.

I

The Sphinx

The spires of sand spring up at every gust
That bids them dance and scatter and lays them low:
He sits impassive, as the ages flow
And bear superbly the mirage of lust.
The moonbright steel he has witnessed redden and rust,
He has seen storm-proud deep-rooted empires grow,
And watched victorious gods flash forth and go;
And still before him spins the aspiring dust.
What has he seen in that hoar-centuried land
More strange and dreadful in its long delight
Of vain hope-haunted ever-starting quest
Than I can follow across this burning sand
Wherefrom the dizzying phantoms take their flight
Within the compass of a wanderer's breast?

II

Nicholson Museum: Exhibit 32

The curious look and pass, beholding naught
But yellow skin and small contorted toes:
I see a burning wilderness of woes
And stagger through its quivering air distraught.
I know the paradise a baby wrought
Of old where still the dear blue river flows,
And there's a crouching fear within that knows
To what a desperate havoc it was brought.
Dear Isis, have you not heard Horus sing
His infant ditties, kissed his radiant head,
And laughed at legs that learned to leap and run?
Forget it not. My heart in offering
Lies bare before you; take it, Queen, and spread
Thy sheltering wings about my little son.

III

Nefert

The gaudy pageant of the ages hies
Down the dim years, yet many a look is cast
That calls us dumbly, from the abysmal past,
In love that lives amid a world that dies.
I thrill to look on Nefert's friendly eyes,
Mad to recall the night I saw her last,
And yet across that memory has the blast
Whirled the deep desert sand of centuries.
Forgive if I forget thee now, my sweet,
If other eyes have led me to the source
Wherefrom the thirsting heart draws sustenance.
Can pallid marble feel my pulses beat?
We approach the limit of our dusty course
When hearts must live on store of old romance.

IV

Shu

Spread on the desert, Seb of mighty thew
Felt cloudy hair, trailed by the evening breeze,
Tingling along each nerve, as by degrees
Nut bowed above him, till his brown arms drew
Her body upon his; so, all night through,
The desert bloomed in starry ecstasies,
Till, even as she sighed in overburdened ease,
Between them thrust the radiant arm of Shu.
Yet they are of the gods, and evermore
Their joy renews itself when earth and sky
Are all one substance in the odorous gloom.
But when two lovers drain their little store
Of mortal bliss and yet are thirsting, why
Inflict on us thy peremptory doom?

V

Khonsu

“Have I not smiled and kept the world at bay,
Given my friends the joy that dried my tears
And left a savour of salt, and filled the years
With desolate wreckage of each yesterday?
O Khonsu,” with uplifted hands I pray,
“O Master of Love, give respite to my fears;
Before the dust is in my eyes and ears,
Grant me thy light upon the darkening way.”
He gazes mildly from the crescent moon;
The sea grows silent and its shimmering space
Is wave upon wave of sand beyond all sight;
I stretch my arms to take whate'er the boon,
And feel imagined kisses on my face,
Lonely amid the desert of the night.