John Le Gay Brereton: Verses about Time

Behind us lay the homely shore
With youthful memories aureoled;
A sky of dazzling blue before,
We sailed a sea of molten gold.

To our old haven we return;
By smoky hills as grey as mud
We see the sullen sunset burn
Malignant on a lake of blood.

Yes, we return: but memory roams
A foul, bleak age of pain that yields
The smoke and flame of ruined homes,
The muck of cannon-pitted fields.

Gone are the aching want, the unceasing fret,
Mad flight and moaning over battered wings,
And self-contempt whose secret penance wrings
Out of the writhing soul her bloody sweat.
But use has never taught me to forget
The glory that the common daylight flings;
Still in my heart the rebel tocsin rings,
And still is love my glowing amulet.
Calm and contented, yet with heart afire
To fight for ever for the sake of strife,
I hold the future and the past in fee.
The time to come brings riper fruit for me
Who stretch my hands with passionate desire
And welcome for the green and grey of life.

Time, who with soft pale ashes veils the brand
Of many a hope that flared against the sky
To plant its heaven-storming banners high,
Has touched you with no desecrating hand;
Your beauty wins a ripeness sweet and bland
As opulent summer, and your glancing eye
Glows with a deeper lustre, and your sigh
Of love is still my clamouring heart's command.

Yet what if all your fairness were defaced,
Wilted by passionate whirlwinds, battle-scarred,
Your skin of delicate satin hard and dry?
Still you would be the laughing girl who graced
A gloomy manhood, by forebodings marred,
In the deep wood where still we love to lie.

The seeking souls, by baleful fires made blind,
Torn by entrapping brambles, thirsty and mad,
Hear on the lonely waste the stealthy pad
And half-held breath of glaring beasts behind;
Then soft hands lead them where the weary find
A refuge from thought's hunting and are glad.
Why to their certain misery should they add?
They rest secure, to freedom's loss resigned.

So, in the bitter years when love and age
Sneered at the youth whose sturdy heart withheld
His hand from slaughter, till, in desperate plight,
He flung into the trampling equipage,
I have heard him mutter, as the music swelled,
“The peace of God is on me. They were right.”

When my time is come to die,
I would shun the decent gloom,
Whispered word and weeping eye,
Fitful hum of knowing fly
Questing through the darkened room.

I would lay my skin and bone
Where no busy care could trace
Failing steps by bush and stone,
With my farewell dream alone
In a bird-frequented place.

So the sounds that bless my ear
When my weary eyelids close
Will be songs of hope and cheer;
So departing, I shall hear
How the tide of living flows.

So my memories shall not be
Blurred by griefs however true;
So my drowsy sense may see
Eyes that light in love on me;
So I'll not be leaving you.

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.