Day and Night

Front Cover

Spine

Back Cover

Title Page

Day and Night

By the same author— From a Garden in the Antipodes (Sidgwick & Jackson) Time and Place (The Caxton Press)

Day and Night poems 1924 – 1934 by the Author of Time and Place ChristchurchThe Caxton Press1939 RISE COTTAGE 1924 – 1934 AD TE LIMEN AMABILE LEVAVI OCULOS TIBI HAEC CARMINA ET QUIDQUID INEST LEPORIS PIETATIS SIGNUM DEDICO Printed at The Caxton Press Christchurch, N.Z. October, 1939

Contents

To-day 1 Rainy Morning 2 Morning Walk 3 Spring Snow and Tui 4 Candour 5 Out on a Spring Morning 6 Spring on the Plain 7 Southerly Sunday 9 Grey Day 10 Picnic 12 Summer Afternoon 14 Rock-crystal 16 Rose-wreath 18 Decoration 20 Autumn on the Plain 21 Nor’-west Evening, Winter 24 After Dark 25 At the Lighting of the Lamps 26 Cloudy Night 32 Twinkled to Sleep 33 Night Rain 34 The Crucifix 35 Waves 36 Midnight 38 The Small Hours 39 Waiting for Dawn 40 Winter Night 41 6th July, 1930 42 Night of July 43 Midwinter Dawn 44 23rd July, 1930 45 9th July, 1932 46 Dark Morning 47 Lever de Rideau 49 October Morning 50 Spring South-wester 51 Summer Daybreak 52 Nor’-west Night 54 Autumn Dawn 56 Limitation 57

To-Day Plenipotentiary Dawn, unwrapping royal gift, Black-overcloaked, red-robed, stern, transitory, A day confers. Death-dusty, knees I bend, hands lift The awful dowry to accept: arbitrament, doom, glory.

Rainy Morning Early in the morning I stood pondering Intricate interchange of shadow on the dreaming hills. Soluble colour, moss-green by purple-grey penetrated, Brown into blue turning, brief gleam of gorse gilding Softened solidity of sheep-sustaining access, Of water-fashioned gully soft decline. Eonial form. Ephemeral coloration. Ascribable to slow, hesitant, soft clouds hanging Low overhead, brooding, meditating rain, rain. At footside, spherical soft clover-head, Whitish and murry-shaded, spicy.… Into the dream there crept a little bird-voice, Again, again, again insinuating his small essential song. Soliloquy’s no song, once spake a pundit. But not guilty, Sir! Not self-sufficient, soul, nor little hidden bird. Spirit of Beauty, here, hovering, informing, prevalent, To thee, to thee, to thee, we sing reconnaissant! Here, where still solitude unseals thy casket Of sovran wealth, we secretly salute thee! Again, again, again, the invisible rain-bird, Never, never seen, but ever heard, Repeats, assured, his sweet eight-noted lay; To thee, to thee, to thee making Plain, plain, his quiet statement Of pure, serene, unquestioned pain, Unquestionable joy.

Morning Walk On a bright morning of winter I walked up the bitumined highway to forget the fret of the fetters of down-tending detail, of diurnal subsistence escape delight-dimming screen. The morning air was full of the cries of humanity active, red sparks rising up to the whiter light of silence; the eternal mountains, aloof, maintained their endless procession; like tender bloom on curve of immature peach-skin clung fugitive frost to the foot of winter-green gullies; shone, sun-glossed gold and silver, the satiny tussock.… I kissed the chains that bind, the body to bounty of earthly scene.

Spring Snow and Tui We said: there will surely be hawthorn out down in the sun-holding folds of the hills by the sea; but suddenly snow had forestalled the thorns there, death-white and cold on their boughs hung the festival wreaths. It is all one. The same hand scatters the blossoms of winter and spring-time. The black-robed psalmodist, traversing swiftly the silent landscape like Azrael, echoed in clear repetition his well-tuned antiphon; a waking bugle it might be, a passing bell, of life, death, life, life telling: it is all one.

Candour Everything was white this morning. White mists wandered all about the river-bed, Grey clouds, light-infused, conveyed the morning, Covering with whiteness the wide sky overhead. White, past belief, the high and snowy mountains, Phantom-like, visionary; whiteness upon whiteness Of frozen foam from far celestial fountains Suffused with soft and universal brightness. Everything was white, this morning, Untroubled, luminous and tranquil pure; Bright as an affianced bride, adorning Herself with white upon the plighted morning; Past all debate, all hazard, still, and sure.

Out on a Spring Morning Oh let me not forget, under grey skies repatriated, Returned to grey, time-patinated towns, Not forget, then, this scintillant early sunshine Playing upon polished new-sprung leaves, Playing on subtle-shadowed tussock bosses And stippled spring-grassed slopes of gorse-trimmed hills, Giving to plain-spread dwellings definition, Lighting to emerald willow-bordered fields, Painting lapis-lazuli the wandering mountains, Shining to diamonds the far mountain-snows. I may forget the bees’ insistent bourdon In the willow-flower by the river, the earthy smell, Alien lark’s carol, little native’s sweet da-capo, Joyous scents of clover, wattle, furze; But let me not forget, but lifelong be recorded Upon my registering eyes’ memorial screen This brilliancy of green, blue, white, and again blue, The Spring-purged sky’s dazzle, The first sun’s brightness, the golden lightness, This glitter, this glory, this morning jubilee.

Spring on the Plain Captured and gentled, harnessed to use of man; Harrowed and harvested, charted to human hold; With a price branded, noble and savage plain, Hereto have untold ages swept down water and stones. Quarried and roaded, sown with essaying grass-seed, Sown with fleecy herds, scaled by defying fences, Dog-watched and fire-purged, free, tempestuous mountains, Hereto uncounted centuries have rolled down boulders and snow. Blade-sprung paddocks and spaces of pregnant plough, The man-disposed prospect; and, rounds of misty green, Soft-spun as seed-balls adrift on level fields, Willows laced about the course of water-races and streams; Gold-traced pastures, incrustations on foot-hills Of bloom-bright gorse-banks, divisional bounds all golden, Into the glow of molten gold we gaze with eyes undazzled, And heady fume of this candescence, still undrunken, breathe. Now is the year’s prize, and slow guerdon of tilth; Now is replenishment of fine young lambs and calves, Brown-burnished heifers and new white lambs that frisk Beside the yellow shield of furze on verdant ground at large; And all is pavilioned with sheer celestial azure Hazing the far alps, their turquoise and silver; And: Life, life, resurgent life! Sings the exalted skylark, As on the battlements of spring he mounts his joyous guard. Hereunto the seafaring forefathers were come; Unknowing, to this dower were we brought from warding womb; Even to this earth-response, farms, and teeming plain, Terrestrial stress, recurrent fields, service of sun and rain. There is no more richness, no riper consummation Of terrene fate than this conjunction with earth-form, Search you the wide seas, or fly the empyrean, Unresting spirits; unto earth the earth-born Must return, as spiring lark nestles to sod again.

Southerly Sunday The great south wind has covered with cloud the whole of the river-plain, soft white ocean of foaming mist, blotting out, billowing fast to the east, where Pacific main surges on vaster bed. But here, on the hills, south wind unvapoured encounters the sunshine, lacing and interlocking, the invisible effervescence you almost hear, and the laughter of light and air at play overhead. Seabirds fly free; see the sharp flash of their underwings! and high lifted up to the north, the mountains, the mighty, the white ones rising sheer from the cloudy sea, light-crowned, establishéd. This sparkling day is the Lord’s day. Let us be glad and rejoice in it; for he cometh, he cometh to judge and redeem his beautiful universe, and holds in his hands all worlds, all men, the quick and the dead.

Grey Day Under leaden sky prisoned, on dull errand bent, by shackles of needs-must chafed and obstructed, clanking my manacles I plod stubbornly in stony dust. Sudden to right-hand on mournful east sky, steel-grey sky, gun-metal sea, image of hidden light lying in level lines, beyond the lowland, on dun sky and sea. Quick to memory comes Clement’s Inn Hall set with show of pewter plate polished to proper sheen, grey of silver and slate; between riches and penury pride of sober mean. Next, on the left-hand, pattern set forth defined of bold magnolia leaves, gold on the underside, on face burnished green, giving back silver gleam from grey-muffled sky. Pattern! that echoing word: purfle of priestly robe, scarlet, blue, purple wove, pomegranates, bells of gold, breastplate of precious stones, for glory and beauty shown to Moses in dreadful mount. (The Spirit of Beauty thus circumstance will outwit, thus in a flash set free a morose prisoner.)

Picnic Gaol-breakers from routine, we halted our four-cylindered trusty and time-worn chariot upon a yielding greensward beside the random shingle of a sequestered by-path through land half-unredeemed and half-subdued by settlers, and with the sweet perfume of lawless gorse invested, upleaning to the wall of tawny, rock-strewn Port Hills. Untroubled, slow milch-kine, with prizeworthy rich udders, behind us nuzzled softly among man-selected grasses in the shadow of a tree-dark, wind-forbidding hill-spur; and we looked upon a piece of planted orchard, spring-green, sunlit, sheltered, where, a procession of bridesmaids, twelve young quince-trees quivered their blossom-sprinkled garlands. Two baskets, osier-fashioned by soldiers invalided from the last and vastest of our vaunted armageddons, furnished convenient rations for a pretty meal alfresco; refreshed, we fell to sharing and collating the material proper to the occasion of our impromptu festival, the looked-for, newly delivered, fortnightly foreign letters. Becalmed in anamnesis, we gave ourselves to silence; on past, present, and future I gazed with widening compass. and dipped with questing plummet deep in darksome thought-ponds; considering that those composed and sweetly-sleeping hill-slopes were but the mellowed refuse from infernal furnaces flinging, the other day, their molten boulders heavenwards. And that from this clear and cloud-bedecked blue ceiling might shortly rain down fearful and deadly fire and brimstone, (they say) from long fore-planned and fore-damned machinations, fruit of our most elaborate rationalisations of hatred and justifications of terror, prepared for the hara-kiri of earth’s loftiest masterpiece, lore-drunken humanity. But for a midge’s moment, between the noble unconscious mineral uproar, the mute half-conscious on-tending river of bioplast, and our immense abolishings, sapient obliterations, mutual annihilations, before the ultimate crime, the grand triumphal felony, the last and final blasting of fragile-flowered life-tree. But for a brief interval, this bread broken in amity, this notice of a goldfinch flitting among the leafage of stripling quince, whose shell-pink decoration sways very gently on delicate shell-blue canopy; but for a brief moment this balm and opiate of song-lark filling with heedless ecstasy the calm precarious sky…

Summer Afternoon All through the sun-possessed long afternoon of midsummer drowsing, the rustle of leaves has solaced my ear-sense, the green-blue, green-blue exhilaration of lively leafage on sky-spaces eye-sense amused, as the crossing of elegant segmented wreathe of wistaria and tend of interlaced spirals wavering lightwards and woven on skeleton lattice above has cut out the shimmering pattern of sky, and I lie in an ice-green and sapphire diapered cavern, cerulean radiance by verdurous trellis sevenfold intensified. Whispering fitfully reminiscence of snow-fields, the south wind fans to dispersal the breath of heliotrope and jasmin out of their pleasant enclosure, and yonder the coastwise vision between insignis branches of heavenly azured Pacific shows where the ultimate plunge of surf on invisible sand-dunes always resounds, as it lashes its spray in the face of the breeze and dazzle of sun; flashing and white I descry in the farthest distance the line of its foaming circle below the delicate amethyst hills. The bees and the buzzing flies, the hum of scurrying motorists beyond the musical leaves has lullabied my passivity; what honey, what hidden rewards sought for by restless gyrators they know; by burning sky and iridescent seclusion boundlessly prisoned secure, I husband the intermission from curious chase; beside me a jungle-beast, gentled, slumbers; together cast by the slow up-surging of centuries on actual beach, we absorb the genial effulgence of here and now. The current sap, impulse of piston or fluttering pinion, the way of the wind with the waves, facture of subtle aroma, beating of ocean-tide, impregnation of planet by potent star, heart-cries: fearful dynamics propounded, passed by and postponed, to-day like sheep of the pasture we lie down at ease; not we ourselves made us; for joy and heat of the westering sun his benign incandescence let be, let be; enough, my furry comrade, to drowse and dream that we are.

Rock-Crystal Routine-galled, dulled, by many years cumbered, slipping halter holiday-wise, away into the west land. So much cool green to see; such deep silence to hear; clear silence; bright waters; such deep green of tree-shade; such chiming of gem necklaces—birds shaking, concealed, the leaves with crystal songs. To hear, at evening, young mountaineers, come down godlike from sunlit pinnacles, tell of prowess and peril; and, taken from pocket, show faceted crystals from high rock-surfaces. To muse: All this, it has been like to crystal, cold-dropping waters, clearest bird-voice, sheerest silence, light-flashing glacier. To be invited: Please have this crystal. And so, like fay-bestowed flower in the fairy-tale, beauty, fast in a crystal, bearing, back to the city. Humanity has ever found it comfortable to render richest experience portable, heart to heart with a sign indenture, sum up in symbol, most high adventure; till, years gone by, and significance broken, folk ask: What mean you by this token? Let us in kindness covet for every man one lovely memory at least in life-span fit to be locked up in crystal reliquary, so all may see it, yet none see, save he.

Rose-Wreath Once again, roses, we see you painted on the screen of trees and azure-shadowed plain and faintly purpled mountain-chain, as in past years beholden. I go down to call them by name, all these my roses; the crimson and the scarlet and the golden, snow-white, ivory and flame of sun-dying, and pink flush of prime; the great deep noble joy and the blush-tipped midget toy fit for a child’s posies. In this early summertime everywhere are wreaths and bowers of roses sprung from eglantine man’s care and life’s caprice, man’s art from earth’s experiment, chief among a thousand flowers for the adornment of our peace. But what is this reminding pain? what weapon keen, kris, javelin, what arrow from an alien sphere pierces my serene content with deeper hurt than starts a tear? this silent, viewless weapon, whence? Beauty, for a wounding spear you take my roses! Extreme predicament is this of our terrene eminence, of our estate the royal bane, we cannot know what a rose is until we betake us hence, but pray that sight may not be dimmed nor heart hard to new surprise, while spring rain and summer wind bring again the roses’ scent, till such divine venom tips and medicates your skilful dart, Beauty, now in Death’s disguise, silencing these stammering lips, sealing these astonished eyes. that our sight closes on earth’s dear mummery, to wake upon your counterpart, mirage roses, where new-born lovely in the unveiled morn is hailed by the clear eye for true, peace wears no rue for past enchantment, and prepares no treachery, and pleasure bears no sting, no spiky thorn, not like these my roses.

Decoration This jar of roses and carnations on the window-sill, Crimson upon sky-grey and snow-wrapt mountain-pallor, (Sharp storm’s asseveration of cold winter’s on-coming,) How strange their look, how lovely, rich and foreign, The living symbol of a season put away, A letter-sheaf, bound up by time-frayed filament, I found; laid by; youth’s flowering. The exotic words blazed up blood-red against death’s shadow, Red upon grey. Red upon grey.

Autumn on the Plain The music of the seasons moves to rallentando Inscribed upon the centuries’ symphonic parchment, As now the rapid-stepping retinue of summer Gives way to grave-eyed March. Slowly the late fruits swell, to be, unruddied, Raped all untimely from reluctant branches For merchants, were else, fulness-fated, To earth-burial cast. Now are the roadways newly scored and gritted By the small feet of myriad ewes in transit, Pawns in the game and play of man’s subsistence, From grass to other grass. Now Autumn calling from some northern territory To northern trees in lassitude of ardours Too long sustained, assures to them remission From their shade-spinning task. Leaf to spread leaf, in shudder of recognition, Trembles; and as of dawn on nebulous darkness One rosy-tufted cloud foretells the crimson, So Autumn’s countermark, Her golden seal upon one crest is branded Among the verdurous boughs of those supplanters Set on the southern plain by man’s disposal And metamorphic art. But the dim hosts entrenched among the gorges, The aboriginal groves, undying green, make answer: Autumn, pass on. No arbiter dismantles, Nor may sun parch Our rain-retaining thickets. Even as the mountains From age to age in majesty and apartness, Recording on their rock-entablatures returning seasons, So stand we fast. Stand fast, old forests; until man the migrant, The meddler come; would mend, mars; his mastery Fire-stolen, your charcoaled stumps will witness Where he has passed. Where he has passed the wintry vultures hover; Deliberate death he wills, and where he passes Waits death, deliberate. But to dissolution All moves in general march. The music of the seasons beats in soft suspension to immemorial mode, till there is writ: finale Upon the score. Then shall the furious trumpets Sound their decisive blast. But listen, now, to mutter of wind, nor’-wester Nursing storms to come; it darkly arches The evening sky, and rising, moans, and sighs away To silence; oh, but hark To Autumn calling: that we miss not blest diaphony Of death and birth; dread not ever advancing Resonance, of no veiled train funereal But, on eternal path, The superb trudge of the Creator’s almoners, Life hid secure conveyed within their casket, (As under carapace of that wind-fallen walnut Thuds a muffled heart.)

Nor’-West Evening, Winter Between the purple canopy of cloud-mass And indistinguishable density of earth-form A space, at evening, of pale yellow, sunlit; Inscribed most delicately upon it The black reticulation of a naked hawthorn. I was aware, then, of a thicker darkness Blotting the shadow of my bitten picture— The breathing presence of a stocky heifer Browsing beside me in a richer twilight. Accord I knew with the confederate creature Fellow-agisted on small star for sustenance; In common, we, upon earth’s mercies pensionary; But my convenient food in that hour was a construction Of cloud-mass darkly overhanging light-rift, And the black latticed twigs of a bare hawthorn Printed most exquisitely upon it.

After Dark How lustrous in the west pale gold produced to lilac In the pure height where eve’s one star prevails, Keeping her tryst tranquilly, and tranquil the observant Who from earth’s dusk that silver lantern hails. Smoulders on northern cloud the garnet glow of sunset, But soon extinct, above the alps’ long black stockade; By raven sea, red gleam of verging beacons; The plain’s deep largeness lies in darkening shade. A murmur low and faint moves in the vale’s obscurity, Uneasy city’s plaint, or restless ocean’s swell; Sleep, sleep, world, sleep, the pomps are consummated; Turn to thy rest, watcher, all is well.

At the Lighting of the Lamps (For Music)

I The solemn, soundless music Of the sun’s setting reverberates Along the low red cloud-reefs, And the last echoing reflections Of his great incandescence Diminish among the mountain-tops, As the sky’s ebbing harmonies Die down in modulations Of gold and red to red-gold, Old gold, pale gold, gold-veiled Lingering pearl-greyness, Grey silence of sleep. The mountains stand round about Like sable-vestured chorus, Until they are swallowed up In the all-encompassing dark.

II But see! from the deepening dark Of the dumb and slumbering plain, Sudden a new song springs; Gold lights on the plain Suddenly gleam and quiver, Suddenly, over all the plain Glimmer, now, golden lights. As instruments with strings Quiver, as dreaming reeds Gleam, soft, in symphonies, On the wide orchestral plain, From the foot-hills to the sea’s Margin, bright companies, Choirs of golden lights. O glittering harmony! O tranquil jubilee! The lamp-set champaign sings! A thousand golden lights Gleam, a thousand sparks Glow, out of the deepening dark Now, the deepening night.

III And out of the deepening dark Of night, above and beyond, Calm antiphonal stars Now from on high respond; And the music of the spheres Out of the depths and heights Hails, to vigilant ears, Flickering human phares; Greater and lesser lights All in their measure set, Proud imperial orbs Answering by name, By note in the vast accord; Stars that moons beget, Planets of magnitude Earth’s murmurings amplify; In fiery celsitude Suns to sun reply; Flames to ordered flame, Lights to stedfast light, Stars to serene star, Into the profound, far Distances of night.

IV Were you not wont, early illumined Christians, To sing, at the time of lamp-lighting, hymns of confident praise? Now should a high seraph, sounding his silver clarion, Echoing in heaven’s vaults these lamp-kindling lauds, Summon melodious shouts of bright clair-audient angels Because the All-wise, All-merciful, All-compassionate Father of Lights, in whom is no shadow of turning, Has laid the foundations of all universes secure. Sleep by the shrouded mountains, now, pastoral ministers, While the Shepherd of Israel musters his flock of suns and moons, Sleep by the hidden rivers, now, fervent industrials, While the Master of Music weaves with his time-space looms; Sleep, now, peering philosophers, venturing physicists, The Lord of Love his alembic allumes, his crucible glows; The watchers and holy ones of our darkness are cognisant, But no shadow of night their lucid vigil knows.

V Praise, praise to thee, Almighty Artificer, Architect, Poet, whose pure inexhaustible spring eternally flows, Artist, whose marvellous works eternally are made manifest, Eternally making, in making, eternally finding repose. Praise to the All; the One; Ineffable; and Intimate; Calling thy stars, thy souls, thy least electrons by name; For thine, as ours, the human heart that beat upon Olivet Under these same stars, and thine the unquenchable flame Of love in that heart.… The city lights of Jerusalem Burned low.… beloved, pitiless city of light Put out, put out; but in pity, on high to be lit again, For the price of the heart broken, the life put out for a night, But mightily rising, rising again, and prevailing mightily.… Light of lights, Lamp of the City, Orient blaze Of glorious splendour, on us shed forth thy golden rays! In thy light our lights are consumed, and yet not utterly, Night after night, in peace, amen, we hymn thy praise.

VI Still the gold lights quiver By hidden sea and river; From the dim arena below Shines their concerted glow; And the bright stars answer still Over above the hill. The deep dome overhead Is fully furnishéd With lamps, and they are lit To the outmost bounds of it. And each mighty spark Sheds its gentle light Into the silent dark, The silent night, On and on, through the dark, the silent night.

Cloudy Night The heavenly vault, to-night, is a structure of massed clouds Irradiated by the hid light of the mid-September moon; A marble and alabaster forecourt of the Lord’s House, Its pillared convolutions sculptured by a seraph’s tool. (No night there, spake the rapt visionary, No need of sun, neither of moon to lighten it; The glory of God, he said, did lighten it. And the Lamb, the Lamb of God, is the light thereof.) So sleep I now, for ultimate infinitude, As my heart’s core thy candle lighteneth; With thine effulgence, Lord, thou showest interfused The mysterious, cloudy architecture of life and death.

Twinkled to Sleep Cerulean night-sky Star-set; Stygian-dark river-plain East, north, west, Dance-set; Myriad amber-flashing Lights dancing, rays flashing, all night. Delight! delight! Inexpressible heart-dance With these. Strange heart-peace, in sparkling lights! Blithe heart-ease, starry peace, dancing repose! Star-charmed, dance-enchanted eyes close, Appeased. Dance in jet-dark depth, in star-set height, Lights dancing, west, east, Star-high, heart-deep, All night,

Night Rain In the dark of the night, rain; Unlocking of water-floods; Washing away, obliterating All night-whisperings; Nought but the sound of falling waters Returning whence they came. By the noise of the rain set apart In a lightless cloister, What am I, in the night, Listening to my suppliant heart In the play of thy forces, Genetrix, What am I but a particle tossed Upon vast arterial waterways, Borne down in the dark? In the ark of thought I abide, Lattice-wrought of experience, Faith-pitched for bitumen, And apocalypse to guide, Riding on the tide of consciousness, On waves of pleasure, pain; Responsive microcosm, alive And free upon the great main, Out of this musical enclosure, This ringing cage of rain.

The Crucifix Aroused from sleep by a rising wind on a clear night and starlit, when I awake up after thy likeness, some echo chanted, I shall be satisfied with it. Thy likeness, thy likeness, I considered, wakened wide by this saying, dimly might it not be mirrored on such a night as this, in a glass darkly, not plain. This night, epitome of thy handiwork: garment, not of darkness but deep indigo light; bodyguard of vast dazzling worlds; this rounded and immense silence tell of truth, beauty, might. But now, by wide phosphorescence, down by the riverside, of myriad street cressets lit dim, I descry a stark carven gibbet. Oh staggering symbol of distress! Thy paradox resolve, Enlightening Spirit: this scatheless, soul-intoxicating night of loveliness, and hung there truthful high over my pallet, the crucifix, the crucifix.

Waves Now in the dark of night disposed Sleepwards, but aware meanwhile, (Night of cloud, sky speechless, Lights on alluvial plain muffled, Neighbouring hill-lights long extinguished,) Under the silence I hear Deep calling to deep. It is the surge of unplumbed seas Of being, from before time was; Fundamental urge of atoms; Slime-emergent, vegetable armies, Phytoplankton, mosses, grasses; Dirge of vast massy forests Passing away fulfilled. Incessant protoplasmic swell Of life impelled to ideal form; Cell to fellow-cell murmuring In dark arteries of supreme organisms Marine memories; the old oceans Curled shells record; salt streams Wherein all life was laved. No wind, that sound, But earth’s yearning sighs For answerer, for deliverer From too heavy burden Of bewilderment, of unspeakable Hid guilt, hidden hurt, Of terrible, hid joy. Deep of heart calling heart, Art yonder? calling. Yea, love, here. Deep of thought: thus, pondering, Thus, thus, probing. Nay but, posing, Deep of soul: Lord, Lord, Out of the deep have I called, Lord, hear my voice. Not lost, these cries, In the deep bosom of time; Hear, to the low perpetual rumour: Kyrie eleison! Deus misereatur! Out of the abysm ever resounding Diapasonal answer: Alpha, Omega. I am the Beginning and the End. Hear again.… deep under Earth’s unease, immutable doom Thundering; appeasing the pain, the expectancy Of the prisoned, the burdened, looking for entelechy; Listen, as it were the sound of many waters: I, the Slain, am the Meaning, the Guerdon; I am the Ground, the Meed. Listen again…it is the Spirit Come, saying, come. The dumb Cosmos learning speech. Come Lord! It is the Beautiful Shepherd piping Unwearied in the eternal meadows; The Bridegroom, ready Bride summoning With dominant: Behold I come.

Midnight All day long, prismatic dazzle, Clashing of musics, challenge, encounter, succession; Gear-change on the up-and-down-hill of hypothesis; Choice, choice, decision, events rivetting shackles; Hazardous tests, new wine of escape…oh, strange noviciate! Bright stimulus, venture, tension, poised preparedness. But at midnight, infinite darkness, Opulent silence, liberty, liberty, solitude; The acrid, mountainy wind’s austere caresses; Rest, rest, compensation, very suspension of death; Deep stillness of death, dark negation…ah, thy heart-beat, Origin, Signification, dread Daysman, Consummator.

The Small Hours Dying, dying, the small, keen, shrivelled moon high up there in the west; long, level cloud-banks lying low over the mountains, dark earth steeped deep in rest. Dying, dying, the world to my heart, my heart to the known world; intellectual light belying the say of roving senses, foreseeing their sails close-furled. Old ardours decadent; dreams flying ghostly to dim caves whence they came. How congruous midnight silence with interior stillness sustaining a slow-dying flame! Dying, dying, condemned to go down to the abyss with every beast, darkness prevailing… nay! even now daunted, paling; dawn, night-denying, hail to you, hail to you in the east!

Waiting for Dawn On a grey morning before the stars have gone out, hoarse-voiced east-wind assaulting sleep-silences, I wake and remember the cruel embraces of death. The pitiless clutch, the fearful down-hold, the fierce, the final assertion of physical mastery, sobbing and stifled endeavour of fugitive breath. Spirit of life, Spirit of beauty, make haste to save us; show in the east again the signal of victory; as in the beginning let the beacon be lit. Orient splendour of light everlasting, come thou, illumine us who sit in death’s darkness and shadow. Creator, oh cast this last enemy down to the fiery pit.

Winter Night All night long, Spirit of Beauty, hast thou played to me Upon an instrument of immeasurable range; Thy great stars scattered on black immensity, Thy moonlight let loose about me, white and strange. At bird-embroidered dawn, on incredible pale blue hast Thou laddering, slender, rosy cloud-bars laid; And all this prodigality in my small casement compassed, All this melodious wealth before my sight displayed. All night long thy pure music, beautiful Spirit, Disciplined my spirit, these keen, deep hours of June, And I lie quiet, offering my heart to be a wintry wind-harp. Whereby thou mightest, peradventure, breathe a heavenly tune.

6th July, 1930 Morning bells now weave their notes through muffling mist-trails; My waking thought, impetuous, threads with restless Shuttle In and out the warp of factual detail. Light-season ascending scales the wintry citadel; Day-loving birds their aubade have begun again, Knowing full well the turn of the year has come again. Lifting my head, I view snow-peaks irradiated With vital rose, where late, cold dormant sepulchres They slept at this same hour in shadowy greyness. Responsive to thy rhythms, energising Spirit, Let now my torpid soul awake and gird herself With garments of goodwill, sandals of service, With the stout armament of sustained praises.

Night of July Midnight; midwinter; nearing the full moon of July. How transparent, Spirit of Beauty, the night blue of the sky! How extreme the clarity of thy silvern stars; How serene the silence that no wind-intrusion mars; How soft the dusk doth sea and sky enfold; The thousand lamps of the plain burn with subdued gold; On northern bound apparent, frozen, mountain snows Seal with their immobility slumbering earth’s repose. Eternal Spirit of Beauty, thy thoughts are very deep; Unsearchable are thy riches. Wherefore dost thou keep The soul athirst for loveliness? Far past Our dream thy plenitude—shall thou not at the last Give drink enough to appease from the fountains of thy deep? To-night, by this draught renewed, I turn to sleep.

Midwinter Dawn Sloth held me fast in pillowed nest But the ascetic birds would not let me rest; Such joy their clamorous hymns and praises voiced I got me up to see why they rejoiced. A world of pallid blue with flecks of gold; Blue-white snowy ranges wintry-cold; Eastward a minim wraith of silver light, Forespent Selene in the July night. But on the horizon o’er the sapphire sea A radiance and a growing red adviséd me Of the pre-eminent and primal flame Whence all our mirth and all our music came. Anon forth-lolling bells confirm the quire That first had warned me of the signal fire; This is a new day! a new day! A new sunrise! birds, bells proclaim; My soul concurs. There never was a day, Nor ever will again be one, the same.

23rd July, 1930 With secret touch the Spirit of Beauty summons my soul To conscious from unconscious being. Six strokes of remote time-telling bell Relate my thought to commonalty. Opening my eyes to ambient austere dusk I know that winter is ebbing away. While jetty yet the expanse of low alluvial plain Studded with red-gold flambeaux, A griseous lambency vibrates the aerial sphere Where silvery star-ghosts hover. Cold salt snatches of breeze coming in from the sea Shake the silences of my watch-tower. Search well, spiritual winds, the recesses of my heart For the ways of wickedness in me, Before the concealing casket of darkness opens wide To display its enamelled jewels, Coral and amber clouds in turquoise blue sky And opaline snowy mountains.

9th July, 1932 Grey sky, grey city-smoke; garden all gone bare, gaunt mountains; pitiful pipe of well-nigh homeless birds.… But then these stinging sun-roused messages tossed hither salt-cold, from the pacific sea; those foremost, dawn-dyed, rose-red eminences, those snow-fast, soon-to-be-incarnadined strongholds beyond..… There shall be no insistence upon symbolism; let each eye take the tokens, heart interpret, individual tongue make fit respond.

Dark Morning When the dark night so thick about us lies None should surmise A near sunrise, When, low unto the sleeping valley bowed, A weeping cloud Doth us enshroud, When, although dull and heavy earth be mute Their jubilant salute Alert birds flute, Each chorister with clear and confident hymn Calling the seraphim To warrant him, Ah, then we know that with delighted zest Shall rightly be expressed All we have guessed; And know that we, when ultimate sunrise Hath outranged our surmise With strange surprise, Like homing birds, out of this darkling dream Flown to the Supreme, Shall find our theme Fast knit into the tissue of the symphony Sustained everlastingly By the glassy sea; For these enthusiast passages do secretly belong To the redeemed throng Their new song.

Lever de Rideau To-day the clocks strike seven, seven, seven, and church-bells chime busily, and the plain-town heavily wakes; a salt-sharp east wind flicks and swells and tosses my emerald silk curtains; translucent green on blue the empyrean, and lo! north and west, endlessly limned and painted, my mountains, my mountains, all snow, Now a change begins in the heavenly tone-chord; to the east, eyes! where the sea is incised like azure ice on sky of vermeil; oh, dream on prolonged, beautiful prelude! hushed still, delay, summoning bird-song! hold, magic touch, be arrested, lovely crisis of sunrise! when yonder death-white summits are rose-flushed and glittering, I must away.

October Morning “All clear, all clear, all clear!” after the storm in the morning. The birds sing; all clear the rain-scoured firmament, All clear the still blue horizontal sea; And what, all white again? all white the long line of the mountains And clear on sky’s sheer blue intensity. Gale raved night-long, but all clear, now, in the sunlight And sharp, earth-scented air, a fair new day. The jade and emerald squares of far-spread cultivated All clear, and powdered foot-hills, snow-fed waterway, And every black pattern of plantation made near; All clear, the city set—but oh for taught interpreter, To translate the quality, the excellence, for initiate seer To tell the essence of this hallowed clarity, Reveal the secret meaning of the symbol: “clear.”

Spring South-Wester Coming back to life this morning, I hear chastising rain-tornadoes Racing north from icy kingdoms, Lashing eucalyptus twigs for whipthongs, Dashing the young tender verdure Of roses on their own thorn-armature, Torn and pierced in shouting fury; But, laced upon the fierce confusion, Sweet, sweet, eclipsing tempest, Matin bird-song’s fluted descant.… (Night, night, all thy storms have broken over me, Yet is thy music, life, unsilenced, oh! and lovelier.)

Summer Daybreak Words are too dense, too dull, too blundering, Pigments too turbid; yet it must be limned This scene, it must be hymned, this hour; I am constrained to join the waking choir, To ease mine eyes of their acknowledgement. Now, before sunrise, the sky is a great pearl Of bluey sheen, but eastward flushed with fire, With forecast fire; no starry dart impales, This soft suffusion, nor pallid moon Flecks the sheer candour of this crepuscule. Above the plain wan cerements of mist Lie, curtaining from unknowing world The rites of dawn, and low beneath this pall The city watch-lights, paling, glisten, Points of fine gold in argent undertone. In the near shade of tenebrous trees not green As yet for dimness, numerous unseen presences Essay, subdued, sotto voce, tentatively, Their tiny phrases, with miniature flute twittering Of imminent mysteries, opening to us, but not yet. “Daybreak!” the tenuous bugling ventures, “Wake! wake! Joy! joy! Not yet! Very quiet, very quiet!” Drop, drop, sweet notes, upon the attendant silence, Into a heart advised, alert, accorded, Waiting the eternal edict: Let there be light! (Will it be thus, thus, that quickening dawn? so still, so tearless, so composed, so gentle; will clinging dreams linger awhile like mist? some timeous candles glimmer, unextinguished? will native and colloquial notes prevent with gradual song the peerless jubilation? tincture of immortality be meted in mercy, drop by drop? lustration measured of these poor orbs, lest instant vision dazzle? and will the scene, unveiled, appear like this, loved and long-known, and beautiful, and new?)

Nor’-West Night A dull haze hangs heavily about the night-watches; A veiled star trembles in the obscurity of my vision; The frail young moon withdraws her furtive lamp. Now low, now loud, moans the night-long nor’-wester Let loose upon us from outer caverns of darkness, Bellowing wild as one in torment, now lulled, now mute. Wail of wind takes words in burden of dark menace: Baseless and soon to be dissolved is the great cosmos; The planetary fabric endures but a short space. This lethal dirge drugs me, melting my limitations; I lean upon the liberation, yet do not lose myself; I look into the utmost negation of the abyss. But at dawn, exhausted, north-west wind gives over, Gives way to silence and soft adverting noises, Shadowy rodents nibbling the dim fringes of night. Anticipation takes hold the while these tremulous moments Prepare us for the familiar, and shaken from trances Of wind-bewitched night-time, I am hearing, awake, Cock-crow from a sequestered shelter, faint and fitful, And far-off nagging of dogs obeying trade-bound drover Very early afoot on some hill-winding road— Life-cries; and now the esteemed music I have listened for.… It is thou, minikin! thou, minstrel mite, my soothsayer: There shall be mirth, there shall be weeping awhile, but no dread.

Autumn Dawn Again, again, gold steals upon the greyness Of hazy dawn; reveals wide sunburned plain, Pure mountains speaking peace, the sea’s Bright shining, sky-reflecting mirror; Now soft assuaging mists, their assignation With thirsty sod fulfilled, mildly disperse; And resting earth, her increase having yielded, Bathes her swart limbs, placid, in the morning sun. Give up, give up, my soul, to this still hour, To these gilt beams, all thine attention; To the sun’s work give assent, and acquiescence Unto succession render; percipience lend To precious balms upbreathed by faint air-stirrings; Audience to all but immaterial riro-riro, Who with small blissful flute musics thy meditations Till they are full-attuned to his serenity. Record, record, memory, these calm awakenings To autumn amplitude—here are so few left, now, Before (what spiritual sheaves there may be, garnered,) That other morning breaks on other shore.

Limitation Time, tacit wardress of our earthly paradise, Is it well done that you speak no word ever of wider fields? Howbeit, you have not cognizance, for more than us your prisoners, Time, are you bonded slave. But the birds are commissioned to remit messages; But every tree a whispering, mysterious harp holds; The sea has a voice, rivers are everywhere melodious, And there are certain earth-mounds, There are old mountain hollows charged with oracles… Sometimes, while the wind changes, we may hear sounds We have waited for, our hearts being tuned secretly To ultramundane stave. They were frighted, heard they no imperial Still voice hidden in the breeze Shall say to mandatary Time, obsequious: Hand me the keys.

Certain of these poems first appeared in The Christchurch Press, to whose editor acknowledgement is due