<hi rend="i">Time and Place</hi>

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Time and Place

Time and Place, a further collection of verse by the author of From a Garden in the Antipodes, has now been published in a small edition. Copies may be ordered through Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd or from The Caxton Press, 152 Peterborough street, Christchurch C. 1

Price 2/6

Time and Place Poems By the Author of ‘From a Garden in the Antipodes’ Christchurch At The Caxton Press 1936

To the dear Memory of E. H. D. P. without whom these had not been written

Spring

Willows in the Valley In a secluded valley, at a spring noontide, New September sunlight subdued by fugitive rains, We saw the ghosts of willow-trees waiting embodiment, Assembled in a pasture’s emerald bay. These were not trees we saw, these were tree-spirits In the still noonday shown us, and a waking dream; Thoughts of young willows not imprisoned yet, Impalpable boughs and incorporeal green. They stood, those delicate spheres (a distillation Of purest green and golden mist and rosy haze Their fabric) motionless; they were poised airily, As they had danced thither, and might dance away. The small bird riro-riro a secret rivulet Of song made warble there; the musical shade Of bird-to-be, fluting in ghostly willow-wood Happy-sad lullaby for spirits soon to wake. Or were these phantom willows from beyond the waves Of time’s deep ocean, trees upon whose branches Aliens hung up their harps, fair maid her garland By fatal stream, or shading tyrants’ graves? And the small bird-trill, fluttering echo faint Of oaten pipe that once by legendary shepherd Was played in far green European meadow, Telling old sylvan pleasures, pastoral complaint? It was a vision of willows in magical young green… Spring-time is vision; come, gone, imperishable; Spring is dim cloudland of new bliss, impenetrable; Spring is a sunbreathed veil on what shall be, has been, A bright stuff spun of the seen and the unseen.

Spring Storm All night in the darkness the Furies, the Furies Shrieked on the southwind and wailed in the rain, Inciting to tumult gales pelting sharp hail From mighty catapult; But deep in obscurity earth slept the surer. At daybreak the storm stayed. Had the dark ones, weary Of ruthless pursuit, their harsh screaming hushed? Or nightwards, hard on their quarry, outrun our dusk? Piercing through mist, One kiss of the fierce sun waked young Primavera. She arose; with a hand-twist wrung out her tresses, Her long yellow tresses; flung naked her young limbs, Her willowy, white limbs, merrily running And tripping light; Her burnished hair, tossing, dressed and undressed her. She laughed as she crossed the wide lowlands over, Scattering rainbows stolen from swift rains; They lay, starry prisms, strown on the vast plain And mountains afar; We saw them this spring day; for so is October.

Anniversary It was a day of young October; wakened To breathe an urgent air of summer heat in spring, Summoned abroad, I saw the season hasten, And the bare boughs quicken their burgeoning. To jettison September’s golden cargoes The freighted wattles bowed, and lilacs now upbore Their perfumed burden, and in all the gardens Pink muslin frocks, or white, the cherries wore. The lime-tree’s tender fans I saw unfolding, The birch, bright green besprinkled, parti-leaved, And saw the sycamores and chestnuts robing — It was as if Spring were spinning while Summer weaved. Beyond those trees, the morning’s opened gateway And the great ocean’s sharp, responsive blue I saw, and new snow-silvered ranges And snowy Tapuaenuku..… Time importunes our vision with such favours As it revolves, and may therewith devise A jot of quiet, the regale to savour — But oh, that we distil from each new spring’s surprise Imperishable essence, intellectual labour Storing the elexir in mind’s treasuries Against the ultimate hour a blinding darkness lies On these, by its very turning, ever time-menaced eyes.

The Long Harbour There are three valleys where the warm sun lingers, gathered to a green hill girt-about anchorage, and gently, gently, at the cobbled margin of fire-formed, time-smoothed, ocean-moulded curvature, a spent tide fingers the graven boulders, the black, sea-bevelled stones. The fugitive hours, in those sun-loved valleys, implacable hours, their golden-wheeled chariots’ inaudible passage check, and slacken their restless teams’ perpetual galloping; and browsing, peaceable sheep and cattle gaze as they pause by the way. Grass springs sweet where once thick forest gripped vales by fire and axe freed to pasturage; but flame and blade have spared the folding gullies, and there, still, the shade-flitting, honey-sipping lutanists copy the dropping of tree-cool waters dripping from stone to stone. White hawthorn hedge from old, remembered England, and orchard white, and whiter bridal clematis the bush-bequeathed, conspire to strew the valleys in tender spring, and blackbird, happy colonist, and blacker, sweeter-fluter tui echo either the other’s song. From far, palm-feathery, ocean-spattered islands there rowed hither dark and daring voyagers; and Norseman, Gaul, the Briton and the German sailed hither singing; all these hardy venturers they desired a home, and have taken their rest there, and their songs are lost on the wind. I have walked here with my love in the early spring-time, and under the summer-dark walnut-avenues, and played with the children, and waited with the aged by the quayside, and listened alone where manukas sighing, windswept, and sea-answering pine-groves garrison the burial-ground. It should be very easy to lie down and sleep there in that sequestered hillside ossuary, underneath a billowy, sun-caressed grass-knoll, beside those dauntless, tempest-braving ancestresses who pillowed there so gladly, gnarled hands folded, their tired, afore-translated bones. It would not be a hard thing to wake up one morning to the sound of bird-song in scarce-stirring willow-trees, waves lapping, oars plashing, chains running slowly, and faint voices calling across the harbour; to embark at dawn, following the old forefathers, to put forth at daybreak for some lovelier, still undiscovered shore.

Summer

November The gorse is rusting; dust on wayside verdure lies; Hedge hawthorns heavily hang down snow festoons; On purple mountains steadily melt those other snows; Ever the noonday sky in darkening azure burns; The airy willows muffled now in wadded robes, A deeper sigh of wind resounds through denser boughs; Thickly the grass to leaf, to seed, to hay matures; The sturdy lambs have given over nursery games, And reverend cattle wait their hour in grave repose. Thus in young summer green-wreathed earth prepares Her year-long increment, and fills her wealthy stores, Made ready, all unwitting, for the sacrifice.… Thou, heart of man, thou knowest thy dear joys Are richly added to thee, not to clutch the prize; These, in due season, presently, thou offerest likewise.

Drive to North Canterbury The January sun had veiled His burning gaze of yesterday, And his bright glances of the morn With drooping mists, ere we had hailed The northern hills; a curtain grey Was hung about our rural way, But painted on its shadowy fold Were, spiral green and level gold, The willow-trees and fields of corn. The sturdy wheat’s terrestrial hold, Established in the former rains, And sucking yet from source unseen, Maintained erect those crests of gold Above the pasture of the plains; And lively yet, in willowy veins, Flowed the refreshment of the spring, Or hidden watercourse might bring Renewal of their vernal green. Never, in a remembered year, Faring by that remembered road, Stood the crops thicker in the field, Throve the wheat richer in the ear, Nor had the bordering willows showed, Where drain or hidden river flowed, Such fresh and mossy verdure massed Against the soft clouds, as they passed, By a low wandering gleam revealed. All Summer’s heat burned in that grain, Embered upon the cloudy veil; All Spring’s quick energy reborn In those green leaves… The old refrain: Seed-time and harvest shall not fail Is news the centuries cannot stale! Painted upon an evening grey We keep for memory of that day The willows and the standing corn. Be thankful, travellers, who greet The tawny harvest-fields unrolled, That bread for body’s need is given And likewise spiritual meat: For, ’tis the lustre on the gold, The grace wherewith in green is stoled, Mid solitude of misty grey, The careless willow by the way, That lure the soul from earth to heaven.

Forest Sleep Think you, lone wanderer, for an hour withdrawn From that hot argument by human commerce bred, Think you not the innermost forest hath foreknown The whole narrative of the heart’s competence and need? The boughs wear drapery of woe, their weeds Weeping slow rain silently, the leaves Are tears, and sunlight, tear-reflected, goads The groundling grasses to ascend their stemmy rooves And run to reddened heaven above the gloom— Melodious gloom, for everywhere a flute, Plaintive or jubilant, alike with fleeting gleam In liquid shadow plashes a pure note. Though every verdurous depth deny the sun, And shaft of sun but deepen the cool shade, And every smallest sound the stillness to adorn With contradiction stir, harmonious abide The forest solitudes; think you not truly, then, The linked light and darkness, laughter and grief Forecast the consciousness of microcosm, man, The tuned antinomies of his mysterious life? Howbeit, wanderer, having slaked your drought In forest silence, eyes in greenness steeped, To mossy stature with the knotted creepers stooped Cede separateness, and disarm observant thought; Take root with trees in centuries of decay, And with their leaves inbreathe the woody fume, From leafy drowse let individual dream Drop with those bird-notes in a falling joy, (Like jewels dropping into a dark well Dug long ago amid the ligneous dust,) And all particular dissolved to primal mist, Whereof the Thinker fashions what he will.

Levavi Oculos The delicate lines of the hills of this country, Rain-swept and sun-tanned, naked to the four winds, Console our tired eyes as the high-lineaged kine do, With their fine-chiselled flanks in a near field reclined, Bring solace, calm as the quiet hills are, Composed of the same lineaments in one design. These tussocked hills have the texture of paduasoy, Seen afar off, or a venerable mere smoothed And soft-surfaced by immemorial friction; Or of brown-leathered, road-worn shoes; Or of shrine steps, foot-rounded by pilgrims, Or a dun-wooded, kiss-saluted rood. Wish not for these again their cloak and vesture, The rich and dark array, fire-burned and axe-felled By foreign tribes, (even ours, ours, the invaders,) But hail these clean lines, with him who first beheld The divine form revealed of a young lissom goddess, Poised, zephyr-sped, on brim of voyaging shell. These lines, at night-fall, melting into the arable, Enclosing wine-tawny and grape-violet shades, Affect us as a faint air might, played upon a virginal, So long ago that all pain it held then is allayed; Or clarinet, so far distant it brings us but a memory Of healed lament, in the dim twilight, dying away. These hills at dawn are of an austere architecture, Claustral; like a grave assembly, night-cold numbed, Of nuns, singing matins and lauds in perpetuity, While the sluggard multitude without is dumb; But at sunrise carmined, gilded; as of rare cosmetics A girl takes, for more beauty now, lest her lover come. But at mid-day, the bare hills have a remote wildness, Like a young colt or filly, unrestrained And running lithely, never having known bit nor bridle, Or lying down quiet, knowing nor spur nor rein.… How often, on dusty plain pent, have I lifted up mine eyes there, And found freedom, and found mind-liberty again!

Autumn

Autumn Roses The roses of Autumn are less numerous Than the accoutrement of valiant Spring, But they are more beautiful, and far more precious, Each several flower presents itself a perfect thing. They are more lasting, their colour is more lustrous, With a more intimate and insistent voice Their pungent scent speaks …What is meant to us By these perfect, departing roses? The joys Adorning the declension of life’s afternoon, Infrequent, rarer, to be remitted soon, Are so much the fairer, so much the dearer to us, Declaring the ineffable vision to be nearer to us. Their perfume is the incense of jubilee For what the deaf shall hear soon, and the blind see.

Showers of Leaves April is passing; the tired trees are casting their harness down, here in the vale where the east wind is bated and fans but faintly the rays of the waning sun. A soft susurration of small leaves in dessication, a rustling, a hushed song is breathed here where the wind stirs them; accomplished, accomplished is their ministration, their service is done. Back, back, bright ornaments, to earth’s breast, the maternal source, whence the vernal sap sprang in young September, when of her life, and the sun’s, and the breeze’s, your substance was spun. Back to the mattamore, brief golden treasure; stormtarnished frail coinage, to the mint again; scattered for largesse as summer’s train to the distance recedes, her regency run. A light leaf’s kiss feathers my cheek as it flutters restwards. Meekly the flitting leaves whisper: Dimittis. Requiescat, requiescat, sighs the dying wind’s salutation. Ah! might I as peacefully, completion serenely accepting, its office fulfilled, as freely put off this integument, and get me hence, mine eyes having seen salvation.

By Burke’s Pass Nature, earth’s angel, man’s antagonist, The stern antagonist from whom he wrests his bread, Long heretofore with vast magnificence Did carve this scene, prepare the arena, spread Bronze tussocked terraces before precipitous Great purple alps, loose glacier-shed Fierce-laughing streams in circuitous riverbed. Lo, man to the assault! In part victorious, His pretty trophies sets he up to amend The natural scene. The corn-stacks aureate, Wearing their weights like amulets, the autumn blend Of orange-spattered poplars, with the various Gilt willows are his signet. Now, vainglorious, He calls the expanse a home and awful Nature, friend. The austere angel smiles on man’s predicament, Foregoes awhile advantage, and abates his blows; Soft mein assumes of kindly ministrant; As on this ending day in genial radiance glows The whole amphitheatre, stark antinomy Of wild and won annulled; and, new-companioned foes, Beneath the hostile heights homestead and farm repose. Homestead? Nay, halting-place, accommodation Achieved… Did not that sombre regimented band Of firs, those gravestones, publish man’s condition? For night, parental night, shall soon with gentle hand Suspend her folding arras, resume domination; Nature, to rest dismissed by a most high command, Shortly roll up this planetary decoration, Man having passed darkly onwards to an unknown land.

Autumn Afternoon On a small hillock, contented, contented, Beside a low valley, I took my repose, One day in mid-May, wearing on into winter, While the calm afternoon drew down to its close. And I saw that the harvest was over, was over, The scything and binding of corn and of hay; And the latter-day harvest of swarthy potatoes, The spaded, dark harvest was now under way. As in a small mirror, a minishing mirror, An old, curving mirror that hung in our home, I saw the band moving, and bending, and lifting, As they filled up the sacks and turned up the loam. The lorry attending, the long motor-lorry, Loading up, seemed to swim on invisible keel; No sound of its labours came over the furrows, No grind of an engine, no round of a wheel; No sound from the distance, so clear so pellucid, So near seemed the bevy of men and of boys, With eye and with ear so soothed and deluded, I fancied a realm that had never known noise! The sheep in their pasture, half lost in the tussock, On the hillside above me or far on the plains (Like a stage army that seems to be passing, And seems to be moving, but constant remains) Fretted the herbage, and nibbled the grasses, Intent on their pasture, so stolid, so tame; All tame and all tallied, all followed the foremost, And rippled the landscape, but kept it the same. And as the light lowered, unsullied and glowing, It threw a last spell before it should pale, A magical mesh of golden and coralline Mist over hill and gully and dale. It enveloped the vale; the long lilac shadows Fell soft as the folds of an old, faded gown; All silken the tussock, all velvet the fallow, As the lustre grew brighter, before it died down. It seemed as if Autumn, red-cloaked for her journey, Autumn, kind Autumn, had paused for a while; Had paused at her parting, remembered the valley, Looked over her shoulder, and and thrown us a smile. It lit up the boughs, it illumined the branches Of a cluster of trees, so placed and displayed— A Lombardy poplar, and two aspen poplars, And a dark purple willow embraced in their shade— So placed and disposed, as if for an artist, As if for a master to trace and portray The design of their limbs, the spring of their arches, In glowing repose at the close of the day. All leafless the willows, all naked the columnar Lombardy poplar, but aspens wore, high On their whispering crests, a glittering circlet, Still yellow, bright yellow, against the blue sky. Then the clear light faded, so slowly, so sadly, As dear Autumn’s smile passed into a sigh; The fields were forsaken, the sere poplars shuddered, As the flotten leaves muttered ‘So now we must die!’ And coming that evening, cold evening, late evening, And coming to compline, dismissing the day; And conning life’s lesson, to fathom the meaning, The exquisite pleasures adorning the way, New every morning, the various treasure Measured again, took up all my mind; The tokens of kindness, the cup in the cornsack, The corn out of Egypt, the blessing assigned, The shining surprises, the rose in the desert, Oh, naught but the mercy, the turning again, Naught but remembrance of kindness and mercy Supplying fresh manna the soul to sustain, New wine distilled, yea, filling the cup full, Secret bread, hid manna, my thoughts did employ— And how a red sallow, and two sorts of poplar, Upsprung in a valley, had wrought me such joy!

Winter

Warning of Winter Give over, now, red roses; Summer-long you told us, Urgently unfolding, death-sweet, life-red, Tidings of love. All’s said. Give over. Summer-long you placarded Leafy shades with heart-red Symbols. Who knew not love at first knows now, Who had forgot has now remembered. Let be, let be, lance-lilies, Alert, pard-spotted, tilting Poised anthers, flaming; have done flaming fierce; Hard hearts were pierced long since, and stricken. Give to the blast your thorn-crowns Roses; and now be torn down All you ardent lilies, your high-holden crests, Havocked and cast to rest on the clammy ground. Alas, alas, to darkness Descends the flowered pathway, To solitary places, deserts, utter night; To issue in what hidden dawn of light hereafter? But one, in dead of winter, Divine Agape, kindles Morning suns, new moons, light’s starry trophies; Says to the waste: Rejoice, and bring forth roses; To the ice-fields: Let here spring thick bright lilies.

Weathered Rocks Poetry is a music made of images Worded one in the similitude of another, Chaining the whole universe to the ecstasies Of humanity, its anguish and fervour. But there shall be no equivalent Of these fire-wrought and water-worn boulders, Tattoo’d and stained, silvered, denigrated, Rusted and empurpled by exposure To ocean-salted south and east winds Unremittingly sweeping over these headlands; Since in the bosom of this volcano The fires abated, died down, and were exhausted, Fretted by aurelian and grey moulds, Encrusted with frilled lichens, pale, glaucous; Giving pittance to lissom tussock grasses And twisted brambles, from invisible crevasses. Rock, thorn, cryptogram, each has significance, Each makes contribution to eternal parabole; And we are kin, compounded of the same elements, Alike proceeding to an unknown goal; And they are secret to themselves as I am secret to myself, And I think they have no part in my dole; And shall another estimate the influence Of mass, form, colour, on individual soul, Or relate my smitten heart-throb, Beholding these things, to cosmic diastole? But deep is the given peace, when informed particular Has respect unto the dignity of the whole.

May Night The long nights of late May repose to the soul afford; First snows are fallen to the base of sentinel mountains, Lost now by fusion of earth and heaven in northern dusk. A watch of stars is set exalt in the dark sapphire sky, Sharp the rays strike upon steel-cold spaces; The frost-stark city-plain glistens with topaz lights. Glassy-cold, crystal-cold and still-fast, the quickened air Smites like musical clang of a bell on exulting spirit, Sense-apprised but unshackled, but free, in heaven-bound flight. Beholding the noble universe as many-faceted gem Fast in a royal crown of power, enhancing its splendour, Not forlorn in the murky dust of uncharted, anonymous mines. The rolling worlds in their courses seem, suddenly halted and stayed By majestical word, to be standing hushed and motionless, And the populous planet, earth, struck dumb, for a short space. Here is richness of solitude for tacit work of the mind, But as singular treasure, prize, soul, this silence, Lest haply unfulfilled the hour from thee be taken away. (Even now up-beats the muffled tug of a freight-train In travail beside the hidden sea; its repercussion Taps and taps on fragile bowl of mountain quiet.…) Too soon shall be shown on eastern horizon an urgent sign; Too soon shall the veil be raised on intricate drama Wherein to every man is daily allotted his transient part. But legion stars their vigil do yet maintain on sapphire heights; The mighty silence is such as of which it is said in the Scripture: There was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. O radiant night! Here is renewal. Herein is vitality. Clear from the well of life shall spring the sparkling waters. Bright, bright are the glittering syllables: Peace, and Perpetual Light.

Envoy Over and over, carefully to con ‘thy tablets, Memory,’ myself accustomed, the one being gone who prompted all; night having fallen upon that territory where, season by season, we had watched unfold fugitive beauty; impotent and cold transcriptions, yet these now shall be thanks for felicity.

Notes Page 12:

THE LONG HARBOUR, translation of Akaroa.

Page 20:

REDDENED HEAVEN i.e. with the scarlet flowers of the rata.

Page 21:

MERE (PRON. ME-RE), Maori weapon of polished stone.

erratum

Page 26 line 6: for ‘ascomplished’ read ‘accomplished’

Certain of these poems first appeared in The North Canterbury Gazette and in The Christchurch Press, to whose editors thanks are due.

Hand set in caslon old face and printed in an edition of 250 copies at The Caxton Press 152 Peterborough Street Christchurch CI July 1936