Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HERE IS MUSIS: 19. BEFORE AND AFTER: AFTER, by AUSTIN PHILIPS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HERE IS MUSIS: 19. BEFORE AND AFTER: AFTER, by                    
First Line: Books as our background. Books
Last Line: All life still brings ... True, blest begetter of these songs!
Subject(s): Books; Libraries & Librarians; Old Age; Reading


BOOKS as our background. Books
About, around, before
Us. Books whose obedient store,
In row, in regiment,
Stands, circumambient,
On ledges, shelves, in nooks.
Books in brave backs. Books brown
With age. ... Books worn with use.
Books blatant, platitudinous. Books whose ore,
Once mined, may fire and fuse
Long-harboured thoughts, thus lead
Towards action, drive to deed.
Books from which each who looks within them wrings
That which, himself, he brings.

Books born but now. Books blest
By generous gift, bequeathed
This hundred years, en-wreathed,
En-riched by dead men's hope
Of widening live men's scope:
Books which some scholar-priest,
Or cultured squire devised.
Books universal, vast
In outlook. Books particular, in-breathed
With hours of Devon's Past,
Which tell of Sea-Kings, wake
The drum-taps of her Drake,
Or else hold, crystallised,
That proud millennium of memories,
Her chiefest City's prize.

Such this rare room where You
And I held rendezvous,
One week agone. To-day, benumbed, bereaved,
Stricken, we gaze in grief
On wreck, wrack past belief,
Watch roof and rafter lie a-heap, in-weaved
With blackened shelves, upheaved
And fallen, reft and reaved
Of their loved load which, burned
To blackened fragments, turned
To piteous, paltry powder, lurks and lies,
Desolate, derelict,
Eternally evict,
Sport of the winds and plaything of the skies. ...
The reek and fume of smoke
Still linger on, to choke
Our throats. Walls, windowless,
Enclose a charred, scorched Hell,
Wailing wan emptiness. ...
And I? My heart itself weeps as I take farewell,
Of this, my bow'r of love—brought ruinous, made shell.

No more myself, unmann'd,
I gaze ... when, lo! a hand
Warm, quick and generous, grasps and grips my own,
Sends my poor strength renewed,
Gives me fresh fortitude,
Silent, speaks friendship, sees me less alone,
Brings comfort, bids all feebleness be gone,
Comes, vital, to dethrone
Despair, kills cowardice,
Grants gracious armistice
To grief—so granting, freshens and inspires
My heart and soul to strive,
Steadfast: restorative,
Fills me again with pristine force, fresh fires,
Points out my path, makes plain
Ways I must walk again:
Ways asperous, ways harsh,
More mountains to ascend,
Rude, route-less valleys, marsh,
Flood, glacier, precipice—all road-blocks which attend
Him whose horizon goes receding ... to the end.

My Dear, my Very Dear—
Proud soul's, a high heart's compeer,
Know this—know well—that I who have loved and won,
Loved, too, and lost, outgrown,
Outlived loved objects, thrown
Unworthy loves aside and, pressing on,
Have still stayed seeker, shunned regression,
Kept firm criterion. ...
Know this, (know well, I say,
From one who has felt fierce sway
Of bodily passion, plunged therein and plumbed
Its fiery depths, essayed
False creeds, impetuous made
Himself frail idols, miserably succumbed
To Saint or Sorceress,
In passing feebleness)
If Juno, Pallas, She,
The Paphian, all came,
Am'rous, to offer me
Their conjoined gifts, their beauties, blent in one sole frame. ...
I—(You once found!)—would find such largess trivial, tame.

In sad escheat I dwell,
Since each day dawns to swell
My ever-growing debt, my deep, strong gratitude
To You, who brought and bring
New life, bid, bade me sing,
(Hoarse with long silence as I was!), renewed
My spirit's sap, so long repressed, em-mewed,
Set Spring in Winter's blood. ...
Not mine the chance, the pow'r
At this, the Eleventh Hour,
To compass that I might in hours of prime, repay
You, who supremely stir
My mind, my heart, prefer
Gifts beyond price, stand stimulus and stay
To me, stand lasting strength,
Found late, yet found at length. ...
Stand Faith, stand Hope, stand Dream,
Stand sweet soul's image, stand
Experience supreme,
Out-vieing her, long since, by fire and passion fanned
To life—Greek Galatea, whom Pygmalion planned.

Though vain be all essay,
Friend of my heart, to pay
Abiding obligation—measureless and vast
Beyond all telling—know
That, hour by hour, I grow
Yours more completely, dwell in still more fast
Devotion, stay your lover to the last,
Find You in largest, least
And lightest thought I think
Or read or utter, link
You up with every action, deed and choice
I take and make, assign
You temple, altar, shrine,
Ceaseless, within my soul ... while music from your voice
Divinely, daily dwells
There, magically spells
Me to make music, too. ...
So that sweet rhythm throngs
My being through and through,
Born of your beauty—Yours, to which alone belongs
All life still brings ... true, blest begetter of these songs!





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