Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE HYACINTHS, by NORMAN ROWLAND GALE Poet's Biography First Line: Take the good ashplant; stuff the old grey cap Last Line: Leap up with immortality in your breast! Subject(s): Country Life; Spring | ||||||||
TAKE the good ashplant; stuff the old grey cap Deep in your pocket. Now that breakfast's done, Out to the field of clover by the gap, And be accepted of the early sun! See you that mass of oakland banked in peace Beyond the poplar family on the right? There shall you find a kingdom of release From half a city's arrogance and spite. Keep now the proper angel at your side To touch the spirit to a heavenly mood, That you may share, as something deified, The sense of morning holiness in the wood. Behold that pear-tree, edged with radiant sky, Still as an Oread open-lipped in rest! Tread softly, friend! The Enchanter must be nigh, For me to feel such pathos in my breast. Methinks, if we could linger in this place Till fall the early veilings of the gloom, At last might show the never-coming face Of Him whose delicate temple is the bloom. Now onward by the ploughman's narrow track Across the field of growing bread, till there, A hundred yards beyond the forester's stack, The wood lies waiting with its drowsy air. This lower part the honeysuckle loves, Enwreathing hazels, climbing lofty trees To show its golden horns to infant doves And be a fragrant playmate for the breeze. Next comes the clearing where, when April shakes Her bosom free of bloom in forest and wold, The falling of the primrose bounty makes The oaks seem rooted in a soil of gold. And next the clearing where, in middle May (To think of them in sunshine!) can be found This holy wood's miraculous display Of hyacinths flooding half a mile of ground. Yon path is best, as keeping back the sight; For I would have this Mediterranean Sea Of dark blue blossoming hurriedly delight The friend who shall be drowned in it with me. How often half a loveliness is lost To those who search it by the easier way! The common paths and eminences cost A price the poet's heart would break to pay. Behold them! Breathe them! Where amazed you stand With quivering eyelids, often have I stood To see a shipless ocean on dry land Becalmed in May within a Warwickshire wood. Here let us sit and play with perished time, When gods were elbowing gods, and startled girls Were gathered as sweet as clusters of the lime To kiss the heroes webbed within their curls. Retreat ten thousand years from all that now Prevents the demi-god, till you with me In fancy hear beneath a thornless bough The bird that best remembers Arcady. Forget each fallen star, believed by Youth Too brilliant-born to dwindle from the sky; The lies that in the domino of Truth Persuaded us to let Reflection die. Forget them all; then, musing here with me, Awake the coloured pageantries of Greece, And watch across this billowy breadth of sea A shadowy Argo steering to the Fleece. For who can link this beauty with the day In which our doom compels us to lament The broken limbs of gods upon the way That ever draws us farther from content? Not you, not I. Insensibly we use, When face to face with loveliness such as this, The fine-spun ropes of dreamihead, and choose The crags that lead us back to Time's abyss. Be fortunate travelling backward! Even reach, As friend for friend desires, the limit of quest; And, having glimpsed a sight too great for speech, Leap up with immortality in your breast! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPRING LEMONADE by TONY HOAGLAND A SPRING SONG by LYMAN WHITNEY ALLEN SPRING'S RETURN by GEORGE LAWRENCE ANDREWS ODE TO SPRING by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD ODE TO SPRING by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD SPRING FLOODS by MAURICE BARING SPRING IN WINTER by CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES SPRING ON THE PRAIRIE by HERBERT BATES THE FARMER'S BOY: SPRING by ROBERT BLOOMFIELD THE COUNTRY FAITH by NORMAN ROWLAND GALE |
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