Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MONICA PEVERIL TURNBULL, by NEWMAN HOWARD


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MONICA PEVERIL TURNBULL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Once more wild march, her mantle shaken
Last Line: "for new buds' swelling."
Subject(s): Death; Dreams; March (month); Soul; Tears; Dead, The; Nightmares


ONCE more wild March, her mantle shaken
In scudding clouds and gales,
Breathes sorrow through the russet bracken:
Sappho has fled the Dales:
Her "king's robe stained with blood" lies doft,
And bare the hill and brown the croft
Trod by her singing footsteps oft,
But now forsaken.

Clouds on the crags, deep-cleft and hoary,
Dream in a mist of tears
Of that brief pageant of her story
That golden sheaf of years,
Since, laughing there when Spring was young,
Around her breast a wreath she flung
Of smoke-weed, tipped with fiery tongue,
Pale fumitory:

Sad omen! Sure in wild caress
Even the flames might be
Changed by her virgin perfectness
To such sweet garlandry;
Such rainbow robes as weeping weaves,
When Hope re-twines her ravished leaves,
And clothes the form no Spring retrieves
With angel dress:

Saint, heroine, victress! yet for her
What solace? Now no more
The beckoning beauty everywhere
Shall her bright wings explore?
Our bird is slain; the throstle's note
Scarce bubbled ere the arrow smote
And hushed the sweet song in her throat,
Transfixed it there, --

Froze its first rapture. So the gloom
Of imminent steeps of Death
Purples with shade the pasque-flower's bloom
And chokes the rose's breath:
For oft to songs our Sappho sings
A wild and haunting shadow clings,
Oft 'neath her girlish treble rings
The note of doom.

So in mid flight o'er oceans blue
The swallow, seeking May,
Sees a dark shadow-bird pursue,
Glassed through the hissing spray.
Shall Sappho find her May? That hour
The Scytheman smote our singing flower
A shape, a Phantom crossed her bower,
Stealthy as dew,

Pale, dreamlike, vague. In fear's embrace
Her waiting spirit lay;
Strong lamplight fell upon his face, --
Or was it the light of Day?
Not terrible now, her songs being done,
He only smiled, that shining One
To hear the glad notes ne'er outrun
The mournful bass.

At dawn she dreamed; Death's flame, or Day's,
Wrapt her sweet limbs that night:
Dear, did One smile his perfect praise
And clothe your song with light?
Smiling, men set the ultimate task
Who know it conquered ere they ask, --
Now shall the Victor doff the casque
And don the bays?

Stricken with dreams, by terrors shaken,
Dreams whisper that we dream:
When night by day is overtaken
How vain those terrors seem!
Our sense, spell-bound by earth and sun,
Weaves solids where the world has none;
Living we sleep; new dreams are spun
When sleepers waken.

What shall the nurseling leaf affirm
Of the oak's unravellings?
What the blind plasm, the groping worm
Of soul or song-bird's wings?
These, narrow of sense, dim caves surround, --
Us the wide heavens; new frontiers bound,
New glories, new delights astound
The expanded germ.

In rhythmic sleep, its petals blown,
Fresh fields the fruit inherits;
Dark skies with countless worlds are sown,
Dark years with countless spirits;
Epics inscribed on myriad scrolls,
Worlds in Time's womb are all men's souls:
From world to answering world life rolls
Its antiphone, --

Deathless through change: o'er times remote
Life's sequent chords unite;
Theme calls to theme; they wreathe and float,
Fragrant of the infinite.
For life integral there is none,
But waves that in one river run,
AEons made moments, felt as one,
Note linked with note.

Nor, of this world alone, one clod,
One swift electric brain:
The ferrule's here, the fulcrate rod
Quivers through space amain.
Souls flame up on his anvil: He,
The Smithy, sits in ether free;
He wields the orbs in majesty, --
His name is God.

Like dust the stars His mind enrolls,
And pours them out in Light, --
Like stars this dust our life controls,
Then looses, and takes flight.
Stars are they? Nay, but song and thrill,
Keen lambent thought evoked at will,
His stuff and ours, -- for he is Will,
Soul of all souls.

For, lo, this filmy universe
Pierced by the tuned ray,
What arras front, -- no frayed reverse, --
Its galaxies display!
Vast regions lie behind: ah, there,
Well shapen still, -- her soul was fair, --
Breathes she the jocund balmy air,
The bruised wing's nurse?

Brave song that broke in dropping tears, --
Dawn dashed to-night, -- thy close
Waits in this music of the spheres
Some birth to solve its throes;
Some bloom to break the perished husk,
And fill the night with fragrant musk, --
Some wings heard fluttering in the dusk
Ere new dawn peers.

For, Sappho, Dante never hymned
A heavenlier grace than thine,
Pheidias ne'er wrought, nor Raphael limned
Madonna more divine! --
Mirthful she was, broad visioned, wise,
Keen-laughtered, constant, and her eyes
Shone with compassion, -- moonlit skies,
Clear, deep, undimmed.

Dark prophets they, who deem Fate's fools
Are all things wise and fair, --
Who dredge for spawn in dead-sea pools,
And read life's meaning there!
More truths of heaven and earth we trace, --
More searchings-out of time and space, --
More wisdom in one woman's face
Than all the schools.

Breathe, then, of fragrant Spring's foretelling, --
First murmuring of her breath, --
Violets, blue violets, breathe dispelling
The heavy mists of death;
Breathe, emblem of her sweetness here, --
Breathe your last breath upon her bier;
Whisper "Earth's bloom turns only sere
For new buds' swelling."





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