Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, VALE ATQUE AVE, by MARGARET LOUISA WOODS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

VALE ATQUE AVE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I shall return to thee
Last Line: I shall return to thee earth, my mother.
Alternate Author Name(s): Woods, Mrs. Margaret Louisa Bradley
Subject(s): Earth; Hearts; Love; Mothers; World


I SHALL return to thee,
Earth, O dearest
Mother of mine!
I who have loved thee with joy everlasting,
Endless discovery, newness diurnal;
I who with every delight of my heart,
As with strands of gold, have enwoven the fairest
Flowers of thy beauty, whose sorrows yearn for thee.
See, with no gesture
Of long resignation, of farewell eternal,
Now I depart,
But as to some new festival hasting,
I bid them fall from me, disentwine
The withered garland, the worn vesture.

Not as a warrior
Lost and defeated,
Out of thy legions
Perished and gone,
Lady, I pass from the fight into regions
Hid from its roar—but the battered armour
Bruises the limbs, the sword is broken.
Loose me them gently, cast them undone,
After thy manner,
Into thy crucible, the seven-times heated.
I to the front, to thy face still addrest
Shall await the recall, shall watch for the token,
Leap at the word. I ask not rest,
But a trustier steel—and back to the banner!

I who have suffered
All in the hurtle
Of thy dreadful wars;
Fierce mutilation,
Red gaping wounds, ineffaceable scars,
Unspeakable treachery and supreme disaster.
But thou madest my heart in its creation
A well of healing, and wherever devouring
Flame had swept and the blackness of fire would strew
My way, the ashes have burst into sudden flow'ring
Of lovely affection and streams unexpected proffered
Waters of comfort, wandering clouds dropped dew—
And about the head, where the Spirit of Fire had cast her
Ashen veil, was woven a crown of myrtle.

What if they cry to me,
Worlds adolescent,
With violent voices,
Throwing their wide
Circling net of invisible forces
In the seas of space! Their hearts incandescent
Rage in rivalry one with another,
"Life! O my thirst!" crying, "Life! O my hunger!
I must have more Life, to conceive, to push up
In a rapture of Being. Life! Come, fly to me!"
Though the mightiest craved me, shrieked in her pride,
"I will have thee, thou drop of red wine, in my cup,
I will suck thee from Earth! I am greater and younger"—
Yet would I cleave to thee, Earth, my mother.

Me thy unending
Drama of Destiny,
Pageant of Life
Holds a spectator untired of its terror,
Pathos and beauty, mystery, comedy,
Harlequinade and heroic strife.
And thy dreams, dearest! Ah! They reprove thee
Because thou hast given us dreams that are far more fair
Than reality and perish sooner or later.
But I praise thee because in thy magic mirror
Thou hast shown us a face fairer than earthly, a greater
Light than the sun's, a love that no heart can share.
For the dreams' sake, most for the dreams I love thee.

'Tis for thy choosing
How I shall serve thee.
Yet may it be
I in my Now, Afterwards fashioned,
Making this energy meet but for using
In the fight and the fury of lives elemental.
Wilt thou in lightning scatter? Reserve me
Ages a force in the seethe of thy central
Bosom? Not so, for some leap of the heart
That loved so thy beauty would burst into being
In a field full of flowers, in the sap of a tree
That pushes and frets for the Springtime's freeing—
A tree monumental, unimpassioned,
In silent beauty, immense, apart.

Up, not to fall again
Into the welter;
Up, see, this urgent
Life of me pushes,
Swings now on white wings where the wave dances
Rhythmical, pipes in the coppice-wood shelter
Low, with strange sweet hesitancies
Till a song floods full on the night of Maytime.
With the galloping rhythm of hoofs it rushes,
Leaps in some merry brown beast at its playtime,
Suffers and dies one way or another,
Learning the lessons that Life must learn.
But I shall still blindly fumble and wait
Till the true door open, the true voice call again;
And back to the human high estate,
Back to the whole of the soul, resurgent,
O Earth! O dearest! I shall return,
I shall return to thee Earth, my mother.





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