13.06.2008, 09:53
Thoughts of Home
I
As are the features of some well-loved face,
One which a life's prolixity is writ
In moving characters much conned and fit
Across a single soulful ground to trace
Feeling and thought and purpose, like the grace
Which motion adds to loveliness (there flit
The spirit's shades, and there the lamp is lit
That lights twin souls to a lifelong embrace);
So to the city-dweller hath the town,
Much conned, its moving physiognomy,
Which oft in exile, as the sun goes down,
Teams in the caverned dusk of memory
With haunting visions of dear streets, that crown
Night's sorrow with entrancing imagery.
II
Does the slant touch of early light awake
The sirens on the Clyde, and fling the door
Wide on the city's rousing all-day roar?
Are the streets well a-clatter? Do they break
From tram and train, that travelling host, and take
The town by storm? Does gathering traffic pour
Over the tide-line of night's silent shore,
Into the spaces, till the cobbles quake?
While down the river, crowded to the brink
With huddled shipyards, many a loaded quay,
Ten hundred thousand volleying hammers clink;
And the slow homing liner booms to see
The ever-coiling waters still a-wink
With mirrored shipping freighted for the sea.
III
Ah me, I dream of what they do at home
This Sabbath sunrise of the early prime!
The slumbering city waking to the chime
Of opening church-bells, when the sun hath clomb
Full half-way up the hollow of heaven's dome;
The leisured family muster, the sublime
Jollity and the uplift of the time
That sets the week-worn spirit free to roam;
The walking to the kirk, the solemn hour
With the Creator, lapsing at the close
Into the sweet expansiveness that plays
Round the church door, when from the too tense power
Of prayer and praise the natural spirit flows
Back to its level. - That was in past days.
IV
What do they do to-day? What form of fear
Haunts the now voided chambers of their life,
Troubling its ancient tenor, parent, wife,
Survivors of the broken circle dear
In the old home enisled, as in some drear
Interspace of existance, till the strife
Is overblown, and but the echoes rife
Volley adown the days still left them here?
How they must suffer! - Yet these later shocks
Displace not from my brain the life it knew
Before the Power that our planned journey mocks,
Over our faring war's dark glory drew;
And when my miser mind its store unlocks,
It takes out treasures rather old than new.
V
So thus I picture it, not as life lies
Now writhing, but as when the days and nights
Followed each other in unmarked delights;
Nor noted we the measure of the prize
Till all was over. Now the spirit cries,
What time encroaching Inanition blights,
For but the phantom of its past, and fights
Extinction with its memories. Let them rise!
Let me dissemble that as in past days
The crystal fountain with delicious flow
Of bursting social joy unconscious plays
Over the garden close, where row by row
The flowers of life in such profusion blaze
That their own loveliness they do not know.
VI
Day follows night, and night returns to day
Through all the enchanting stages of the spring;
And exile lengthens out to months that fling
Their shadow further, and my life grows gray;
Grays even with the sun's increasing ray;
While forward still the heading heats do wing
Into the year, that softly rounds his ring
To midsummer, and June is on the way:
The perfect season, when the hawthorn blows
Down cream-white Scottish hedges, and the spent
Airs of the evening gently swaying close
Tired eyes upon it, heavy with its scent;
While on the Downs the beating sunlight glows,
And sends the wildering roses over Kent.
I
As are the features of some well-loved face,
One which a life's prolixity is writ
In moving characters much conned and fit
Across a single soulful ground to trace
Feeling and thought and purpose, like the grace
Which motion adds to loveliness (there flit
The spirit's shades, and there the lamp is lit
That lights twin souls to a lifelong embrace);
So to the city-dweller hath the town,
Much conned, its moving physiognomy,
Which oft in exile, as the sun goes down,
Teams in the caverned dusk of memory
With haunting visions of dear streets, that crown
Night's sorrow with entrancing imagery.
II
Does the slant touch of early light awake
The sirens on the Clyde, and fling the door
Wide on the city's rousing all-day roar?
Are the streets well a-clatter? Do they break
From tram and train, that travelling host, and take
The town by storm? Does gathering traffic pour
Over the tide-line of night's silent shore,
Into the spaces, till the cobbles quake?
While down the river, crowded to the brink
With huddled shipyards, many a loaded quay,
Ten hundred thousand volleying hammers clink;
And the slow homing liner booms to see
The ever-coiling waters still a-wink
With mirrored shipping freighted for the sea.
III
Ah me, I dream of what they do at home
This Sabbath sunrise of the early prime!
The slumbering city waking to the chime
Of opening church-bells, when the sun hath clomb
Full half-way up the hollow of heaven's dome;
The leisured family muster, the sublime
Jollity and the uplift of the time
That sets the week-worn spirit free to roam;
The walking to the kirk, the solemn hour
With the Creator, lapsing at the close
Into the sweet expansiveness that plays
Round the church door, when from the too tense power
Of prayer and praise the natural spirit flows
Back to its level. - That was in past days.
IV
What do they do to-day? What form of fear
Haunts the now voided chambers of their life,
Troubling its ancient tenor, parent, wife,
Survivors of the broken circle dear
In the old home enisled, as in some drear
Interspace of existance, till the strife
Is overblown, and but the echoes rife
Volley adown the days still left them here?
How they must suffer! - Yet these later shocks
Displace not from my brain the life it knew
Before the Power that our planned journey mocks,
Over our faring war's dark glory drew;
And when my miser mind its store unlocks,
It takes out treasures rather old than new.
V
So thus I picture it, not as life lies
Now writhing, but as when the days and nights
Followed each other in unmarked delights;
Nor noted we the measure of the prize
Till all was over. Now the spirit cries,
What time encroaching Inanition blights,
For but the phantom of its past, and fights
Extinction with its memories. Let them rise!
Let me dissemble that as in past days
The crystal fountain with delicious flow
Of bursting social joy unconscious plays
Over the garden close, where row by row
The flowers of life in such profusion blaze
That their own loveliness they do not know.
VI
Day follows night, and night returns to day
Through all the enchanting stages of the spring;
And exile lengthens out to months that fling
Their shadow further, and my life grows gray;
Grays even with the sun's increasing ray;
While forward still the heading heats do wing
Into the year, that softly rounds his ring
To midsummer, and June is on the way:
The perfect season, when the hawthorn blows
Down cream-white Scottish hedges, and the spent
Airs of the evening gently swaying close
Tired eyes upon it, heavy with its scent;
While on the Downs the beating sunlight glows,
And sends the wildering roses over Kent.