Poems
Canby, David Morton, Robert P Tristram Coffin, Margaret McGovern, Theodore Maynard, Marie de L Welch
POEMS Unholy Light Light is holy as the bees Save on moonlit winter trees When the world is sheathed in ice. Not the eye of cocatrice Could work so deadly on the blood As this lethal moonlit...
...Escape Waste not on trivial things Thy passionate heart...
...O live, and never try to enter here...
...Now life is at its richest, which is why I have tremendous need for lying fallow, Like a dark glen with sun-gold in its hollow, And nothing moving but the migrant's cry...
...But here you are all that perfection is, And life is like a shadow at your heel...
...David Morton...
...Elude thy dull despairs In the bright regions of the upper airs...
...Not the eye of cocatrice Could work so deadly on the blood As this lethal moonlit flood Which pours out diamonds with black cores, Evil as houses with locked doors And lights at every window pane...
...If I can stay as still as this the spring, Laying her landscape out at secret dawn, Will mark me gently for anemone...
...Margaret McGovern...
...CXallow Now I am through with thinking and can lie Fallow, watching wind-water in the willow, Swishing in tonic blue upon fair yellow, While red-winged oak leaves mount the air and fly...
...Theodore Maynard...
...How may the merciful errands they set on Be told...
...Lines to a Dead Franciscan God knows I did not wish it...
...Marie de L. Welch...
...There brooding love distills Healing from bitterest bane...
...My banks will waken when the winter's gone, Where happily some virginal willow tree Lifts up the bird that is the first to sing...
...you will live Sweetly perhaps, in your own time and space...
...The tide swept Me by the door to where you lay at rest With hard-worn hands at breast...
...Even in your heart you will not live So exquisitely, your own breath is not dear In you as in this place you have not known...
...It seemed unmeet to look down on your face Luminous, for any space, There in a half-lit gloom, To touch your feet was all I could presume...
...Spread thy wings...
...Beckon the lights on hills Aquiver with daffodils...
...Sire The memory that broods among these hills Walks in a dream where all but dream is past, And the long silence that is on her stills Her going that is always and at last A desolate going, and a proud, and lonely For starry shapes of heroes at a stream, And women who were beautiful as only Queens are beautiful in a ruined dream...
...Small cares May heavy weigh, slight stings Smart sorely...
...Robert P. Tristram Coffin...
...For One Enshrined Lady, you will not live so exquisitely In all the world as in this secret place Where you have never entered...
...She will put on the spring green like a gown, And put it off again when spring is past, And each slow dusk will bring her a grave crown Of stars to wear-but always and at last She wears a crown of sadder stars than these, And older springs are flowering at her knees...
...Such nights will work upon the brain And make a man afraid of night And other dark things that are right...
...You will be glad indeed of all the world, But where you are there will be others who Though they enchant you, though they make you wise, Will take away from you a little of you...
...so calloused in the shabby ties And eager to disguise Succor with singing words, Following that Little Brother of the Birds...
...You will be lost in living, you will find Yourself grown often misty and unreal...
...Marion Canby...
...They knew the sermon wanting, These poor feet, Cold, tired feet that make the tears to run...
...There shall thy heart be free To spend, sans loss, its power- One with the shouting sea, The deep-dug swaying treeExultant, hour by hour, In the glad life that beauty brings to flower...
...There, as the grass drinks rain, Thou too mayst drink of long-lost joy again...
Vol. 11 • March 1930 • No. 18
