Louis Golding

“ Rebuke the man who sings vain words;
His sheep-dog growls a low complaint,
Then turns to chasing butterflies.
But when the indifferent singing-birds
From midmost down to dimmest shore
Innumerably confirm their songs,
And grasshoppers make summer rhyme
And solemn bees in the wild thyme
Clash cymbals and beat gongs,
The shepherd's words once more are faint,
Once more the alien song is thinned
Upon the long course of the wind,
He sings, he sings no more. ”

“ Sweet, my song is done.
PLOUGHMAN AT THE PLOUGH
He behind the straight plough stands
Stalwart, firm shafts in firm hands.
Naught he cares for wars and naught
For the fierce disease of thought.
Only for the winds, the sheer
Naked impulse of the year,
Only for the soil which stares
Clean into God's face he cares.
In the stark might of his deed
There is more than art or creed;
In his wrist more strength is hid
Than the monstrous Pyramid ”

“ Fills the hushed day with other wings than birds'.
Now where on foam-crest waves the seagulls rock,
To their cliff-haven go the seagulls thence.
So too the shepherd gathers in his flock,
Because birds journey to their dens,
Tired sheep to their still fold.
A dark first bat swoops low and dips
About the shepherd who now sings
A song of timeless evenings;
For dusk is round him with wide wings,
Dusk murmurs on his moving lips.
There is not mortal man who knows
From whence the shepherd's song arose:
It came a thousand years ago. ”

“ Tipped with green starshine and with opal flamed!
Days shall not rot
My fruit so sacred that it is not named.
Not with a carnal lip shalt thou devour
A pulp so tragic-sweet.
For here the juices of disaster meet
When silly power
Gives form to fancy that a man might eat.
Leave us a single tree of precious fruit;
One dream to be our own;
One shape which shall not stammer into stone;
One sweet song mute
To sing with fleshless lips when flesh is flown
PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST
I have been given eyes
Which are neither foolish nor wise,
Seeing through joy or pain
Beauty alone remain. ”

“ Lo now! from evil thought
Soaring through steeps of fire their brows are caught.
Columnar topaz in this time of shrift,
Their tall heads lift
Among the bases of celestial hills.
Ah streets, rent roofs, ah chimneys, I am blind!
I dare not find
You lifted so from purgatorial dooms.
I cannot breathe.
Hold me! I sink where the dense colour fumes!
Now opiate hands close round me, draw me down,
Foam-lulled where soundless tides of sunset seethe!
Hold me! I drown!
My eyes open! ah so wretched eyes! ”

“ Between two bournes from which her heart is sealed:
The intimate keep of the far midmost town,
The green quick raptures of far outmost field.
She knows not the heart throbbing nor the tense
Roads shimmering where the hundred thousand feet
Make thunders where they meet. ”

“ And leaves flap and slow women ply their trade,
Those all are living things, but these are dead,
All that they were, dead totally. What fool still
Knows their extinguished songs? They had their fill
Of average joys and sorrows. They learned how
Love wilts, Death does not wilt. What more left now? ”

“ You hear no bones click, see no shaken shroud.
Though no tombs grin, you feel ghosts gathering. Crowd
On pitiful crowd of small dead singing men
Tread the sure earth they feebly hymned; again
With fleshless hand seize unswayed grass. They seize
Insensitive flowers which bend not. Through gross trees
They sift. Nothing withstands them. ”

“ A Song stealing away.
My feet and hands never could
Do anything evil or good:
Instead of these things,
A swift mouth that sings.
SHEPHERD SINGING RAGTIME
(For E. V. Branford)
The shepherd sings:
"Way down in Dixie,
Way down in Dixie,
Where the hens are dog-gone glad to lay..."
With shaded eyes he stands to look
Across the hills where the clouds swoon,
He singing, leans upon his crook,
He sings, he sings no more.
The wind is muffled in the tangled hair
Of sheep that drift along the noon. ”