The Five Books of Youth by Robert Hillyer


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Page 4

Incarnate music flashing into form
Fled from the vineyards of melodious Greece,
Feet that have flown before the gathering storm
Or glanced in gardens of the Golden Fleece,
Face atune to all the songs that mass
Their gusts of passion on the sunlit grass,
Image of lyric hope and veiled despair,
Like them, thou shalt unutterably pass
Into the silence and the shadowed air.

POMFRET, 1919


VI - HUNTERS

A vase red-wrought in Athens long ago....
The hunter and his gay companion ride
Through the young fields of life; on every side
Frail and fantastic the tall lilies grow.
Her head thrown back, her eyes afraid and wide,
Flies like a phantom the grey spectral doe,
Her light feet scarcely bend the grass below,
Gloriously flying into eventide.

Ahead there lies the shadow, then the dark,
And safety in the thick forestial night,
But nearer still she hears the bloodhounds bark,
And horses panting in impetuous flight,
And hunters without pity for the slain,
Halloing shrilly over the windy plain.

Sombre become the skies, the winds of fall
Sing dangerously through the hissing grass;
Sunlight and clouds in slow procession pass
Over the tress, then comes an interval
Of utter calm, the air is a morass
Of humid breathlessness. A dreadful call
Rings suddenly from the onrushing squall,
And the storm closes in a whirling mass.

And still the doe eludes the raging hounds,
And still the youths press onward toward the woods,
Though the world shudders with diluvian sounds
And the rain streams in undulating floods.
Sharp lightning splits the sky; the doe is gone.
O follow! follow! if it be till dawn.

The hunted flees, the boyish hunters follow
Into the forest's dripping everglades,
The wind goes wailing through the swaying shades,
And violent rain gushes in every hollow.
The doe runs free, triumphantly evades
Those straining eyes; the ghastly shadows swallow
Her flying form; the frightened horses wallow
Deep in the mire. Then the last daylight fades.

O Youths, turn back! the year is getting late,
And autumn has no pity for the slain.
Twining like serpents, the lean arms of fate
Grope toward you through the blackness and the rain,
Then Death, and the obliterating snow....
A vase, red-wrought in Athens long ago.

Tours, 1918


VII - A WRECK

Survivor of an unknown past,
On this wild shore cast
By the sad desolate tides;
In a warm harbour long ago
They waited you, and waited long,
And guessed and feared at last,
But could not know.
Now in a language strange the waves make song,
And the flood surges round your broken sides,
And the ebb leaves you to the burning sun.
But when the voyage of my life is done,
And my soul puts forth no more,
Then may I sleep
Beneath the fathoms of the tideless deep,
And not be cast deserted on some dark alien shore.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Sun 22nd Dec 2024, 19:31