Thomas Moult

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For Bessie, Seated By Me in the Garden

To the heart, to the heart the white petals

Quietly fall.

Memory is a little wind, and magical

The dreaming hours.

As a breath they fall, as a sigh;

Green garden hours too langorous to waken.

White leaves of blossomy tree wind-shaken;

As a breath, a sigh,

As the slow white drift

Of a butterfly.

Flower-wings falling, wings of branches

One after one at wind's droop dipping;

Then with the lift

Of the air's soft breath, in sudden avalanches

Slipping.

Quietly, quietly the June wind flings

White wings,

White petals, past the footpath flowers

Adown my dreaming hours.

At the heart, at the heart the butterfly settles.

As a breath, a sigh

Fall the petals of hours, of the white-leafed flowers

Fall the petalled wings of the butterfly.

To my heart, to my heart the white petals

Quietly fall.

To the years, other years, old and wistful

Drifts my dream.

Petal-patined the dream, white-mistful

As the dew-sweet haunt of the dim whitebeam

Because of memory, a little wind . . .

It is the gossamer-float of the butterfly

This drift of dream

From the sweet of to-day to the sweet

Of days long drifted by.

It is the drift of the butterfly, it is the fleet

Drift of petals which my noon has thinned,

It is the ebbing out of my life, of the petals of days.

To the years, other years, drifts my dream. . . .

Through the haze

Of summers long ago

Love's entrancements flow,

A blue-green pageant of earth,

A green-blue pageant of sky,

As a stream,

Flooding back with lovely delta to my heart.

Lo the petalled leafage is finer, under the feet

The coarse soil with a rainbow's worth

Of delicate colours lies enamelled,

Translucently glowing, shining.

Each balmy breath of the hours

From eastern gleam to westward gloam

Is meaning-full as the falling flowers:

It is a crystal syllable

For love's defining,

It is love alone can spell --

Yea, Love remains: after this drift of days

Love is here, Love is not dumb.

The touch of a silken hand, comradely, untrammelled

Is in the sunlight, a bright glance

On every ripple of yonder waterways,

A whisper in the dance

Of green shadows;

Nor shall the sunlight be shut out even from the dark.

Beyond the garden heavy oaks are buoyant on the meadows,

Their rugged bark

No longer rough,

But chastened and refinèd in the glowing eyes of Love.

Around us the petals fulfil

Their measure and fall, precious the petals are still.

For Love they once were gathered, they are gathered for Love again,

Whose glance is on the water,

Whose whisper is in the green shadows.

In the same comrade-hand whose touch is in the sunlight,

They are lying again.

Here Love is . . . Love only of all things outstays

The drift of petals, the drift of days,

Petals of hours,

Of white-leafed flowers,

Petalled wings of the butterfly,

Drifting, quietly drifting by

As a breath, a sigh. . . .

'Truly He Hath a Sweet Bed'

Brown earth, sun-soaked,

Beneath his head

And over the quiet limbs. . . .

Through time unreconèd

Lay this brown earth for him. Now is he come.

Truly he hath a sweet bed.

The perfume shed

From invisible gardens is chaliced by kindly airs

And carried for welcome to the stranger.

Long seasons ere he came, this wilderness

They inhabited.

They, and the mist of stars

Down-spread

About him as a hush of vespering birds.

They, and the sun, the moon:

Naught now denies him the moon's coming,

Nor the morning trail of gold,

The luminous print of evening, red

At the sun's tread.

The brown earth holds him.

The stars and little winds, the friendly moon

And sun attend in turn his rest.

They linger above him, softly moving. They are gracious,

And gently-wise: as though remembering how his hunger,

His kinship, knew them once but blindly

In thoughts unsaid,

As a dream that fled.

So is he theirs assuredly as the seasons.

So is his sleep by them for ever companioned.

. . . And, perchance, by the voices of bright children playing

And knowing not: by the echo of young laughter

When their dancing is sped.

Truly he hath a sweet bed.

Lovers' Lane

This cool quiet of trees

In the grey dusk of the north,

In the green half-dusk of the west,

Where fires still glow;

These glimmering fantasies

Of foliage branching forth

And drooping into rest;

Ye lovers, know

That in your wanderings

Beneath this arching brake

Ye must attune your love

To hushèd words,

For here is the dreaming wisdom of

The unmovable things . . .

   And more: -- walk softly, lest ye wake

A thousand sleeping birds.

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