POETRY
THE SOLITARY VISION
(CORNWALL. AUGUST, 1922)
I CAME to-day by hedges where the wind Lingers at ease, and dallies with the rose, The country dog-rose, honeysuckle-twined ; I came by lanes and tracks where summer goes All jewel-footed, leaving grassy ways And many-petalled paths.
I came alone ;
But one whom beauty in my brain portrays, You, that are neither flesh nor blood nor bone, Nor real, yet true ; whom neither life nor death May crown with being nor destroy with tears, You of my dreams, that never yet drew breath, Your beauty scattered through the lazy years That had not toil enough to make you live, But only lovely women, half of you,— You came to me. Companionship you give That solitude retains. I looked for you, And felt you come as something from the sea, Out of the earth, or yielded out of flowers, I felt your fingers suddenly close to me, Stroking my face like wind.
Two towers Stand on a cliff a thousand yards away ; Noble they stand, and strong, and long-enduring
So stood we two, more noble and strong than they.
I think that in that moment ills past curing Which laid long siege about my little strength
Unknown to me—yet which, unknowing, I knew—
Were, for my freedom, beaten back at length.
No longer now a prisoner of the past I stood a-tip-toe on a peak of time, As when a well-wrought song attains at last The final chord, joined to the crowning Thyme.
E. O. S..
Previous page
