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OTHER POEMS

 

OF VARIOUS DATES AND TIMES

BY G. R. LEDGER

 

This is part of the web site of Shakespeare's sonnets

   

Duchess of Beaufort by Gainsborough

   


   
 

The Duchess of Beaufort
by
Thomas Gainsborough

 

Hermitage, St. Petersburg.
See below for enlargement.
 
   

 

Home Sonnets 1 - 50 Sonnets 51 - 100 Sonnets 101 - 154 A Lover's Complaint. Sonnet no. 1
First line index Title page and Thorpe's Dedication Some Introductory Notes to the Sonnets Sonnets as plain text 1-154 Text facsimiles Other related texts of the period
Picture Gallery
Thomas Wyatt Poems Other Authors General notes  for background details, general policies etc. Map of the site Valentine Poems
London Bridge   as it was in Shakespeare's day, circa 1600. Views of London   as it was in 1616. Views of  Cheapside  London, from a print of 1639. The Carrier's  Cosmography.   A guide to all the Carriers in London.  As given by John Taylor in 1637. Oxquarry Books Ltd
Other Contemporary
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Since immortality may not be had for the taking, (and what use is it to the living or the dead?), the poet must make what shift he can to obtain reward in his own lifetime.  It is easy to deceive oneself that words are beautiful, but they are unruly things.  Whatever combinations we may haply light upon might have been used before, or might be banal or indifferent.  Sometimes a strangeness beyond all comprehension overwhelms us, sometimes we are elated for unknown reasons.  What I present here did at some time delight me and I recall it for the pleasure of others, if they be so minded.  If you, the reader, do not like them, then forgive the intrusion, and I pray only that you return to your old favourites with renewed fervour and ask yourself what it might have cost the poet to write them.  For words are not cheap or obtained easily, despite evidence to the contrary, and we, the emissaries, are a threatened species.  In the world's history we have a small place. And truly the items here add but little to the world's commodities and might therefore claim the right to be tolerated, or to inhabit a better palace.  

G. R.  Ledger.  February 2009.

 

 

 

                             I  

 

 

This poem is like the passage of a boat
Along the stream, with gently plashing oars
And swan like feet, and afterwards a silence
And still reverberation.  Nothing disturbs

The quietness.  In such a place I could grow old
And die without complaint, watching the leaves move,
The gliding glassy waters, the sun on green,
The russet shape of clouds where no one treads

No human voice to break the spell, or even
Footsteps upon the gravel to herd the hours
So seldom does the day remain so motionless
So deep the chasm which the sky has entered. 

 
     

 

 

                              II  

 

Wakeful I listened to the first morning bird
Defining rooftops and the intractable fields,
Breaking the liquid summits of achievement
Over unbounded plateaus and hills untainted.

That moment then it seemed stood still forever
Silent as glass, soft as the empty spaces
Between a cloud and cloud in the first dawning
Chill as the waters lying in foreign lands

And moving then far off away from cities
And sleepers, and away from sounds as if
That fragmentary miracle pieced its images
Into perfection out of sight remote from harbouring minds.


 
 

 

 

   

 

 

 

                               III  

 

Some one of you some you some other one
Or else some other you that lives within
Or you yourself the one I never knew
But loved in images of times having always been

That you I saw depart and you unnoticing
Guiltless sat by untroubled and I could not catch 
That swift elusive spirit as it flew
Passing so easily from touch and following

And let it go so much of you being mine
Though you were still the same and still unchanging
Beyond the scope of measuring, that strange world
So huge and uninhabitable I could have never hoped to hold. 

 
     

 

 

                                IV  

 

This is the first day of the days that bring
Warmth and abundance from the sun, knowing that genuine
Caress, the elaborate workings of the trees
The smell of ferns toiling in green wildernesses

From damp and dewy pathways.  I could believe
Such lines as these would be to after ages
A diary of the skies that May produces
Still moist with music still anchoring spacious volumes

Of air with birdsong and disorganised themes
Of joy love laughter yet still reticent
Where bees should build their shrines and pillage thrones
Rich with the regal scent of yellow flowers smouldering. 

 
     

 

                                 V  

 

How fast my days are fleeting
Like water on the sand
The raindrops on the window pane
Leaves falling to the ground. 

 Tomorrow is like yesterday,
I look into your face
To see the shades of autumn there
The lines his pencils trace.

 It is my own reflection
Which dances in the glass,
A beetle crosses the water's edge
A dragonfly hums past. 

 My loves are like the autumn days
Mysterious, rich, unknown,
They colour the apples on the tree
And scatter the thistle down. 

 And why I lived and why I loved
I ponder frequently.
The grasshopper resonates his song
Scornful of mystery. 

 Earth brings to its completion
All that is ever sown,
Indifferent to the artefacts
That we think of as our own. 

 And therefore are we severed
From land and sky and sea
Like scattered limbs upon a field
Or birds on a frozen tree.

Our thoughts are for ever flying
Through spaces where worlds are thrown;
The mountains laugh, the dawn ascends,
As if we had never been born. 

 

 
     

 

                                  VI  

 

Against the paper of the sky
The poplar leaves are bending;
With velvet wings a butterfly
Tells of the summer’s ending. 

This amphitheatre of woods
Bounded by sky and stream
Is where the councils of the gods
In ancient times were seen. 

And still their presence may be felt
In every flower that breathes,
Wherever with a hand of stealth
The breeze moves in the trees. 

And yet this world must have an end
And you and I must close
The chapter which enlivened us
And now is comatose. 

For silent are the hills and streams
And those who might understand
No longer live, are long since gone,
Flown far to a distant land. 

They cannot now prognosticate
What gives the brief flower its day,
Or tell what strange skies might indicate,
Or where the blind winds shall stray. 

And we are left surrounded
By things that are all unknown,
Wandering, drifting and  confounded,
In a world that is not our own. 

Though from the painting of the sky
Sometimes a thought takes wing
And wrapping itself in mystery
Makes the lone nightingale sing,

Yet that is brief, and the richness
Which once we thought we knew
Turns into fused confusion, 
And makes what is untrue true. 

So, friends, farewell to this artfulness,
And the duplicity of song;
In another world we will know ourselves
And at last to ourselves belong. 

 
     

 

                                  VII  

 

The last leaves of the autumn
Turn russet and gold and brown;
Sunlight as pale as water
Freckles the patchwork ground. 

Now skeletons, frames and scaffold 
Cut traceries in the sky
Where birds find space to linger
Reluctant, unused to fly. 

And nature shall be our mentor 
To show how the earth grows cold
As entropy kills off everything
That is not already old.   

I will no longer consider 
Wherever my place shall be,
On the slippery streets of cities,
By a loved one, or solitary,

Where thoughts can thrive, like flowers,
That rise with the morning sun,
To fade with the hot heat of noontide
Thinking their task is done.  

And your glance which was like the sunlight
Through the glass of a dusty room
Lit up the piles and the lumber
And shed its warmth in the tomb. 

But I will not be deluded
That these stores are a secret world
Like folded flags in an attic
Waiting at last to be unfurled. 

For once more the Autumn splendours
Which look down from the hills and laugh,
Are gorgeous and abundantly fictive
Like the words of an epitaph. 

They will go their way without meaning,
Without sense without song without sound,
Leaving us here but as empty shadows
Stalking the dank foreign ground. 

 

 
     

 

  

 

                                  VIII  

 

As I walked today along the woodland ride
A red camelia wore a shawl of snow
And the dark fir trees had silver eyebrows
And all the ground was blanketed with white. 

 
So I asked myself why are the heavens not red,
Or the snow a different colour, like gold,
Why is green the shade of nature,
But everything is grey in me as I grow old? 

 
Let the blood in my heart warm the ground,
Let my thoughts beat like the wings of many birds
Fluttering upwards, and let love respond
Within me with rainbows of glorious words. 

 
How little we know of the world, for all our wisdom. 
The Spring comes, and is halted in despite,
And the heavens care not for our poor  rules of thumb 
Covering all Spring’s blossoms with blinding white. 

 
So I shall walk again looking for other colours
Knowing how little they mean in the scheme of things,
As if in other worlds, in the minds of others,
Purple and gold and green tune their hearts’ strings. 

 
     

 

                                  IX  

 

 

Like the singing of an unstrung lute, like the sound
Of clouds that pass, or the sun that lights them,
Or winds that gather in the horizon’s end,
Or everything that ever in the earth has meaning,
I catch the last breath of a word unspoken
A scorpion of the sand, a plant still hidden,
Melodies and silence, the life unbidden,
And all that ever was born, was broken
Like waves continuous, or empty sand
On which the wave breaks, a falling strand,
A memory half-hidden, a time yet to be
The eternal difference between you and me,
   My voice speaks it by utterance and broken tongue
   A language stretched out, a thought forever wrong.

 

 
     

                                  X  

 

Do you slip away forever, not to be seen,
Like an eclipsed moon, or a shadow that runs
Along a rainy street, or a forgotten tune
At times half heard in the sound of another;

Do you disappear forever, my heart, my dream,
The one who was always me, yet did not discover
Your loss till you were gone, when I had not held
Your aching hand to mine, did not uncover

Your sorrow’s depth nor what it was to know?
The music begins again, it is silent now,
Not such as you created or made to sing,
It is the hollow reverberation of a broken string.

All that I had of love was buried in you.
I make these words only but to make sorrow new. 

 

 
     

 

                                  XI  

 

IN A BOOK OF CATULLUS’ POEMS

I am Catullus
Who wove the string of a song
In the hot reeking days
Beside the heavy walls of Rome

Or thought of love and music
Under pine trees by the shores
Of sultry Adriatic seas
My memory dry as bone. 

Who will understand me
When I am gone
When famished time my body has eaten
And swallowed the language I loved in?

 
     

 

                                  XII  

 

THE SEA

The swelling sea that heaves its chest
And brags and boasts and spits out mist,
An old man that the world forgets
A worn face that the sun has kissed. 

The waves roll in with spendthrift force
Seething with froth and silver edge,
A line of prose, a line of verse,
Line upon line and ledge on ledge. 

A thousand years, a myriad ways, 
Long  regiments of infantry  
That march and fall upon their face 
Brief fragments of eternity. 

Or if upon the populous waves
A dolphin rides, or if a ship
Hangs on its fathomed rugged face
The long brine heaves and sneers its lip. 

Could we but compass with an ear
The everlasting sounds that rain,
Dying and rising, cheer on cheer,
A cry of joy, the dead man’s pain,  

All that the mighty world contains
Would be therein, and from that voice
Our lives for pettiness would cease
And the white waves would then rejoice.

Freedom that holds immensity,
A line of light where the sun sets,
The changing and unchanging sea,
An old man that the world forgets. 

 

 

 
     

 

Home Sonnets 1 - 50 Sonnets 51 - 100 Sonnets 101 - 154 A Lover's Complaint. Sonnet no. 1
First line index Title page and Thorpe's Dedication Some Introductory Notes to the Sonnets Sonnets as plain text 1-154 Text facsimiles Other related texts of the period
Picture Gallery
Thomas Wyatt Poems Other Authors General notes  for background details, general policies etc. Map of the site Valentine Poems
London Bridge   as it was in Shakespeare's day, circa 1600. Views of London   as it was in 1616. Views of  Cheapside  London, from a print of 1639. The Carrier's  Cosmography.   A guide to all the Carriers in London.  As given by John Taylor in 1637. Oxquarry Books Ltd
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Duchess of Beaufort by Gainsborough


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