The Oxford Thrushes

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1. Thrushes Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn, More coiled steel than living – a poised Dark deadly eye, those delicate legs Triggered to stirrings beyond sense – with a start, a bounce, A stab Overtake the instant and drag out some writhing thing. No indolent procrastinations and no yawning states, No sighs or […]...
2. If All the Skies If all the skies were sunshine, Our faces would be fain To feel once more upon them The cooling splash of rain. If all the world were music, Our hearts would often long For one sweet strain of silence, To break the endless song. If life were always merry, Our souls would seek relief, And […]...
3. To the President of Magdalen College, Oxford Since now from woodland mist and flooded clay I am fled beside the steep Devonian shore, Nor stand for welcome at your gothic door, ‘Neath the fair tower of Magdalen and May, Such tribute, Warren, as fond poets pay For generous esteem, I write, not more Enhearten’d than my need is, reckoning o’er My life-long […]...
4. Inscription 01 – For A Tablet At Godstow Nunnery Here Stranger rest thee! from the neighbouring towers Of Oxford, haply thou hast forced thy bark Up this strong stream, whose broken waters here Send pleasant murmurs to the listening sense: Rest thee beneath this hazel; its green boughs Afford a grateful shade, and to the eye Fair is its fruit: Stranger! the seemly fruit […]...
5. The West Wind IT’S a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds’ cries; I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes. For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills. And April’s in the west wind, and daffodils. It’s a fine land, the west land, for hearts as tired as mine, […]...
6. TO BRENDA WILLIAMS ON HER FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY The years become you as Oxford becomes you, As you became Oxford through the protest years; From Magdalen’s grey gargoyles to its bridge in May, From the cement buttresses of Wellington Square To Balliol, Balliol in the rain. The years become you as the Abbey Road becomes you, As you became that road through silent […]...
7. Thrushes Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim, Whose voices make the emptiness of light A windy palace. Quavering from the brim Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night, They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof Whose heart’s a haunted woodland whispering; Whose […]...
8. Only Dreams A maiden sat in teh sunset glow Of the shadowy, beautiful Long Ago, That we see through a mist of tears. She sat and dreamed, with lips apart, With thoughtful eyes and a beating heart, Of the mystical future years; And brighter far than the sunset skies Was the vision seen by the maiden’s eyes. […]...
9. Verses on Sir Joshua Reynold’s Painted Window at New College, Oxford Ah, stay thy treacherous hand, forbear to trace Those faultless forms of elegance and grace! Ah, cease to spread the bright transparent mass, With Titian’s pencil, o’er the speaking glass! Nor steal, by strokes of art with truth combin’d, The fond illusions of my wayward mind! For long, enamour’d of a barbarous age, A faithless […]...
10. Duns Scotus's Oxford Towery city and branchy between towers; Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded; The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers; Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded Rural rural keeping-folk, […]...
11. OXFORD ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY POETRY&#039 To Simon Jenner NO ARMITAGE (I’d like to see his rage) NO DUHIG (one dig long overdue) NO GREENLAW (M & S might sue) NO IMLAH (ditto the TLS) NO CRICHTON SMITH or JAMIE (Tuma’s not haggis-crazy) NO CONSTANTINE (who’ll miss his donnish whine?) NO LONGLEY (the QMP tick didn’t do the trick) NO PORTER […]...
12. Clearing at Dawn The fields are chill, the sparse rain has stopped; The colours of Spring teem on every side. With leaping fish the blue pond is full; With singing thrushes the green boughs droop. The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks; The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist. By the bamboo stream […]...
13. Shells (Morecombe Bay February 2004) Grey skies, cold and bitter wind A share of a damp mattress In an unheated room. You follow orders from the brother To the man who let your cousin die In a truck approaching Dover. Your parents wait back home With nothing but pain and a photo of you Smiling through […]...
14. Delight is as the flight Delight is as the flight Or in the Ratio of it, As the Schools would say The Rainbow’s way A Skein Flung colored, after Rain, Would suit as bright, Except that flight Were Aliment “If it would last” I asked the East, When that Bent Stripe Struck up my childish Firmament And I, for glee, […]...
15. The Song of the Ungirt Runners We swing ungirded hips, And lightened are our eyes, The rain is on our lips, We do not run for prize. We know not whom we trust Nor whitherward we fare, But we run because we must Through the great wide air. The waters of the seas Are troubled as by storm. The tempest strips […]...
16. The Remonstrance I was at peace until you came And set a careless mind aflame; I lived in quiet; cold, content; All longing in safe banishment, Until your ghostly lips and eyes Made wisdom unwise. Naught was in me to tempt your feet To seek a lodging. Quite forgot Lay the sweet solitude we two In childhood […]...
17. A Sea Child The lover of child Marjory Had one white hour of life brim full; Now the old nurse, the rocking sea, Hath him to lull. The daughter of child Marjory Hath in her veins, to beat and run, The glad indomitable sea, The strong white sun....
18. In the Matter of One Compass When, foot to wheel and back to wind, The helmsman dare not look behind, But hears beyond his compass-light, The blind bow thunder through the night, And, like a harpstring ere it snaps, The rigging sing beneath the caps; Above the shriek of storm in sail Or rattle of the blocks blown free, Set for […]...
19. Catullus: XXXI (After passing Sirmione, April 1887.) Sirmio, thou dearest dear of strands That Neptune strokes in lake and sea, With what high joy from stranger lands Doth thy old friend set foot on thee! Yea, barely seems it true to me That no Bithynia holds me now, But calmly and assuringly Around me stretchest homely Thou. […]...
20. 395. Sonnet on the Author's Birthday SING on, sweet thrush, upon the leafless bough, Sing on, sweet bird, I listen to thy strain, See aged Winter, ‘mid his surly reign, At thy blythe carol, clears his furrowed brow. So in lone Poverty’s dominion drear, Sits meek Content with light, unanxious heart; Welcomes the rapid moments, bids them part, Nor asks if […]...
21. A Walgett Episode The sun strikes down with a blinding glare; The skies are blue and the plains are wide, The saltbush plains that are burnt and bare By Walgett out on the Barwon side The Barwon River that wanders down In a leisurely manner by Walgett Town. There came a stranger a “Cockatoo” The word means farmer, […]...
22. In The Waiting Room In Worcester, Massachusetts, I went with Aunt Consuelo To keep her dentist’s appointment And sat and waited for her In the dentist’s waiting room. It was winter. It got dark Early. The waiting room Was full of grown-up people, Arctics and overcoats, Lamps and magazines. My aunt was inside What seemed like a long time […]...
23. THE MUSES' SON [Goethe quotes the beginning of this song in His Autobiography, as expressing the manner in which his poetical Effusions used to pour out from him.] THROUGH field and wood to stray, And pipe my tuneful lay, ‘Tis thus my days are pass’d; And all keep tune with me, And move in harmony, And so on, […]...
24. Snowdrop blaze from late december onwards the day comes back But not till february do we see those glimpses That let us take deep darkness off the rack And shake it free of lethargy that cramps us Through those dim months we’re made amanuensis To what loud rain and bitter spells dictate We seek bed early and […]...
25. Conqueror I was a gulp of high air – A bird breathing in, A black dot on blue paper, A privileged recipient Of finite sacrament Of souls of flying saints. That all happened the moment You taught me splendid roundness As defined by the touch of your lips. The other mysteries fell, one by one, Cities […]...
26. By an Autumn Fire Now at our casement the wind is shrilling, Poignant and keen And all the great boughs of the pines between It is harping a lone and hungering strain To the eldritch weeping of the rain; And then to the wild, wet valley flying It is seeking, sighing, Something lost in the summer olden. When night […]...
27. Victory The schools marched in procession in happiness and pride, The city bands before them, the soldiers marched beside; Oh, starched white frocks and sashes and suits that high schools wear, The boy scout and the boy lout and all the rest were there, And all flags save Australia’s flag waved high in sun and air! […]...
28. Morning Song in the Jungle One moment past our bodies cast No shadow on the plain; Now clear and black they stride our track, And we run home again. In morning-hush, each rock and bush Stands hard, and high, and raw: Then give the Call: “Good rest to all That keep the Jungle Law!” Now horn and pelt our peoples […]...
29. The Rapture of the Year While skies glint bright with bluest light Through clouds that race o’er fields and town, And leaves go dancing left and right, And orchard apples tumble down; While school-girls sweet, in lane or street, Lean ‘gainst the wind and feel and hear Its glad heart like a lover’s beat, So reigns the rapture of the […]...
30. Jonas Keene Why did Albert Schirding kill himself Trying to be County Superintendent of Schools, Blest as he was with the means of life And wonderful children, bringing him honor Ere he was sixty? If even one of my boys could have run a news-stand, Or one of my girls could have married a decent man, I […]...
31. Ears In The Turrets Hear Ears in the turrets hear Hands grumble on the door, Eyes in the gables see The fingers at the locks. Shall I unbolt or stay Alone till the day I die Unseen by stranger-eyes In this white house? Hands, hold you poison or grapes? Beyond this island bound By a thin sea of flesh And […]...
32. A Cat She had a name among the children; But no one loved though someone owned Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime And had her kittens duly drowned. In Spring, nevertheless, this cat Ate blackbirds, thrushes, nightingales, And birds of bright voice and plume and flight, As well as scraps from neighbours’ pails. I loathed […]...
33. Adolescence There was a time when in late afternoon The four-o’clocks would fold up at day’s close Pink-white in prayer, and ‘neath the floating moon I lay with them in calm and sweet repose. And in the open spaces I could sleep, Half-naked to the shining worlds above; Peace came with sleep and sleep was long […]...
34. A Mile With Me O who will walk a mile with me Along life’s merry way? A comrade blithe and full of glee, Who dares to laugh out loud and free, And let his frolic fancy play, Like a happy child, through the flowers gay That fill the field and fringe the way Where he walks a mile with […]...
35. In The Garden One moment alone in the garden, Under the August skies; The moon had gone but the stars shone on, – Shone like your beautiful eyes. Away from the glitter and gaslight, Alone in the garden there, While the mirth of the throng, in laugh and song, Floated out on the air. You looked down through […]...
36. The Rain and the Wind The rain and the wind, the wind and the rain They are with us like a disease: They worry the heart, they work the brain, As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane, And savage the helpless trees. What does it profit a man to know These tattered and tumbling skies A million stately […]...
37. The Meaning Of The Look I think that look of Christ might seem to say ‘Thou Peter! art thou then a common stone Which I at last must break my heart upon For all God’s charge to his high angels may Guard my foot better? Did I yesterday Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run Quick to deny […]...
38. Going Away Walking to-day on the Common, I heard a stranger say To a friend who was standing near him, ‘Do you know I am going away? ‘ I had never seen their faces, May never see them again; Yet the words the stranger uttered, Stirred me with nameless pain. For I knew some heart would miss […]...
39. THE WANDERER [Published in the Gottingen Musen Almanach, Having been written “to express his feelings and caprices” after His separation from Frederica.] WANDERER. YOUNG woman, may God bless thee, Thee, and the sucking infant Upon thy breast! Let me, ‘gainst this rocky wall, Neath the elm-tree’s shadow, Lay aside my burden, Near thee take my rest. WOMAN. […]...
40. Mild the mist upon the hill Mild the mist upon the hill Telling not of storms tomorrow; No, the day has wept its fill, Spent its store of silent sorrow. O, I’m gone back to the days of youth, I am a child once more, And ‘neath my father’s sheltering roof And near the old hall door I watch this cloudy […]...