A Birthday Sonnet
For Anne and Cynthia
This morning when I woke the world was gay
With wind and sun and scent of yellow broom
And Bok-ma-kiries welcoming the day,
And summer in possession of the loom
That weaves the robe of Nature, blue and grey
And green and gold – each season as it plies
Choosing the colours that can best portray
Its meaning as the busy shuttle flies.
And you, who celebrate your day of birth
Upon this windy, sunny day, may you
Enjoy the beauty of the patterned earth
Through all your years… yet leave it gladly too.
I wish you winds to blow away your fears,
And sun to touch with rainbows all your tears.
Oct 28, 1956
With love to the Twins, Timberlawn, Constantia.
A Bowl Of Fragrant Roses
A bowl of fragrant roses in the sun,
That slants across the room ere the day is done;
Deep pink, and stately white, and blushing red,
And yellow fair, their fragrant lustre shed,
To make the whole dull room one gorgeous bloom
aOf glowing colour, and sweet perfume.
Reflections from each pretty petalled face
Fill every nook and cranny of the place.
As perfume rising from yon sun-kissed bowl,
Sweet thoughts of friendship radiate my soul;
The white rose symbol of pure love shall be,
The red shall speak of faith and constancy;
The pink, the beauty of true friendship’s rays,
The yellow, golden sun to fill our days.
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press
1925
A Bridge Is A Praise-Worthy Feat, Whoever Builds It
(The First Human Steps into Space)
I have an urge to sing the exploits of my kind.
I have an urge to bring the homage of my mind
To lay at the feet of the folk who dare unconquered space,
For I am a part of them, a part if this human race.
Science knows no boundaries; nor Music, nor any Art,
But only the isolate pride of the selfish mind and heart.
A tower to tap the skies! It has been raised before
By men who thought them wise, and failed to force that door,
And razed it by division… and Babel became a name
Remembered with derision. Shall we share the same fame?
Airlie Close, Willow Road
Constantia C.P.
A Bundle of Love
I so wish I could give you the earth
Instead of just a pebble,
The sky instead of a sparkle of stardust,
The sea instead of just a shell,
The fields and hills and forests,
And the scent of summer instead of just a flower.
But I can give you my love and caring
And a warm wish from my heart.
A Coloured Man Speaks
So, you begin to fear, oh great white man!
Yes, I see it and laugh, for I have eyes
That can see through your colour bars and understand.
A darker pigment happens to taint my skin:
My brain and heart are coloured the same as yours,
Oh smug white man, and Christ had a swarthy hue-
He was not white and anaemic like most of you.
Bah! I have seen your brother die in a ditch:
Am I such a fool white skin can deify
A sight like that? You kick him where he lies
And go to Church to pray for the heathen man
Of colour, who stops to play the Samaritan.
I was your chattel once, beneath contempt,
Created by a kindly Providence
To be your slave, your doormat, and your fool.
You were the master, I the brainless tool.
And I, who knew no better, played the part
And looked upon you as a demi-god…
Poor, witless fool...Well, I know better now
For you have taught me. You may perk and stride
As you have always done: uphold your pride –
(Poor, flimsy stuff!) Maintain your old conceit.
You cannot fool me now because I know
The paltry shadows underneath the show.
I watch you act your given part, and laugh.
You waken to the fact that I’m a man –
You like it not. Ha, Ha, are you afraid!
Think you I cannot see nor understand?
The harmless household cat is free to roam.
You put up bars for tigers because you fear
That their magnificent strength will overcome
Your puny might and leave you in their power.
Yes, cage your tigers – but all your colour-bars
Are powerless to keep me from your stars!
A Desert Night
House tops… muted stars against the sky…
The young moon plucking an unfamiliar strain
On alien heart strings, silencing the why
Eternal, minimising mortal pain…
The armoured hills, strong-etched against the night,
Encircle jealously the desert’s rim
Guarding with sullen ineffectual might
The desert’s solitude from human whim.
Their last defeat is whispered by the gleam
Of myriad lights. And like a sudden cry
That tears across the fabric of a dream
A shooting star flames bold, to burst and die.
And the inscrutable desert stretches forth
Lean hands to pluck your heart, O Son of the North.
For Torgie and Ruth and Arthur and Frostie.
May 7th, 1949
A Dreamer Once
I was a dreamer once, e’en from my birth.
Now every day things have wrapped me round
Till, pinion-winged, I cannot leave the ground;
Like Pegasus, a prisoner to earth.
I share the joys and sorrows, the rude mirth
Of men, and gradually lose the sound
Of songs sublime, of silences profound.
I walk the ways of men – but at what dearth!
In terms of rainbows once I saw the light,
As sheen on leaves, as gold on linnet’s wing –
Now ‘tis a thing to work by, not to sing.
And beauty is a toy, a child’s delight…
I lose the way of it and, once a king,
Became at last a poor chrysophilite.
A Family Man’s Farewell
Should I come no more to you
save as Spring’s lost flowers do
in remembered sweetness;
do not grieve for me. I have found completeness.
If I be severed at the root
Do not fret, if I be freed
From Winter’s withering hand.
I have known the joy of blossom and of fruit,
The miracle of seed,
God has given me to understand
The flower’s cycle; given me
Immortality.
A Farewell
To-night you go forever, I know:
I take my leave of you without regret.
Since time began it has been ordered so.
What boots it, then, to fret?
And what I shall remember, and what I shall forget
Is in the book of time . . . the jewelled thought unset,
The rhyme unrhymed, the song unsung, the uncarved stone
You brought me to complete . . . the bitter and the sweet
To-night we say goodbye. I would not have it otherwise.
Your gifts remain. My parting word
Is Thank you - for your truths and promises and lies,
Beauty and ugliness, happiness and pain
And thorns and roses, questions and replies
Apparent losses and apparent gain.
I thank you for your best and for your worst
(For who can separate eventual good and ill?};
That endless quests are endless and eternal thirst
Unquenchable; the hunger is unsated still.
Whatever I forget, whatever I remember
There is no regret, no backward-looking sigh,
No sorrow at the ending of December.
Only Thank you, Old Year, Thank you - and goodbye.
Dorothea Spears
A farewell
(Constantia Partitioned)
Now I listen who have listened long . . .
Now all my being is become an ear
To hear the dying cadence of your song
Before your magic makers disappear.
So soon Suburbia will put to flight
The old unpinioned magic of our spell
And sign your death knell. Hungry hands will write
The signatures that break and buy and sell.
Eager to turn your beauty into gain;
Eager to share the magic they destroy
Dismembering your being in the vain
Belief that you possess eternal joy;
That beauty such as yours can be divided
In tiny pieces and remain a whole
And that grand symphony in which we prided
Dispersed in single notes, retain the soul.
Now I listen, who have listened long
Now all my being is become an ear
To miss no moment of your song.
My Valley Beautiful sing loud! Sing clear.
Dorothea Spears
A Farewell
Here in this haunt of a former generation,
Where time’s swift feet have lightly, lightly trod,
Where the dignities of Civilization
Had permeated, and the peace of God,
Dreamed this old house, surrounded by unshaken.
Encroaching Speed’s accelerating din
Which other strongholds ruthlessly has taken
But hemmed tranquillity more closely in.
Beneath still shade of ancient oak trees pleasant
My alien heart entrenched itself at last,
Less to evade the duty of the present
Than to preserve the beauty of the Past.
A reed was I, holding a torrent at bay
And singing the wind. But that was yesterday.
A Gray June Day
(Constantia)
To-day is gray, you say, no single ray
Of sun can pierce the sullen clouds. But see
The bottled sun, in spread acacia tree
Beyond the lawn along the hedge's way,
Spilling golden light to fill the cool
Reflective blueness of the swimming pool!
How clear the colours and how bright the sight
Of Autumn vineyards climbing up the hill:
The air is chill, you say. But see how still
The trees of russet leaves all poised for flight!
A gray June day - now Beauty's quest can rest
Content to stay with Autumn at her best,
Dorothea Spears
A Kloof Song
I have built a tiny cottage, with a silver-thatched roof.
It is waiting in a valley in the corner of a kloof:
The walls are white inside and out, the windows hung with blue
A little darker than the skies -more like the eyes of you.
A slender stream comes stumbling down to make a placid pool
Beneath the shadow of a Krantz, and in its cool
Knee-deep the cattle stand and dream. And all the idle kine,
The valley and the cottage, the little brook are mine.
Within my bit of woodland close the wood doves cry and cry
And just behind the kopje there the world of men goes by.
They hasten on their dusty way across the dusty field
And little dream so close to them lies paradise concealed
My blue-eyed windows beckon, but it isn’t all for me:
They weary for a fairer face: the doves are calling still
For you to put your hand in mine and trek across the hill.
And when you come this happy kloof shall thrill to joyous song –
Beloved, my beloved, do not make us wait too long!
A Lenten Thought
The summit of the suffering was not
The humiliation, of the body’s pain
Or dark, but man’s rejection of perfection,
The doubt that incarnation had been vain;
The triumph of the traits that tokened death;
The seeming failure to implant the plan
Upon this planet of an evolution
Beyond the concept of existing man.
And all who walk the way of Calvary
Must share the heartbreak, learn the bitter grief
Accept the seeming failure to achieve
Divinity, the slowness of belief.
Only through that Garden over that Hill
Lies the path to resurrection still.
A Little Sonnet on Parting
To part is ever sad where there is love;
But to the cynic, who will not believe
That friends must meet again, here or above,
It must be hell. I rather had deceive
Myself to think it true, were it not so,
Than bear the agony of that farewell
Devoid of hope; but oh, thank God, we know!
That everything at last will happen well.
So should it chance that you and I should meet
No more on this grey earth, my heart’s dear friend,
We shall not be undone, for time is fleet,
And hastens to the understanding end.
Then let us say farewell without regret;
Just ‘au revoir’ of friends who can’t forget.
The Epworth Press
1925
A Love Song
Soft across the Southern sea
Hangs a silver moon;
Soft it beckons, “Come with me,
Morn comes too soon!
While the mellow moon is high,
While the Night is young,
We will wonder, you and I
Where the stars are hung.
Soft the sea, silver sea,
Night and Love are calling thee!
Soft the mountain meets the sky
Blending black above;
Soft the Southern breezes sigh,
Whispering of love.
Where the balmy breezes woo
Soft above the town,
We will wander, I and you,
Where the stars look down.
Soft above, black above,
Come into the night, my love!
Earth is full of melody-
Soft the turtle dove
Croons his patient plaintive plea,
Come with me, my love!
While the night birds softly sigh.
Ere the morning mist.
We will wander, you and I,
Where the stars keep tryst.
Soft the song, silver song,
Come my love, the night is not long!
Love is in the silver moon.
Love is in the sea;
Love is the song the breezes croon,
Love I bring to thee.
Where the night is soft and true;
Where the breezes roam,
We will tarry, I and you,
Where the stars sing home:
Calling me, calling thee-
Come! Ah, come to Arcady!
A Man’s Reach Should Exceed His Grasp
It doesn’t really matter at all, how deep
The intervening valleys, or how high
And inaccessible the peak, how steep
And bleak the crag to cross to reach the sky.
It doesn’t matter, if we must retrace
Our footsteps, having followed a wrong turning.
To slip and fall and rise is no disgrace,
As long as every error is a learning.
It doesn’t matter… as long as we never lose
The vision, of the peak
We seek to conquer, nor discard the shoes
For climbing, though the flesh be weak.
Only this makes life’s adventure vain –
To have no beckoning summit to attain.
Veritas
Constantia, C.T.
A May Piece
The Autumn winds are rowdy;
Yet o’er the great sea’s swell
I hear the hare-bells ringing
Soft in an English dell.
I Hear the limpid laughter
Of sun-embroidered stream
Where stately silver birches
In golden silence dream.
Marsh-marigolds will muddy
Their feet in that rich loam-
Fern-fronds will be unfurling,
For it is spring at home.
Wood violets are waking,
By shyness stricken dumb-
Blue eyes that will be watching
For me, who cannot come.
Out here the sea is screaming:
But I can only hear
The music of the Springtime,
The cuckoo calling clear.
The southern skies are frowning:
But I only see
A dell in dear old England
Where Spring is calling me.
A Misunderstanding
I held out my hands to you –
filled with my spirit’s frailest flowers.
You did not understand, did you?
They could have filled with scent your
bleakest hours.
My flowers meant naught to you.
You brushed aside without regrets
the blossoms that I brought to you:
you wanted turnips – and I offered violets!
A moment nearly missed
Nothing in the rising of this sun
Could indicate that this particular moment
Lay in wait for me to come and claim it.
Nothing in the breaking of this dawn,
Although it heralded a shining day,
That seemed to say to me in any way
“Surprise! Surprise!” or bade me shut my eyes
Until I broke the wrapping of the hours
And came upon this moment: dawn revealed
No Hint of what this day concealed. I might
Have missed it altogether, shattering thought,
And been the poorer all my life nor known,
However much I sought, what I had missed
This day, by turning left instead of right
Or hurrying towards the night too soon,
Too business-bound at noon to stop or look
Or listen - to this record or this book
By chance, I thought, I chose these living poets
To speak their living words to me, to me:
And I arose and went with them to see
What they had seen and been for this brief space
Of time where they had been . . . and time stood still
And filled this moment with eternity.
Dorothea Spears
A New Comet in the Sky
A line of silver circles in the sun
And settles on the earth, superbly still.
Another conquest over time is won
And space is telescoped by human skill.
And you who watched this culminating flight
Saw – what? …A thing of beauty come to birth?
…a comet trailing such prophetic fight
As shed a glow around the shrinking earth?
I saw fulfilment of a dream of man,
And promise of fulfilment of an age
That’s dreamed of God in his Immortal Plan,
And Man aspiring to his heritage…
All evolution set the stage for this –
The dauntless harbinger of Synthesis.
Cape Times 6th May 1952
Veritas
Welbeloond Rd, Constantia, C.P.
A Night Piece
On a balcony, overlooking the sea,
At night…
A silver-grey night.
The harboured ships are bright
From stem to stern: the iridescent light
Runs towards me over the velvet curves
Of the ocean’s breast.
I am at rest.
I am one with the dark sea.
The molten light,
The silver-grey of the night
Are one with me;
And the brooding spirit behind.
Only I would that you were here
And part of us,
You, who are so dear.
But since your mood
Is not attuned to vastness – better solitude.
Yet is there just a little ache that you prefer
The nearer lights, the evanescent laughter,
That leave no beauty after;
That you cannot divine
Nor share the glory that is mine.
Still you are content…
And so am I
Albeit with disillusionment.
‘Tis better so, for in the end
Only on my own soul must I depend.
“Oaklands”
Newlands Ave
Newlands, C.P.
A parting
What does the heart say
Standing at the parting of the ways
looking back across the years
And turning the pages of nights and days
And places and faces
Dappled with sun and rain?
The heart says only “Thank you . . .
Thank you for the years
Of beauty and joy and pain -”
But not with tears,
Oh, not with tears!
Dorothea Spears
A Peep at Two Souls
(A Man Speaks)
Years still flit by, and yet is love unchanged –
Old Time himself can sever not the bond
That binds me to you darling of my heart.
Yes, wind may blow and storm may rage overhead-
And seas may swell and earth upheave her breast –
And heaven may lose her sun, and night her stars –
And hell’s e’erlasting fires may flicker out –
Yet still shall love be strong between we two,
To sooth our hearts with tender glances sweet
Agleaming from these moist and mortal eyes,
Which now gaze up in childlike faith to mine.
You love me still – and ever-ever will?
Tell me again, and make this dream a truth,
With pressure of those rosebud lips on mine-
Let me caress these shoulders soft and white
With burning lips: and hold you in embrace,
For heart and heart beat together -one!
Let mind but echo mind as love doth love,
When uttered from the hilltop of the soul-
Though from its valleys, murk and smoke may rise.
To make deposit on the snowy heights,
Yet still love falls in pure unsullied flakes
And mantles once again the tinted peak.
You Love me …
I love you…
And God loves us …we two.
A prayer
If ever there comes a day
That flowers have nothing to say
To me; that I turn away
Unhearing from a sky
Of cloud shapes nor reply.
Be kind, Lord; let me die.
Dorothea Spears
A Psalm of Sickness
(By “Shortfellow”)
Tell me not in mournful numbers
That you’ve got that wretched ‘flu;
That the “rheum” disturbs your slumbers,
And bronchitis has you too.
Pain is real, and burneth;
And the human frame’s it's goal:
And at night-time it returneth
While you toss and curse and roll.
Not the drugs we meekly swallow
Is our destined end and way;
But to take, that each tomorrow
Find us better than today.
Being “down” seems often humbling –
When you feel things might be said
Be not like a sick man, grumbling
Be a she-ro in your bed!
Trust no doctor, suave and pleasant
When he says you’re “doing well,”
While all symptoms still are present.
Tell him just to go –
Pains rheumatic oft remind us,
As they tie us in a knot,
That a painless life might blind us
To the fortune of our lot –
Fortune which, perhaps, another
Sailing o’er life’s troubled main,
Some poor suffering, tortured brother
Often envied in his pain.
Let us then be down, obeying.
With a heart for any fate.
Doctor’s orders, humbly praying
That his bill won’t be too great!
A Rather Common Street
It’s such a lovely walk
From your house to mine:
The cloud-flecked blue above,
With glorious sun ashine!
There are such lovely things
All up and down the way-
The white road leading on,
And children at their play;
The scent of lavender;
A peach-tree of bloom;
A flock of daffodils;
All Spring’s distilled perfume!
The mountains just beyond;
The restful hill ahead,
And daisies in a field
And violets in a bed:
A rambler rose a-climb
Upon a latticed stoep;
And arum lilies proud
And poppies all a-droop:
The day all full of sun,
And birds upon the wing-
To walk along this way
It is a gladsome thing!
Well, yes, perhaps it is
A ‘rather common street,’
To be quite practical;
But full of things all sweet!
So many lovesome things
To see and hear and smell,
And God all ‘round about,
A-whispering, ‘All’s well!’
It’s such a lovely walk
From your house up to mine,
All rosy with God’s smile,
And little things divine!
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press
1925
A sad song
“All will be well to-morrow . . .
All will be well.”
she said.
“Fortune is fleeting but love is long.”
She bought a measure of hope with a song
and caught a dream in a net of gold.
“All will be well tomorrow . . .
All will be well.”
she said.
But tomorrow the bell tolled.
Dorothea Spears
A Scottish Castle In The Air
I have found the very spot
Where we’ll build our little cot,
My Beloved, when winter’s past and gone.
- When the winter of our sorrow
Breaks in sunshine on the morrow –
There is a lovely hill to lie and dream upon.
With the Scottish sky spread o’er us,
And the Sound of the Mull before us,
And the ruined Duart Castle on the isle;With the moorland all behind us,
Where the world will never mind us-
On the island of Kerrera in Argyll.
We shall have a few white sheep,
And a jersey cow we’ll keep,
And a tiny little garden in the dell.
In sunny summer weather
We shall lie amongst the heather,
Looking far across the land we love so well.
When its cold we’ll warm our feet
At a fire of glowing peat.
(Ah, the scent of burning peat in Scottish air!)
With the sea just at our door:
-Could a mortal ask for more?-
And our best loved books to evening with us there.
Ah, I see it in my dreams
Till it’s true it nearly seems,
And my hungry lips are curving in a smile-
But that scene of peace and cheer
It is no for us, my dear,
So, farewell to fair Kerrera in Argyll!
For I would not care to own
Such a bit of heaven alone;
Oh, the beauty, it would only break and burn;
And my heart would die with longing
For the memories that come thronging,
Of a Summer-time that will never return.
A SILVER FLUTE CRYING
You write to imprison thought; I to escape it.
Your pen is a weapon: mine is a silver flute.
Words are your tools to seize on thought and shape it.
Words are the notes I play when the fiddle's mute.Words are the wings on which I soar to heaven:
They are your armor, guarding you through hell.
Beauty and rythm to me are this world's leaven -
You see? My opiate is rhyming. Well,Where do we meet? I understand your striving
But you won't trust yourself to my silver wings,And I will be no warder of words, friend, driving
The thought to bay. No, mine is a muse that sings.Go on with your philosophies, your trying
To conquer thought with the weapon that is your pen;
But mine is only a silver flute, crying
From my heart to the lonely hearts of men.
A Song
It’s a beautiful land, where the Drakensberg lift snow-
crowned peaks to a brilliant sky.
And over and into the Christmas land where East
meets West and the palms rise high.Where the warm sun woos in an ardent love, and the
ships of a realm go by.It’s a wonderful land; the tropic East, the smiling Cape with its azure dome.
The grey Karoo with its flaming spires : and never
the hearts of its loved shall roam
From this wonderful land, this glorious land—South Africa, our home !
A Song for Eleanor
Broken shaft of sunlight lay
Scattered about the forest floor…
I said…I will carry these away
To make a song for my Eleanor.
From last year’s carpet, richly brown,
I’ll gather a patterned leaf or two,
A glimpse of the maple’s flaming gown,
The mossy stump where an old oak grew.
Lichened steps of rough-hewn rock,
Laughter of birds and chant of sun,
A snip of the oak tree’s yellow smock,
I’ll weave in a song for my lovely one.
Up here, above the dreaming Wye
I’ll gather the treasure of Wyndcliffe’s store,
Sun-spilled shadow and cloud-filled sky,
To fashion a song for my Eleanor!
Let others pipe their lover's lays.
But I shall sing fair friendship’s praise.
Let lovers harp ecstatic madness.
But I shall sound the saner gladness
That comes when hand clasps faithful hand
And knows the heart will understand;That fears not absence, tongue, nor time,
But trusts with simple faith sublime.The sweet scent of the orange bloom
Soon palls with excess of perfume:But one who scents it ne’er regrets
The modest sweet of violets.
A SONG OF LOVE AND ACACIA.
Flimsy, feathery, festive tree,
Spreading shadily over me ;
Yellow blossoms in gay festoon.
Gleaming gold in the light of noon;
Hark! I’ll sing me a song of thee.
Flimsy, feathery, festive tree !
Light and silvery is the sheen
Of the sun on thy foliage green.Like thy blossoms to burnished gold.
Touched to glow by the sunshine bold;
Like thy song to the sheltered sea.Flimsy, feathery, festive tree!
Like thy shade to My Lady’s grace.
Fickle, flitting from place to place,
Blown by breezes that whisper by,
Blow along with a kiss, and sigh;
Fickle, fanciful, fair and free.
Flimsy, feathery, festive tree !
Now you’ve dropped me a blossom down ;
So My Lady would cheat my frown,
Giving smiles when I fain would chide—
You’re a pair of you, undenied.So here’s a song of my Love and thee,
Flimsy, feathery, festive tree !
A SONG OF WORK
Now let us sing the joy of happy toil,
The satisfaction of the thing well done:
The recompense achievement is, the foi
Enhancing leisure when such respite’s won.
And let us hymn the sheer exhilaration
That’s born of making something, small or great,The ecstasy inherent in creation
When Man apes God and glories in his fate.
And if our destined task be low or high
Be writ in poetry or halting prose ;
To tunnel earth, or drive across the sky,
To raise a fane, a cabbage, or a rose—
Praise God Who grants to each his little share
In keeping this great world in good repair!
A Sonnet of Life and Death
The days were never long enough for me.
Old time, who grudged my minute, snatched away
From my too eager lips the cup of day
Ere I had satisfied avidly
Or quenched my thirst for day’s brief ecstasy.
“Another day tomorrow!” Time would say
“With similar tears and laughter, work and play.”
But I knew hours have no facsimile.
The days are never long enough for me, and yet
The night comes too soon. I love the deep
And satisfying luxury of sleep
Too well to face the twilight with regret.
So write, when I have done with mortal breath
That one who loved life greatly welcomes death.
A Stranger Peril
Shall I protect my body in a shell
Of armoured love imperviously wrought
To parry all the barbs of poisoned thought
And all intangible attacks repel?
Or shall I go unarmed, as knowing well
The spirit's power for immunizing aught
That harms the spirit − thus have I been taught:
Resist not but accept, absorb, dispel?
Deflected darts can find another mark
And wound the sender or attack some other
Vulnerable to the deadly kiss.
But darts destroyed strike no man in the dark,
Infect at last no unprotected brother...
Is my young magic strong enough for this?.
A SUGAR BIRD IN A SILVERTREE
A sugar bird in a silvertree!
Ah, here is exquisite poetry
Writ by the Great High Poet’s hand
In language that all may understand:
Here is a paean of ecstasy –
A sugar-bird in a silvertree!
A flash of green and gold and flame –
Jewels caught in a silver frame –
Splendent jewels that shimmer and shine
Like the gems on a Shinto idol’s shrine,
Set in a fulgent filigree –
A sugar bird in a silvertree.
Soft the sheen on the silver leaves
Where lambent laughing sunlight weaves
Dreams diaphanous as the dew
That ushered dawn in when the day was new;
A dream, a poem con amore
A sugar bird in a silvertree!
Glinting, glimmering, gay as light
Colour incarnate poised for flight:
Here is a masterpiece. Here is a song
By a lover, immutable, measureless, strong –
A lover that loves all the world, and me,
And a sugar bird in a silvertree!
A Thought for Christmas
The Christ, they say, is looking for a manger
Wherein to stable His Divinity:
But such a course is fraught with gravest danger –
The finitising of Infinity.
Too, frail, too frail is human habitation
To house this focussed point of Power and Light.
Yet we sorely need this incarnation,
So sorely need the Song within our night,
Of “Peace on earth… Goodwill! Goodwill!” undying,
Above Man’s hate and greed and selfish skill,
To set the hearts of all the world replying
And echoing the call – “Goodwill! Goodwill!”
The will for Good to All would pave the way
To Peace on Earth, and that new Christmas Day.
A Thought of Friendship
I wonder if ever you think of me, friend,
In the midst of your busiest day,
Or soft in the twilight when day’s at an end,
Or deep in the night when you pray.
For ever your face, or the sound of your voice
Breaks into my task or my play;
And ever I lift up my heart and rejoice
That God chose to send you this way.
There are so many paths that you might have trod
Where I should have missed you alway;
So I render my thanks to an all-gracious God
That our far paths have crossed for a day.
Dorothea Graham Botha
1925
A Thought On Van Riebeeck Day
Nearly a third of a thousand years ago
A governor accepted the Command
To Supervise this garden, make it grow,
And husband for it’s lord this potent land.
Our race has had three hundred years and eight
To sow the seeds of Christ, the seeds of love;
Eradicate the virulent tares of hate
And cultivate the flowers of brotherhood;
Three centuries to tend the vineyard where
Its lord appointed us as husbandmen
To till the soil, with care that it should bear
His harvest ere he came to earth again.
Here are the fruits that we have sown and raised …
Do we deserve to be destroyed or praised?
“Veritas”
A Thousand Nights Ago
A thousand nights ago you stood with me-
A thousand nights ago! The same soft balm
Was in the air, and like a burst of psalm
The sun sank glowing in the sapphire sea.
We pledged – do you remember? -sacredly,
To keep our troth, beneath this alien palm,
And wondered that the earth could be so calm
When such a passion swept o’er me and thee.
You have kept faith with other loves than this,
You have found shining fame in other ways:
To farthest lands your mighty name is known.
How could I hope to hold you with a kiss
When high ambition called, and thrilling Praise?
A thousand nights ago! My tryst is lone.
A Time for Letting Go
Spanning the year from April to September
Watching the deaths of Autumn, sensing Spring.
There is a truth that all life should remember −
Relinquishment's a necessary thing.
Although it may seem difficult and strange
The season's brief perfection must not cling;
The principle of growth is constant change
And flight involves the moulting of the wing.
For every life its cycle, swift or slow
(Fulfillment finds at last a finer joy),
A time for holding and for letting go
Of feather, leaf and fruit and favourite toy.
There is a season of growth and one of rest −
And life that fits the pattern fares the best.
Dorothea Spears
A Time for Rejoicing?
Why do you sit so silent in this breast
O Heart, with joyous Easter drawing near?
“Can mankind stand this searing searching test,”
Said Heart, “When this Gethsemane is here?”
New Calvaries loom dark against the sky;
Each Judas, Pilate, Peter plays his part,
And you and I stand by and watch Him die.
What room’s for Easter in self-full heart?”
Airlie Close
Constantia, C.P.
A year
A year is a strange companion -
Coming and going,
Giving and taking away
From dead and living . . .
Accelerating, slowing,
Grave . . . gay . . .
Moulding and being moulded by
Inexorable time.
And night and day . . .
Returning here again
Having lived for a year
In other lands
Touching other hands.
What has the year to say?
That he can alter places
Unbelievably . . .
But not friends’ faces.
Dorothea Spears
Abstraction
Can you divorce the colour from the shape
The music from the melody.
The Meaning from the word?
Can you escape the image seen and heared
Without a sacrifice, a loss
Of something precious and wise
At too great a price?
Can you divorce the mind
From behind the flesh and blood and bone
Of mortal design,
Or spirit from body to study a while,
Alone and unconfined?
Perhaps some time, somewhere, somehow
The essence of beauty will need no phial
But not now.
Dorothea Spears
Acacia
Flimsy, feathery, festive tree
Spreading shadily over me;
Yellow blossoms in gay festoon
Gleaming gold in the light of noon:
Hark, I’ll sing me a song of thee,
Flimsy, feathery, festive tree.
Light and silvery is the sheen
Of the sun on thy foliage green;
Like thy blossoms of burnished gold
Touched to glow by sunshine bold:
Like thy song to sheltered sea,
Flimsy, feathery, festive tree!
Like thy shade to My Lady’s grace,
Fickle, flitting from place to place,
Blown by breezes that whisper by,
Blow along a kiss, and sigh:
Fickle, fanciful, fair and free
Flimsy, feathery, festive tree!
Now you’ve dropped me a blossom down-
So My Lady would cheat my frown
Giving smiles when I fain would chide…
You’re a pair of you, undenied.
So here’s a song of my Love and thee,
Flimsy, feathery, festive tree!
Actors
The Bard divined that all the world's a stage
Whereon we mortal men and women play
Our given roles ... a comedy today
Tomorrow, tragedy. We take our wage
At curtain-fall, and turn another page
And con another part, or grave or gay
Or big or small. Experience is the way
The actor learns his craft from age to age.
What matter the character of the current part,
Well played? To sense the Author's purpose whole,
Perfecting our performance with each role,
Encouraging actors of less stalwart heart
Experiencing all we gain our goal,
Achieve at last the mastery of our Art.
Dorothea Spears
Africa Adolescent
I
Here is an adolescent boy. See how
He strains against the leash: his father frowns,
His mother sighs, and shakes her head and tries
To reason with him, but he scorns advice.
He fears to look a fool among his fellows:
So sensitive is youth to ridicule.
He hides his filial love behind a cloak
Of rude indifference, asserts his will
To exercise his new-discovered ego,
Half marvelling himself at this new ego,
Within him, goaded by its growing pains
To irritable outbursts, All the strains
Of his heredity at issue join,
Sime succoured by environment, some by strong
In their own strength; and unsuspected traits
Of ancient forebears suddenly appear.
His parents stand aghast at this new phase,
But, being wise, chide not too much his ways.
For now the youth discovers in himself
Strange, undreamed depths, new soarings of the soul.
A new spark flames within him, flaring up
Before the slightest draught of opposition
Like the new kindled coal it burns
To that quiet glow that sends out steady heat
Now he is shy and awkward, hands and arms
Are separate complements, but he will learn
The grace and power of perfect unison.
(So must the dweller of a chrysalis
In breaking forth experience puzzling pains
And handle awkwardly his new-found wings)
But time will bring him strength and confidence.
These great ambitions stirring in his heart
Will one day reach achievement; but meanwhile
Their unfulfillment makes him feel restless, strange.
His mind, in groping for new truths, oft stops
Instead in doubt, as ships in unknown bays
May strike a bar in searching for the sea
And needs must wait full tide to reach the deep.
II
So with South Africa. His turbid youth
Is moulding into manhood. Bear with him
For adolescence is a trying time,
Requiring infinite patience, wisdom, love
To guide aright the questing soul of youth.
His heritage from England, Holland and France.
And all his honoured forebears fight within
Himself for mastery, distracting him
This way and that till he himself scarce knows
Which will is his. Impatient of restraint
He scorns advice, grows angry at reproof.
He storms and sulks in turn; too sensitive,
Is easily offended, proud, aloof.
All this is but stirring in his soul
Of new discovered strength. Some future day
His stubbornness will tame to firm resolve,
His independence to initiative:
These traits that seem at variance now will blend,
With careful and judicious handling, love
And wisdom, kindly weeding out the flaws,
Till, interknit, they form the perfect whole.
He shall develop these strange depths that call
Within him. He shall reach the glorious heights
That beckon in his brain. He shall expand
In body, mind and soul: his late unrest
Shall be forgotten in the joy of work.
He shall learn concord; his hands and feet must move
In unison, his lumbering gait be tamed
To steady tread, unconscious, unashamed.
The darker blood within him, now resented,
Shall find its place and be no more his curse.
Now he is selfish, finding out himself,
But self once found, he shall be great to serve.
He shall be strong in justice, righting wrongs,
A champion of the weak and the oppressed,
Till all the world shall look on him and say
“Truly, here is a man amongst the nations!”
All this may be if kindly governance
And patience guide the adolescent youth
With wisdom in the paths of light and truth.
He shall know how to fashion with his hands.
He shall learn industry, and self-support,
The wasty places deep within must till
To blossom like the rose and bring forth fruit.
He shall pour forth the treasure of his heart,
His golden heart, unstinting; jewels are rare,
And those less dazzling but of sounder worth;
Shall cultivate the treasure of his mind
Producing gems of art; rare poetry
And music’s gentler grace shall prove his charm
To captivate and hold his social place.
Comely he is : the years shall lend him grace.
III
Can you visualise South Africa –
Strong in might of manhood’s full estate
Yet gentle with the kindness of true strength;
No talent undeveloped of his ten;
The master of himself, at peace within
And therefore, calm and full of quiet power;
Whose friendship all the nations of the world
Shall strive to gain; a Christian gentleman?
So shall South Africa, the difficult age
Of adolescence safely past, fulfil
The difficult tasks that lie ahead of him;
And having made himself first a man,
Go forth to help the world fulfil God’s plan.
After Bacon
Do not boast, O mortal, when the gods
Have granted you some boon over your fellows
Or set you a place in some unpublic sun.
It is the fortune no one ever sees
That makes a mortal happy and unenvied.
Constantia C.P.
After Storm
When the hopes and dreams have vanished
Into nothing, whence they came;
When the Passion has been banished
And Desire is but a name;
As the glamorous day, declining
Yields to darkness with its balm –
Undesiring, unrepining,
Life achieves at last Calm.
After Thirty Years
He thought his father was acting when he paced
The study floor, and beat his breast, saying
“Alas, so much to do; so little done…
Mea culpa… mea…mea...culpa!”
His father had known adulation, reached
The top of his ladder; by his speech had swayed
Humanity to laughter and to tears;
Been greatly friended. It was his to make
Decisions with the souls of men at stake,
And men proclaimed him just and wise and kind.
Yet looking behind, across the crowded years,
Some deep depression suddenly took his hand
And humbled him to his knees. His son watched, still,
Too old to scoff, too young to understand.
Today, with threescore years behind, he too
Has felt that hand, and it is no play
To say, “So little done…so much to do…
Mea culpa…mea...mea culpa!”
Aftermath
So many years ago, at first war’s end
I walked through Flanders Fields, here and there
Among the truncated nature’s devastation
The grass grew lush and green, to make amends,
And hurt the heart more deeply than the bare
And unadorned bones of civilisation.
For where the grass was greenest the spades knew
That they would find rich harvests of despair,
The sacrificial offerings that grew
From death to life anew where old decay
Of older beauty reimbursed the clay:
Maturing death proliferating life,
Ultimate beauty from immediate strife.
Constantia C.P.
Afterwards
How shall they turn again to fill their days
With all the brief inconsequential things
Of ordinary life, these who don wings
And cleave to the utmost skies without amaze?
How shall they find it in their hearts to praise
The old gods, riches, property and things,
Who fly across the heavens where death sings,
The power of godhood in their eyes ablaze?
How will they face the tasks that must pursue?
When all this Titan holocaust is past?
And when (and if) they turn to peace at last
Will they have strength to build the world anew?
Or will they be too tired, when war is done,
To claim the guerdon that their work has won?
Against a Revival of Nationalism
I speak
Not as of any nation
Nor any hue or face,
Not as of any rank or station:
I speak as member of the human race.
We have learned the hard way,
Brother, you and I.
(Or have we learned?) We pay
Thrice over, now if we deny
The lessons that the centuries have taught,
Through family, through group, through clan,
Expanding ever, reaching out in thought.
As man’s horizons broaden so does Man
(Or does he?) through City and through State,
Through Nation, Empire, Commonwealth –
Twice of late
Has Mankind’s road to health
Been blasted by the backward turning gaze
Of those whose minds still lagged in outgrown days;
Who found no higher goal in this great sphere,
No larger allegiance than a Nation’s pride
For which they held no sacrifice too dear –
For this we died.
Are we incapable of learning then?
Must we too play Lot’s wife?
Disaster waits for who turns back again:
In progress only lies the way to life.
I fear not change – but let it be
To something greater, not to something less;
Some further step towards worldwide liberty –
The one road to success.
Cape Town
Agnostic
You want the verse and chapter, figure, fact,
Before believing anything is true,
And beggar life of beauty, since no act
Or fact can prove God’s love, or mine for you.
Constantia
Albina Sings The Songs Of Sappho
(To Albert Mallinson’s Music)
Oh, did you hear?
Sappho?
Did the clear
impassioned notes
part the misty years
and call your unrequited ghost
to gusts of tears?
So long ago,
Sappho?
You love, and lo
On music borne
your troubled spirit flows
across the centuries to mourn
a fallen rose!
Alien
Now, in the Spring of England, I behold
The miracle of Resurrection staged.
Where Winter long the stormy blasts have raged
In field and forest, now is bright with gold,
And Beauty wakens from the sunless mould
Where all Winter it was held fast-caged;
And all the powers of Nature are engaged
In bringing Life from Death by wood and wold.
But where I dwell, now Autumn comes apace,
And Easter heralds Winter. I must go
From promise of life to death. I may not know
The wonder of fulfilment. From Love’s face
And England’s Spring I turn. Fate wills it so-
For I am one who dwells in a far place.
Dorothea Graham Botha
Stratford -on – Avon, Warwickshire.
All God’s Creatures
I have watched the lion behind his bars,
A den for a roof, where should be stars;
Majestic in his captivity –
And the gaping crown that shouts with glee
When he roars and shakes his shaggy mane
And paces his cramping cage in pain.
But the bitter suffering in his eyes
Tells of the longing that never dies
For the open veld and the forest glade,
And the rippling pool in the silent shade.
The monkey, chained to his measly stick,
Dreams of a spot where the leaves are thick:
And straining eagle, born to soar,
Pines for the crags he shall see no more.
And one who notes the sparrows’ fall
Looks down with sorrow upon them all:
Looks down in reproach at you and me
That in His world such things should be.
In city street, and country road
I have seen dumb oxen under the goad,
And donkeys falling beneath their load;
Starving horses, lean and gaunt,
And the look in their eyes will forever haunt
My soul. And so I must cry their pain
Till all men hear, until this stain
Is purged from the heart of this, my land.
Oh ye, who are men, take up your stand
For the weak and defenceless! For every one
Must answer for what he has left undone.
Think you that He who is sparrow-wise
Can fail to hear his creature’s cries?
Oh, that my words are cords of flame
To lash men’s hearts to a burning shame;
To sear the consequences and scourge the will
That we could never again sit still
Or fold our hands in a coward’s peace
Till all God’s creatures have found release!
All Life is a Miracle
All life is wonderful to humble eyes.
How can they question miracles who see
The acorn p
With roots perish… and become a tree
With roots that hold the earth and boughs that rise
To glimpse the majesty of distant skies…
The naked stump that in a trice will be
A laden vine… the honey homing bee…
The tiny egg that breaks its shell and flies?
The miracle of life is so immense:
The life that underlies whatever grows
Has been a mystery since time began.
Who contacts life with every quickened sense
Believes in miracles because he knows
The source of life’s beyond the grasp of man.
Veritas
Constantia
Allegory
How imperceptibly the brightness slips away
How silently the night supersedes the day!
Some task, perhaps, may be half finished when the eye
Becomes aware of strain, and lifts to find the sky
Grown pale before the quiet advent of the night.
The needle may hover above the stitch; the pencil stay
Uncertain on the paper, reluctant to betray
The fact of slowly fading light that dims the sight . . .
The unclaimed moment when the senses cannot say
"This moment's name is Night, this moments name is Day"
So unobtrusively the light is put to flight,
So imperceptibly the brightness slips away,
So silently the night supersedes the day.
Dorothea Spears
Allegory
Very old is this tree,
Very old, and very dear,
Crippled, bent and worn.
Yet every year
When skies are grey
And winds are drear
And all the land is tempest-torn
She laughs to scorn
Life’s unacknowledged fear
With blossom gay;
And hearts forlorn
That chance to pass along this way
Find hope re-born.
She’s past her usefulness, you say?
Not while white blossoms still adorn
Her withered limbs with faith in Spring,
To cheer
A winter day.
Always a Fairer Rose
It is the one best loves the rose who knows:
A lovelier rose is hidden in the womb
Of Time that Time's good pleasure will disclose,
Yet loves no less the latest breath of bloom,
The born explorer's secret is it not
(However high he goes, however far,
By whom he is remembered or forgot)
That there will always be a further star?
Aye, we who seek rejoice that earth is fair,
That goals are far and that the rose is sweet;
But more rejoice that there's a purer air
A fairer rose, and distance for the feet.
This earthen vessel, may it never hold
Enough to quench my thirst, though I grow old!
Dorothea Spears
An Autumn Lullaby
Rest, Deciduous Children, take your rest.
Loose your anxious hold upon the sere
And shabby leaves that you have worn all year −
The wind is blowing coldly from the West!
Forget the restless urge of Beauty's quest.
Though Winter comes apace you need not fear
His boisterous lullabies. You will not hear.
Go to sleep, my Children, this is best.
Go to sleep, my Children. Do not cling
To worn-out garments, avid still to keep
Familiar coverings; the kindly Spring
Will bring you fairer ones, so do not weep.
(And if the Spring bring no awakening?
You will not know.) Deciduous Children, sleep.
Dorothea Spears
An Incident
It was a ward for two, where I
Lay sorely ill, perhaps to die.
And in the bed next mine there lay
An old Dutch father, tired and grey.
He little English understood,
And I was never any good
At speaking Dutch, and yet, in some way,
We held communion that long day.
‘A simple saintly man,’ I said,
‘That occupies this other bed.’
And then they come to operate,
And I could only lie and wait
While he was gone, and humbly ask
That God would aid the surgeon’s task,
And give the poor man his sight
(It was his eyes to be put right)
And when they brought him back again
Delirium had eased the pain:
That state when men’s true selves appear
Without the artifice they wear
In conscious moments;
When the soul is stripped, and visible in whole.
‘Oh God,’ he said (his voice was low),
‘I’m just a poor man, You know’-
The words trailed off, then came once more
In tones more pleading than before-
‘I’m just a poor man, You see,
O God, but You remember me.’
A silence. Then ‘It’s just my eyes,
O God, I know that You are wise,
And if it be Thy will- my sight.
But any way, it is all right.
All right, O God, all right.’ He slept.
And turning to the wall, I wept.
It was a touching scene. I thought
of all the years that I had sought
For Christ through learned theology
And never yet had come to me
A faith and love that spoke like this.
There is so much that one can miss
For learned men, a simple heart
Can graciously to him impart
To this old man God was a friend,
And anything He chose to send
That was ‘All right, O God, all right!’
O God! Give me that blind man’s sight!
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press
1925
An Interrupted Friendship
Perhaps ‘tis better so; we had no time to quarrel:
Our brief, sweet friendship lingers like a bar of song,
Or like the scent of orange blossoms, caught in passing
Some wayside grove, too swift to pall, but sure and Strong.
Just in that brief hour of uncloyed sweetness to
Remember:
No time for thoughtless words, and nothing to
Forget.
A bar of song may lose its charm with repetition,
And orange blossoms pall. No, I do not regret.
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press
1925
An Oudtshoorn Memory
Is it not strange how some familiar thing –
A scent, a sound, perchance a breeze a-blow-
Will bring to life a scene of long ago,
With all the poignant memories that cling?
But now, a little wayward wind did fling
A shower of leaves into my face. Just so
It showered us that day, while soft and low
The river flowed. How subtly it did bring
An hour with you beneath the old thorn trees
By that arched bridge that spans the Grobler’s stream
At Oudtshoorn! Once again I caught our dream
Of peace; was showered by the sudden breeze.
And even in the lure of memory
The same serene content returns to me.
Anna
A few days old, you lie in my arms
Plucking in low-key demand
The heartstrings of my barrenness
With your small sucking noises of reproach.
I dare not offer too much in response,
Negate the bravery your natural mother showed
When she consigned you to a chain of care
That will not stop at me,
But I can claim the natural right of prayer
And hold you at my breast to suckle strength
From that great body of concern
Which is your new-found family.
Anniversary
Do you remember how we paused, each half afraid
To put to test the dream that we had made
Lest contact with the world should break its sunny wings?
For dreams, like butterflies, are fragile things.
So beautiful, so gossamer; so strong and frail,
Like spider webs that hold against the gale
Yet shiver into ruin at one ruthless touch –
Oh, dared we risk the dream that meant so much?
Yet here we stand at year’s end confident and sure,
Come gale or sun, that love’s web does endure;
Knowing at last, however fair the rainbow seems,
Fulfilment is more beautiful than dreams.
April night, Constantia
Now God be thanked that my sweet comrade Sleep
Forgot to call for me this April night.
I might have missed the Easter moon's flight
And been unkissed by this rich silence deep:
Nor seen the dark and velvet shadows creep
From trees, nor chrysanthemums holding out their white
Unfolding hands to mould the moon’s light.
The memories I put in words to keep
Oh, I should have been the poorer all my days
If I had missed this beauty and this peace.
So little time is left us, now, to meet
With unadulterated night. The ways
Of the city will spread a net with no release
And make each moonlit lane a garish street.
Dorothea Spears
Arbor Vitae
Once more the potent Spring evokes the strange
Benignant influence, serene and calm,
That rises with the sap at season’s change
Transmuting sun and rain to healing balm
In delicate leaf, whereby the oak tree’s strength
May be administered in healing shade
To Man. Can you not sense it down this length
Of avenue, and in this glade?
Impatient mortal, hurrying to and fro
Speed-ridden, pause beneath these radiant trees
And bathe your wounded spirit in their glow
For God’s own healing infiltrates this breeze.
Could we but sense it, here is peace for mortals,
For every oak tree stands at Heaven’s portals.
“Veritas”, Constantia, C.P.
Armistice – Day of Remembrance
Today the old remember, but the young,
Unborn half a century ago,
Think other thoughts and speak another tongue
And do not know and do not care to know
The way their fathers thought, the war they fought
“To end all wars,” their dreams, their dedication,
Their naïve belief the world would not be caught
Again in senseless strife for domination.
Today we call to memory the things
That we believed in once, for which men die,
When justice and liberty and faith were wings
On which all men could rise to any sky.
Today the old remember but the young
Think other thoughts and speak another tongue.
Airlie Close
Constantia C.P.
Arrogance
How arrogant? How arrogant is Man?
The denizen of this dark planet, unbowed
As Lucifer, proud as Arachne, who span
Against the gods, and won a spider's shroud.
The possibility that there should be
Within this Galaxy a greater Race
Of mightier mind and surer soul than he
Inhabiting the vastnesses of space
To little Man is unbelievable.
That evolution's older than the earth
To little Man is inconceivable,
Whose life is limited by death and birth.
Why think that universes vast, unknown,
Exist, 0 little Man, for you alone?
Dorothea Spears
Art Deco
Scratching at the paint
Through a week of turning hours,
Spreading white over cream
To cover old scars.
Dissecting thought,
Scraping the surface of days
With a strident sound,
The knife on the glass.
Always the tune,
Discordant at times but true
To the rhythm of life,
The blade in its sheath.
The question unasked
That lies at the edge of the mind
Unanswered in turn,
Will it come to light?
The careful gloss
Put on with a shaking hand,
How long will it last
And lasting, look right?
Art Thou Weary Heart?
Are you weary, Heart
Tired, hard to please?
Go and hold communion
With the trees
Bare your head and borrow
Courage from the breeze.
Are you broken, Heart?
Your garden waits to heal.
Go and claim her comfort
Go and get the trowel
Even while you kneel
Gathering the pansies
You will surely feel
Heartsease for happiness
Through your being still.
Are you discouraged, Heart?
Life too dear to buy?
Go and lose your belongings
Underneath the sky.
On the earth’s rich bosom
Freely you may lie
She will give you courage
Both to live – and die.
Arthur Shirley Cripps
The pioneer of God at last has come
To Journey’s end. The night was dark and long
But radiant light and clear undying song
Were in his heart, whose lips were never dumb
To praise, whose fearless mins would not succumb
To perils of the path. Undaunted, strong,
He folded in his care a dusky throng
And shared with them his sacrificial crumb.
The mystics singing journey through the night
Of earth is done, but in no foreign place
He greets the dawn; to his enraptured sight
No strange abode, no unfamiliar face…
The rising sun envelopes him in light
And Christ still walks beside him through all space.
“Veritas”
Constantia, C.P.
Arum Lilies
I have seen lilies rooted in the mire
That give dignity to their low place,
As proud and chaste as virginal desire
With their white beauty and their austere grace.
Some inner urge that whispers “Higher …Higher …”
Has bid them spurn the mud. Without a trace
Of its pollution, spotless they aspire
The uncontaminated sun to embrace.
In muddy fields frequented by rude kine
Bovine and human, I have seen them rise.
Undaunted by environment they line
The roadside ditches, reaching for the skies.
I have seen lilies, growing in foul sod,
That raise a chance beholder’s thoughts to God.
At Christmas Time
A year ago I said that Christmas time should
never come
Out here in this blazing heat, where flowers
and birds are dumb;
That Christmas was a camouflage to hide the
deep unrest
That fills the homesick Northerner this season
of the blest.
But Love came weaving in and out through all
my sombre soul,
So threads of brighter colouring through all
life’s texture stole;
And life has gained new meaning since that last
year’s bitter day –
I know, now, that it’s Christmas time wherever
Love holds sway.
At Kirstenbosch (for L.R.)
This here and now is sufficient for here and now:
Tomorrow is never and forever
And yesterday has already become today.
The how and why
Of time is in this present moment's stay:
This present moment . . . and this still pool
Shallow enough for reeds to paddle ankle deep
Yet − holding earth and sky within its cool
And unassuming keep.
The secret of the universe and space
And time is now and here
Within this quiet glade, behind this face,
Within this questing mind.
Alas, that mortal senses Interfere
With vision, leave us dense and deaf and blind!
And yet, reality's so near
That, silent in such setting, man can sense
A fragmentary echo of Omnipotence.
22/12/58
At the rail
I standing at the rail
Of this small ship plying its way
From India to Italy -
I, gazing over the vastness
Of the breaking sea as blue
As only depth can be -
I, knowing where I am going,
Who hold the length and breadth and depth
Of all the waters of the earth
Within my consciousness,
Am not confounded by
My insignificance, for I
Can reach beyond the farthest tide,
And though the waters drown me
Still am I greater than they,
Knowing, and being able to say
That I am I.
Dorothea Spears