Each man makes his own prison
Each Man Makes His Own Prison
The consciousness of living in eternity
Expands a man's horizon; gives him room
In which to stretch his mind: and as a tomb
Confines no living spirit, so a cell
Is ample space to compass Heaven - or Hell
Dorothea Spears
Ear to Ground
I put my ear to the ground.
Dear God! What a vital coming and going of sound!
What a growing up and a growing down and a flowing round
And a saying of unimaginable things both shallow
And profound!
Voice from every kingdom excitedly speak
Of what goes on under the ground every day, every week:
Voices loud and arrogant and proud and gentle and meek-
I’d no idea of the ventures that abound
Beneath the ground,
Such births and deaths and rooting and shootings and sleep
And waking, and holding of breath and deep
Inscrutable transmutations that creep
Of clamour, swift or slow –
The things that go on under the ground that we don’t know!
I put my ear to a keyhole in the atmosphere
And drew it away quickly for all the things that I could
Not bear to hear,
Lest I be drowned in the sudden accession of sound that
Assailed my ear,
Shaken and shattered by the unseen unheard vibrations
Of all the world, elations and desolations, and the voices
Of planets and of nations-
God be thanked for our mortal limitations!
Earthbound
The moon is full to-night: the world gleams white
And silver in her scintillating light.
How cold she is! How beautiful and proud!
And in the sky one narrow, lonely cloud.
Of all the world the cloud alone is near;
All else is far away. I dimly hear
The city’s breath below, and heaven’s reply.
But faint and far, and sounding like a sigh.
Here alone I keep silent tryst with night,
Like yonder cloud, that pauses in its flight
Half way ‘twixt heaven and earth, and longs in vain
To clasp them both, in ecstasy of pain:
So I, held by the beauty of your love,
Clinging to earth, raise longing eyes above.
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press
1925
Easter at Dawn
At dawn, within the quiet of my room,
My spirit rose, and went unto the tomb
Where my dead hopes, dead loves, dead dreams were
Laid.
Nor went I alone, but unafraid
For in this Blessed Easter dawn I knew
That I should find the Easter message true –
In empty tomb, in presence fain to bless –
There is no death for any loveliness!
UBI VADIMUS
Glory that was Greece;
Glory that was Rome;
Glory that is Washington –
(Marble Column, gilded dome)
Some far day will these be one,
Stone unleft on stone?
Eastertide
This joyful Eastertide
What need is there for grieving?
Cast all your cares aside
And be not unbelieving:
Come, share our Easter joy
That death could not imprison,
Nor any power destroy,
Our Christ, who is arisen!
No work for him is in vain,
No faith in him mistaken,
For Easter makes it plain
His Kingdom is not shaken:
Then put your trust in Christ,
In waking or sleeping:
His grace on earth sufficed;
He’ll never quit his keeping.
Ebb and Flow
The fruitless period’s not to fear, my friend :
Receding sap should not be forced to flow.
For there are times to rest and times to grow,
A time to fashion and a time to mend.
And there’s a time—could man but comprehend
The law of cycles
he would surely know—
There is a time to stay, and a time to go,
A time for a beginning and an end.
The moon that wanes and
waxes, and the sea
That tenses and relaxes;
day and night
Forever cycling into dark and light;
They know, they know their periodicity,
The rhythmic breathing of eternal might,
The mortal use of immortality.
Eden
Stay. Spring the while I sing the praise
In honey words of halcyon days,
or beauty burgeoning in trees
Of blossom bearing rapsodies;
Or beauty bursting from the earth
In unpremeditated mirth:
Of beauty breaking through the sod
In reminiscences of God;
And how, when beauty first began
The Garden was the home of Man
To which he'll never lose the chart
Who keeps a garden in his heart.
Dorothea Spears
Eighteen Years
(Armistice 1918-1936)
A Voice from those who went.
Eighteen years. Dear God, how short a time
To have forgot so much!
…To have forgot the clutch
Of terror at our throats… forgot the slime
Of vermined trenches…
Of rotting bodies.. the dragging mud
Of Flanders… and the poppies, red
Where comrades joined the dead
In sleep… Forgot the stickiness of blood
On face and hands … forgot the dreaded suspense
Of waiting, breathless, for a crimson day
To mark the zero hour
Too proud to cower
But vividly alive in every sense
To suffer…to be cold…And then, the fray –
The burning shell, the carnage, and the gas –
The awful, choking fear
That made death seem more dear
Than life… the limbless, faceless, forms to pass
Cold, repelled and sickened to the core –
We have forgot the awfulness of war.
A Voice from those who stayed.
Eighteen years. We have forgot so much…
The agonising fear
For those that were most dear…
The hopeless longing for the unforgotten touch
Of hands that were outstretched, and clasped by Death…
The bitter-sweet of leave
That all too short reprieve
From fear… Forgot the lists…the bated breath…
The wounded, and the limbless, and the blind …
Disease that took its toll
of body, and of soul…
Forgot the burning agony of mind…
The sleepless vigils…And the silent door
Waiting the touch of one who came no more.
In Unison
Eighteen years. The wounds are staunched that bled…
We have forgot the vows we made our dead…
We have forgotten all that went before
And prattle glibly of “another war!”
Eloquence
The multi-coloured English words that flower
From alien root or from indigenous stem
To challenge Time or grace the passing hour
What beauty can be fashioned out of them!
The common words men pluck and toss away
Idly as children on a daisied hill
Gathering an ephemeral bouquet:
The gracious words arranged with practised skill
The stately words the sonorous words men use
Or classic sheaves exotic words to set
In bridal wreaths − with such a wealth to choose.
What beauty can be wrought from words! And yet..
More eloquent than any verbal spray
Are rain-wet roses on an April day
Dorothea Spears.
Empiric
What does it matter? I am as conscious of living in eternity
As you are conscious of the house of brick and wood and stone
In which you think you dwell;
And this brief carapace of flesh and blood and bone
That seems to occupy a certain place in space
I know is but a temporary shell
To be inhabited improved, and put-away
You say “I see: therefore I know” of wood and stone and brick.
I say “I come: I go” and there's the trick
Of immortality . . .
And who can specify the length of a day
Or separate the contiguity of far and near,
The relativity of false and true?
My evidence is as empirical to me
As yours to you.
Should one born deaf repudiate the thing he cannot hear,
Or blind, deny existence to what he cannot see?
End of August, Constantia
For a moment the night listens, and all is still.
And then you hear the wind coming
Softly, softly at first, and far away,
Humming; and trace his gathering pace
Filling the troubled air with turbulence,
And the trees waving bare arms in his face;
Threatening to force the windows,
Lift the roof, and strip the garden.
But nothing happens… Then
You hear him muttering down the road
And all is hushed until he comes again –
Suddenly, blustering, vain.
Another silence… Then
The deafening deluge of winter rain!
At daylight you open the blind, fearfully,
Thinking to find the garden all forlorn
After the fury of the storm.
And there are unbowed daffodils
Full of sun …
Airlie Close
Constantia, C.P.
Endurance
I cannot bear it … Looking at the world
From my carapace of time and place
Through shifting consciousness with changing light
Constantly shattering the flaming white
Of God to a multiplicity of vibrations
That shakes the Universe to its foundations
Wherein the spectrum dances like a dervish –
Where find healing, which is making whole,
For the universal body, mind and soul
Of which I, an infinitesimal part
Am whirled beyond the endurance of the heart.
England and Rest
England again; and English fields
Of gold and green:
White daisies gleaming in the grass,
And buttercups between.
England again: and English streams
That murmer low.
How oft’ I’ve seen it in my dreams!
The daffodils a-glow-
While sitting on the sultry stoep;
The brown veld by
a-simmer in the summer sun,
strident -harsh and dry.
By dusty, dried-up river beds
Of hateful heat
I’ve dreamed of English brooks and lanes
Soft-scented, cool and sweet.
Where flaming aloes flaunt their pride
With scarlet wing
I’ve dreamed of May-buds opening
Away in English Spring!
And now Old England clasps me close
Against her breast.
And in her arms, so soft and dear,
At last have I found rest.
Ephemera
Bewailing Time which taketh all away,
“This thought is as a death which cannot
choose ”
The poet cried in passionate dismay,
“But weep to have that which it fears to lose.”
Aye, there you have it, Shakespeare, truly
there
Your intuition points the hovering ghost;
You put your finger on man’s great despair
That makes a mockery of his proudest boast—
The evanescent quality that bides,
A gnawing fear; within the rarest stone
The
hidden flaw; the spectre that derides
The thing that man most proudly calls his own.
Yet
he’ll not see the clue to happiness
Lies not in owning more, but craving less.
Eternal Encounter
If I should meet a Master of the Wisdom face to face;
If I should meet the Christ Himself in form –
I should not curtsy nor stand afar off.
I should take His Hand eagerly and say
“Will you come and take tea with me in my room with the
Beautiful view?”
And when He was coming I should play the second movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet
And flood the room with music and with light
And open all the doors that give upon the valley.
And when He came I should not think to genuflect...
I should hold out both my hands, and He would embrace me with His eyes and fold me in His Aura.
So we should enter together my room with the beautiful view
And the light and the music, and the door open to the valley…
It would be more beautiful than I ever knew.
“Veritas”
Constantia, C.P.
Eternal Loneliness
Is there no thing that is not lonely, dear?
Although my soul is so attune to thee
That I am vibrant with the melody
Of thy sweet soul, yet can I never hear
The deepest strains that vibrate full and clear
Completing that ethereal harmony
That is thyself. Some inmost ecstasy
Must still escape my listening soul’s keen ear.
Some part of thee and me must still remain
Forever mute, immensurate, above
Expression. Even while I hold thee near
Our lonely souls strive to unite in vain.
In all this radiant world of light and love
Is there no thing that is lonely, dear?
II
Is there no thing that is lonely, Sweet?
This tiny grain of corn within my hand
Too mighty is for us to understand:
So tiny, yet profound enough to cheat
The learned world’s encompassing conceit,
That knows, yet knows not how, it doth expand
And fill with verdure all the barren land
Until its humble mission is complete.
This seed of corn, so dormant and so dull, so like another, in its heart doth hold
That is cannot impart. The grain of wheat
Becomes at length a harvest bountiful
But it still harbours secrets never told:
Is there no thing that is not lonely, Sweet?
III
Is there no thing that is not lonely, Love?
The soaring eagle seeking out his mate,
The tiny sparrow, hopping from his plate
To tempt the tit-bit from thy outstretched glove;
The timid but desirous cooing dove,
Each holds within his heart some secret gate
That cannot be unlocked, some love or hate
That none may know as high he wings above.
So every bird is lonely, every song
Inadequate to vent his longing heart;
Alike the lilting lark and cooking dove
Must carry to his death the passion strong
That he would fain unto the world impart:
Is there no thing that is lonely, love?
IV
Is there no thing that is lonely, Dear?
The rose, creation of consummate art-
The busy bee that valiantly doth start
To sip the nectar sweet, bold privateer,
Shall ne’er gain all, though long he persevere.
Nay, ruthless each fragrant petalt par
Yet unrevealed is still that passioned heart,
And though has only spoilt what hast no peer
In all the world no rose blooms duplicate;
In all the world no insect that can lure
The rose’s radiant secret, nor no seer
However wise, that can emancipate
Unto the world that perfume sweet and pure:
Is there no thing that is lonely, Dear?
V
Is there no thing that is not lonely, Fair?
That haunting bar of melody that aches
And cries with longing unexpressed, and breaks
To silence in a paean half despair
Because we cannot understand nor share
Its ecstasy; the canvas that awakes
High thoughts of happiness, it still partakes
The common fate, nor can express it there.
Here’s loneliness eternal, Heart of mine,
In thee and me, in Melody and Art,
In Nature, every seed that breaks the sod:
Here’s loneliness incarnate- and divine.
For ah, least understood of all, Dear Heart,
And the loneliest of all, is -God
EUCHARIST AT ST. ANDREWS
or Anywhere
When we, prepared, have shared the bread and wine,
And knowing ourselves to be at odds with none
Have taken together the Sacrament divine -
Are we not conscious of becoming one?
Surely the warmth of fellowship must flow
Unhindered through this fame will regain
A breath of eternity in Now, and know
For a moment a touch of the joy that hallows pain.
I want to smile with every sister and brother,
Rejoicing in the kinship thus begun -
How can we be strangers to one another
Having supped together as we have done?
But alas, I feel the brethren might take it amiss
Were I to greet them with
a holy Kiss
Thes 5.26 Romans 16.16 ICor,16.20 II for.13.12
Peter 5.4
Ever Since Eden
“The woman that Thou gavest me –
‘Twas she – she bade me eat
The fruit of that forbidden tree.”
Said Adam looking at the Lord reproachfully.
And Eve stood, looking at her feet,
Penitent and sweet,
And said “The serpent beguiled me,”
Very softly. And the serpent smiled,
Knowing that it would always be the same
While woman is woman and man is man…
Somebody has to take the blame.
Airlie Close
Constantia C.P.
Every Idol Is Made of Clay
When your idol tumbles from its pedestal,
When the feet of clay crack,
Don’t keep trying to patch it up
And put it back.
Accept it as it is, imperfect, marred –
Love need not be blind –
It may be dearer, the honest idol scarred,
For love is kind.
Airlie Close
Constantia C.P.
Experientia Docet
The bard divined that all the world’s a stage
Whereon we mortal men and women play
Our various roles… a comedy…today
Tomorrow, tragedy…and 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?
To sense the Author’s purpose for the whole,
Perfecting our performance with each role,
Assisting actors with less stalwart heart –
Through stern experience we gain the goal,
Achieve at last the mastery of the Art.