Faith-Light
It is so long since I have felt the urge
To put on paper all these things that surge
For ever restless through this busy brain:
The losses camouflaged to look like gain,
The joy so poignant it resembles pain;
The beauty incomparable that lies
In God’s grand garden, or a baby’s eyes.
Yet have I lived ‘amidst all these wonders rife:
Have lived and loved, and marvelled that my life
Could be so poor within a world so fair.
Methinks, so blessed, another would be rare
And good. And then I marvel that you care
So much for me, you whom all men adore
And women reverence and bow before.
I’ve trod so far in beauty’s wonderous ways;
Have lived so many sun-kissed golden days,
My soul has revelled so in Southern sea
That all the thrill has fled away from me,-
The Thrill of all the joys that used to be.
But one thing has the power to stir me through,
And that- the faith-light in the eyes of you.
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press
1925
Faith
Somewhen, somewhere, In God’s good time,
I know that at every pain-filled hour
Will blossom, at His touch sublime,
Into a radiance of flower.
Sometime this life that hurts so much,
These jangled notes that pierce and scream,
Will tremble, at His master touch,
Into the music of a dream.
Sometime, somewhere, at His decree,
This tangled skein shall be unwound
And worked into a tapestry
Of gold upon a silver ground.
Yea, every agonising prayer
Shall be transmuted, at His will,
Into song … sometime…somewhere…
Oh clamorous heart of mine, be still!
Fall of the Leaf
The wind and the rain, the refrain
Of repetitive pain, of grief, and the brief
Indispensable parting, the vain
Indefensible heart clinging over again.
Fall of the leaf . . . fall of the leaf . . .
Beginning, beginning and ending
Of what was begun and is done,
A spending of beauty, a rending
Asunder of sod and of sap and of sun,
A sever of tenuous tether too frail for the strenuous weather
Of winter, assailed by the gale. Fall of the leaf . . . fall of the leaf
Yellow and russet and red,
And what is beneath when the bough is bare?
What’s there, when the leaves are shed?
The sun and the sod and the sap and water and fire
Within, and fundamental desire,
And the magical wand of the Spring beyond.
Dorothea Spears
Fall-out
The fallout from the potent word and thought
Exploded secretly in high places,
Permeating intraneural spaces,
An unsuspecting populace has caught
And such inestimable harm has wrought,
Twisting lineaments to sly grimaces
Inwardly behind familiar faces
Where violence is born, unseen, unsought.
Once the image of creation's torn
Men become conditioned to designed
Deformity and thoughts to fit are worn.
Floating fall-out cannot be confined
(However secretly conceived and born).
To any area . . . or any mind.
Fall Rain
There is a song that I love to hear,
The song of the rain when the skies are drear-
Its pitter-patter upon the pane,
Its swish and roar at the greedy drain;
The constant chorus upon the eaves,
The calid kiss on the brown oak leaves:
How gay and infectious! How vibrant with cheer
The song of the rain at the fall of the year!
The song of the rain when the year’s at the Fall
Driving like hail on the Northern wall-
With stealthy trickle a-down the flue
And merry laugh when the sun breaks through:
Drops that dance on the pavement grey
Or splash with glee in the brimming vlei,
A mantle of grey overhanging them all –
Oh, the song of the rain when the year’s at the Fall!
Falling Sanctuary
I said – I shall go to the woods again.
With God’s pine-scented balm
My heart shall be healed of this deep pain
Within their templed calm.
I said – I shall lie in the cool, green glade,
And the brook will sing a song:
I shall find relief in that blessed shade
For the wound that has bled so long.
I said – I shall walk on the windy hill
With the breath of God in my hair
When the stars are out and the night is still,
And I shall find healing there.
I said – I shall sit in the sunset’s glow
And gather the scattered gold
And the peace that my heart is craving so,
As I did in the days of old.
I said I shall find a refuge here
In the paths where of old I trod
And the peace I knew in another year
When my soul was alone with God.
But alas! I walk no more alone
With God, though the woods are fair:
No refuge find I for mine own –
For You are always there.
I have sought the spots I thought most sure;
I have cried to heavens above
But there is no cure, there is no cure
For the world old wound of love!
Farewell to the Free State
I love it so, the open veld,
Ant-hilled, and brown, and dry,
The honest mountains, unadorned,
Against the pallid sky.
(Save when the clouds in gossamer caps
And filmy shadows dress
Their rugged forms, with soft white hands,
And clothe their nakedness.)
In many an unexpected kloof
Lies paradise concealed,
At home, with tree and bird and love,
And flock, and verdant field.
Bush-freckled kopjes, barren heights
Strange carven by God’s hand;
The sheer cleft kranz, the unbound space,
The silent untamed land.
And Night – Ah, hush! Speak reverently –
A million stars can hear,
So close they lie in the veld,
So infinitely near.
My heart is in my eyes that gaze
And gaze, and drink their fill
Of passing mountain, fading veld,
And fast receding hill.
But though mine eyes no more behold
These mighty, lovely things,
My soul shall still return in dreams
To stretch its cramping wings.
Father
It is not a lack of humility that makes me loth to say
“I am not worthy, Lord,
I am not worthy to stay
And gather up the crumbs that fall
Beneath your table…”
For you have made me in your Image,
Made me tall
To touch the sky and earn your accolade!
Even failing I am not afraid
To claim as my inheritance
Your love, to hear your call
Or feel your chastening rod,
Knowing that there is nothing, nothing at all
Can separate me from the love of God
Even if I find myself in Hell
I shall not question that you love me well.
‘Fear Not Them Which Kill the Body’
If I must go out on a blast, let me go with my own,
With the men who think as I think that Man is divine.
An infinitesimal spark of the One Fire blown
Along on the wind of desire in a vast design,
Where a man's a Man whatever his shape or shade,
A son of God, a part of an unknown Whole;
Of air and earth and fire and water made
To house the holy flame of a living soul.
Here I am drenched with a weight of water great
And greater, quenching sooner or later the Light
That's bright within me. Deliver me from this fate
Whatever the price, however black the night
If I must go out on a blast - Dear God. let me go
Before I have sold my soul to this plausible foe
Dorothea Spears
FEBRUARY FULL-MOON
Nowhere’s
a cup of moonlight for the quaffing,
Honey-sweet and smooth and cool and bright;
A draught to shape the eager lips to laughing
And quench the ardent thirst with liquid light.
Our landlord. Earth, upholds the carven cup
To catch the bright intoxicating brew
Distilled in outer space. Come, drink it up!
Be drunk with beauty while the wine is new.
The rounds are “on the house” again tonight.
The Ruler of the Universe is host,
And ugliness, for once, is put to flight,
And mute aspiring mortals ’ tiring boast.
A toast to our Host, my brothers : let it ring
Across the ether . . . “Gentlemen, The King”!
Festina Lente
Do not leap too eagerly to Spring,
Land that I love…
So short, so short is the season of blossoming.
So swift and delicate is the green
Of infant oak leaves at their first unfolding,
And of the burgeoning willow wands holding
Shyly their brief and unaccustomed sheen.
So pure and so untarnished is the gold
That turns the restless sand
Of the Cape Flats into a burnished fairyland
Hasten not to Spring, my Cape,
For Summer is close behind,
Who has no use for beauty too delicately
Designed.
Do not leap too eagerly to Love’s Spring,
Children I love…
So short, so short is the season of blossoming!
Festival of the Flowers
(Droxford 1981)
Some spirit that inhabits me
At times rose early this morning
And took me to church, impatiently,
To see, the Saints, like flowers, adorning
The Sanctuary. Silent I knelt
Amongst them… meditating…
And all around I felt
Mary and all the Saints waiting
Expectantly for someone to see
That they were there, and recognise
(Mortals in immortality)
The deep compassion in their eyes.
Fiddler
You draw your bow across my quivering strings
And as you call the tune I must play…
And as you call the tune, so I have wings,
Or flutter to the earth, engulfed in grey.
Fiesta Day – Regatta
“Never were kinder or more generous hosts than
The Portuguese”
Lourence Marques, and Delogoa Bay…
The very names are music on the tongue,
And beauty, with a careless hand, has flung
Her tree-embroidered mantle, vivid, gay
Across the Town. And on Fiesta Day
The heart of Portugal is brave and young
As when bold Diaz or Da Gama hung
Her Banners down this southern Ocean-way.
From Clube Naval the gay Fiesta Race
In sun and sighing breeze and swinging tide
Calls little ships to set their sails and glide
Across the waters, jockeying for place,
The friendly yachts that come from far and wide –
And Beauty folds them all in her embrace.
24.8.59
Fifth Column
Have you not heard them creeping through the nigh,
Intangible, invisible and real;
A darkness in the darkness; in the light
A shadow seeking shelter, velvet steel?
As starlings find the one unminded spot
And occupy the roof, as waters seep
Unseen through tiny inlets guarded not
To breach the dyke: so fear and hatred creep
Through rifts of unforgiveness, occupy
The stronghold of the mind and storm the heart –
Italian beetles, house to house they fly
And riddle nations till they fall apart
Be vigilant of fear and hatred, Soul
Who undetermined the love that keeps life whole.
Fire Thoughts
(Constantia)
The smoke made finger-prints across the sky
At first, and then it blotted bits of hill.
And after that the flames came leaping high
Amongst the pines, lit torches at their will.
Now there, now here, like Will-o-wisps they flew
To start another b1aze . . . now here, now there . . .
And men were helpless to prevent each new
Encroaching, dangerous, devastating flare.
Prometheus meant well who stole gods' fire
For man, forgetting every man must find
The benefits and dangers of desire,
The potencies of manifested mind.
For fire is dangerous beauty − guard it well.
The fire of mind can kindle the fires of hell.
Dorothea Spears
First of June
It was good that I had to go
To town today -
Otherwise I wouldn't know
How rich, how gay,
How jaunty the cloaks of the poplars and oaks
Out Newlands way.
Otherwise I might not have seen,
With an answering thrill,
Gold Autumn dancing from Waterloo Green
Up Wynberg hill,
Or flaunting her glimmering1 shimmering sheen
By Mosterts Mill.
How lucky it was that I had to go
To town to-day, or I wouldn't know'.
Dorothea Spears
First Step to Peace
A solitary swimmer in Time’s stream,
Full often I have pondered, unresigned,
The fallibility of humankind;
The inability of man supreme on earth
To realise his ancient dream
Of peace.
We read Life’s text, scored, underlined
With blood, yet no solution can we find;
No key, no door to that desired regime.
“What then must be the individual’s part
To outlaw war ere strife again be bred?”
I cried unto the Sage within, who said
“If thou the path to lasting peace would start,
For thee, and for thy world that late hath bled –
My son first outlaw hate in thine own heart.
Cape Town
Flaming Judas Tree
From my high study window, I can see
Alone in the foreground, the flaming Judas Tree
And wide shaven daisied lawns running
To dabble their green frocks in the Long Pool
At the bottom of the garden where the great grey willow
Weeps and keeps the dappled sun at bay,
Beyond the aging cedar towering high
Against the sky above its fellows
A Cyprus, a birch and a copper prunus
A spreading yew… and behind the pool
A ribbon of wooded island dividing the pool
From the ease hidden river running free
Beyond the blended screen of green on green
And alone in the foreground the flaming Judas Tree
Thalus looking westward, looking towards the south
I greet a square of sky aspiring limes
In delicate spring sheen… a bank of lilacs
White and purple crowding the bright tipped yews
Against the pale cypress trying to reach
And share the sky with an elegant copper beech
And here and there at the best I can catch a glimpse
Across the river cattle on greening pastures
Climbing further hills and other groves
Of blended greens; curved horizon broader
By pasture and woods to make a different shape
Of grey sky as far as eye can see
And alone in the foreground the flaming Judas Tree
A hieroglyph? What would it say to me?
Flood-lighting Table Mountain
The Table of the Mountain still is spread,
For who would feast, above us and behind.
And he who seeks for sustenance shall find
If he will lift his bowed and weary head,
The wherewithal by which the soul is fed;
If he will only lift his heart and mind
To see, above the mists that blur and blind,
That God is holding out his daily bread.
Flood if you must, this Table with white light.
But let us not contaminate this food
With artificial colouring matter crude
And cheap, adulterating sense and sight.
Here let us guard the purity of night
For who has tasted knows that this is good.
Dorothea Spears
Flowering peach
Have you forgotten, now
How the delicate whorls of white
Broke from the black bough
To fill the tree with light?
Now, humble as a shepherd
And proud as a sceptred king
She stands by the pool in the garden -
Epitome of Spring.
Dorothea Spears
Food For
Martha might write verse. O yes indeed,
But never poetry. But Mary, now
Would never cook like Martha. She would need
And store within the cupboards of her brow
Ingredients thrifty Martha would discard
As useless, cluttering space… butterfly wings
And dreams and spoken words and memories starred
With dew and fragrance, all the untold things
Collected otherwheres that have no words
To hold them in, nor labels for the shelf
In Martha’s pantry… and the songs of birds
And mystical communings with the Self
(Such a waste of time!) and talking with the Master
(The lazy one) which means that Martha’s hand
And feet must toil the harder and the faster –
How strange the Master does not understand!
The way the world is made it must be fed.
. . . . . . . .
Ah yes… but poetry as well as bread.
Footprints
Transient footprints in the African dust
Ground more fine than any cruet's spice
By countless feet that wear away the crust
Of earth and sculpt the outcropping rock between
Two polished contours innocent of spoor −
Yet not more innocent, not more unseen,
Yet not more unrevealing than the fine
And unresistant dust that takes the print
Of every passerby and blurs the line
In mute surrender to the latest foot
Of animal or man, of wind or storm:
Impermanent as legends scribed by night
And alternating day on the scroll of time.
This is Africa. No footprints take
On granite and no sounding echoes wake
In unresisting dust. The centuries pass
Across the granite and the dust and leave
No trail by which the erudite can trace
The footprints of the darkness and the light;
The permutations of the ancient form,
The ancient weakness and the ancient might
Before the advent of this age, this race.
Dorothea Spears
For Christine
Dead-heading
The roses
And gathering
Their crumpled fragrance
To preserve –
Perpetual in pot-pourri
I wished I could
As cleanly cut
The brown-edged petals
Of your pain,
To leave you free
To bloom again.
For December 15th
My dear, the years of life go flying, flying
The generous years that offer us so much
Why waste the present for some future crying
That may be dust and ashes to our touch
The gifts that God has given let us cherish
Accept with open hands what now supplies
Nor wait per factionless perchance we perish
And lose earth’s beauty gazing at the skies.
There have been potholes in the road behind us
There may be danger in the road ahead
So let us claim the present joys that find us
Nor starve appreciation till we’re dead.
For Elsie Hall
(On her ninetieth birthday)
How beautiful this sunset, how serene,
After so long a day, so long a day,
Beginning with a melody that's been
The underlying motif all the way:
Beginning with a melody in June
Far South, far South; and every brightening hour
Another note of harmony, a tune,
A realization of an inner power.
It must be good to watch the sun go down
And know that when the last long rays are gone
And night is over city, field and town,
That melody goes on and on and on;
To look with confidence at night skies
And know, content, that music never dies.
Dorothea Spears
For Hilary and Maureen
October 5th, 1968
What can I give you that you cannot buy,
Beloved ones, something for you to keep . . .
A blossom tree, a patch of blue sky,
A memory, from love that roots deep?
I'll weave the sunlight into a web of sound
For you to sing. I'll card the garden's scent
To knit a garment that will wrap you round
With harmony and beauty and content.
What is given is given, good or ill,
Is part of you, as you are part of me.
But I should like to be, when thought is still,
A peace within your hearts, a shady tree
To shelter you against a hot day,
A quiet benediction on your way.
Dorothea Spears
For Memory
I give thee violets
For memory.
Because the violet
Is dear to me,
And speaks of faithfulness
And constancy;
I bring thee violets,
Dew-kissed to thee.
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press
1925
For My Clever Friend, The Atheist
I would not pit my wit against your own;
But Toynbee, now… he knew a thing or two,
And Jung and Huxley, mentioning a few
Of many mental giants I have known
In black and white. The seeds that they sow
I don’t despise; in fact it would be true
To claim (with all respect, of course, to you)
Their flowers than yours more naturally grown.
You think the here and now that you can touch
And feel is all the real, are satisfied
That Man is all… no guide, no God, no grace.
But I’m with Toynbee – the worlds we need to clutch
Are the spiritual worlds within ourselves – inside –
And not the physical worlds in outer space.
Veritas
Constantia, C.P
For That Which Teaches You
For that which teaches you detachment, friend,
Be thankful, since both happiness and pain
Delude the personality and lend
A false reality to loss and gain.
For somewhere on life's journey you must learn
To rise above elation and despair,
To love without desiring love's return,
To stand unhurt; to care, and not to care.
For that which teaches you detachment, friend,
Be thankful, and to him who wields the rod;
For surely he is strongest in the end
Who seeks his peace within himself and God
Who find's, beneath earth's brief banality,
The immanence of immortality.
Dorothea Spears
For the New Year
If I had loved you less
I should have wished you wealth and happiness
And health. But since I love you more
I choose for you
From out the New Year’s store
Of gifts, another two.
I would not give you happiness if pain
Will make you beautiful; nor gain
If loss will make you fine.
Sharp tools are needed to release
The diamond from the mine:
And peace
Is won through turmoil, not through ease.
The gifts that I would choose
For you and me
Are love and service, gifts to use
For unlocking of Eternity…And wit to see
How small this little one appears
Against a background of a million years.
Fore note to Autumn
I thought I heard the voice of Autumn in the wind
That sang across the valley yesternight:
It left behind
A chilly echo, that morning light
Found lurking in the vineyard
And swiftly put to flight.
Cape Times
27.04.53
Foreboding no.2
I know not why I should be sad tonight
Nor why my heart should tremble and stand still:
There is no thing to hurt me, nor affright,
Yet can I not dispel this haunting chill
That creeps insidiously through my frame,
Freezing the laughter, bidding joy take flight,
Possessing me – a fear without a name –
A shadow passing over my delight.
I cannot face a Thing that is not there,
An insubstantial ghost, a shade of fear:
I cannot flee it for it fills the air
And interpenetrates the atmosphere:
I breath foreboding with each breath. Oh! Why
Am I so sad tonight? What ghost comes by?
“Dawn”, Silwood Rd, Rondebosch
Foreboding
Spring has been too beautiful this year,
Turning the garden into a fairyland:
Too beautiful… too early … and too near –
Unless one believes in fairies and can understand
That this is the natural way for the world to be,
Accepting and enjoying every day
As a link in the daisy chain of eternity,
Forgetting that frost may still be hiding in May.
Why does the fact of perfection frighten Man?
Why must we say that beauty cannot last
And must be paid for when and where we can,
Living in the future and the past
Remembering that summer before the war
And wondering “this time what are we waiting for?”
Forenote
I thought I heard the voice of Autumn in the wind
That sang across the valley yesternight,
And left behind
A chilly echo that morning light
Found lurking in the vineyard
And swiftly put to flight.
Four O'clock in June
Close the windows. Shut the door -
The hand of the clock is on the four
And four of the clock is not too soon
To close the doors in the month of June.
For now the sun that warmed at two
Although the sky is pale and blue
Has sacrificed his summer power
And loses magic hour by hour,
Surrendering to the chill that creeps
About the house when Summer sleeps,
Seeking to enter unawares
And fill the rooms and climb the stairs.
Close the windows. Shut the door.
The hand of the clock is on the four.
Dorothea Spears
Fragment
The world grows old and cold.
Men tire
And shiver in the summer sun
And stare at shifting shadows.
Mortal! Tend the tiny fire
Upon your own hearth.
Blow the smoldering brands!
Some wanderer may see the glow
And warm his hands
Dorothea Spears
Fragment from Fernwood
How can I catch this beauty
And close it in a cage of words for you?
A lowering sky, and flashing out of the grey
Uncompromising winter day
A sudden flock of pigeons in a silver flight
Wheeling and circling bright
Against a stormy row of naked trees –
As if they caught some hidden source of light
Of which they knew, somewhere
And I unaware.
Freedom
To look on beauty
And possess it not
Without desire of possession
To come to terms with duty
And confess it
Without a pride in the confession:
To hold within
All one’s necessity
This is to win
This is to be free −
Dorothea Spears
Friend
If there were such a thing as greatness in me –
Your belief in me would make me great:
Your faith to highest pinnacles would win me;
Your confidence would overmaster Fate.
If there is such a thing as goodness in me-
(If it be you have not come too late!)
Your steadfast faith to Heaven’s heights will win me;
And your strong love will open Heaven’s gate.
The Epworth Press
1925
FRIENDSHIP
When first we met and brown eye challenged eye,
And hand clasped hand, that moment there was born
In our two souls a glow as of the morn.
An understanding love that cannot die.
It was not the love of
man and maid to sig
For further bliss, and
hard-forged bonds to mourn :
A pure and steadfast
flame of passion shorn
It rose to lose itself against the sky.
But love like this they could not understand,
The common world. So you
go on your way
And I on mine, in paths
that rarely blend.
Conventions like a host between us stand :
How can they know that
even for a day
No distance can divide our souls, my friend?
From A Balcony in Johannesburg
Scarce twilight yet … The stormy sky
It is that fills the street with this strange light
In which the twinkling globes unclose and vie
With muted signs against encroaching night
Like flowers opening unsuspecting eyes
To brief and unreasonable suns to shine
Against the garden with naïve surprise.
A dust of gold against a dull design
And then the rain … and mirrors everywhere
Transforming and reflecting! And the drums
Of thunder Quivering through the startled air!
In such a burst of splendour beauty comes,
Announced by lightning, terrifying and bright –
And Twist Street sings, and I, to see this sight!
Fruition
For love to last, there must be in it
Underlying, basic power
Of the Divine. So only a pure heart wins it,
And know the glory of its flower.
Dorothea Graham Botha
The Epworth Press
1925